#no seriously i have to blogpost for my coursework

[cee-sees-the-sea]

Imagine yourself submerged in the prehistoric ocean. There are no fish, instead the only life forms consist of feather-like sessile organisms that sit on the seabed, filtering the current. The early organisms that evolved out of this, such as Jellyfish and Starfish, had radial anatomy. Their body structure entails a central axis from which you can split everything else. These bodies are simple, not designed for active mobility, lacking a ‘forwards’ or ‘backwards’. They didn’t even have eyes, instead interacting with and responding to the world via photoreceptive cells. What emerged from this were two developments: the evolution of complex eyes and the emergence of bilateral anatomy in early vertebrates and arthropods. In contrast to radial anatomy, bilateral anatomy entails an organism that can be split down the middle with rough symmetry. This is to say that they are built for direction. A body that is built for mobility entails significantly more complex behaviour behind its operation. Behaviour, in this sense, also becomes significantly more directed. These creatures now living in the ocean or on the sea-floor now begin to directly interact with one another. The mechanisms facilitating this interaction become pretty apparent in the fossil record; eyes, claws and antennae. The evolutionary consequences of this are the emergence of a complex nervous system alongside the presence of predation and, as Godfrey-Smith puts it “[From this point on] The mind evolved in response to other minds”.