When the Earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago, it took around 500 to 600 million years for life to form within it.
By the time life emerged, there were three interacting geospheres: the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere. From within the second
geosphere, forming within the first geosphere, an "autogenic" cell emerged. This cell was formed from phospholipids that collapse into a spheroid
shape; and within this shape, rudimentary chemical reactions formed - a proto metabolism. This proto metabolism was fed by the deep sea alkaline
hydrothermal vents emitting sulphur, iron and other 'core metabolites'. Atmospheric nitrogen also found its way into the hydrosphere, and into the
pores of these deep sea vents, and finally to be integrated into the self-organization of the autogenic cells.
At some point, the cells complexified by adding amino acids and nucleic acids into their processes. Later on, prokaryotes evolved into cells that
housed smaller organelles inside of them. An Archaea (a type of prokaryote) swallowed a bacteria, and the eukaryotic cell emerged: the nucleated cell.
The archea became the cell body and the bacteria became the nucleus. Later on, mitochondria emerged, and with them came the ability to make the cell
'portable', and no longer need to rely upon proximity to the energy source (as in the deep sea pore). Mitchondria process oxygen; and oxygen was
available in the atmosphere as well in the water (H2O2). Hydrogen peroxide and a sort of 'proto-mitrochondrion' allowed the cell to source energy in
the water around it.
Fast forward 4 billion years, and life has colonized the planet. It covers it; on land and in the oceans, in caverns and under ground. Each cell is
powered by a complex yet logically organized set of compartments with bidirectional communication patterns. In multicellular organisms, the
bioenergetic logic of homeostasis becomes organized around a higher semiotic logic. This higher logic can be conceived as a set of patterns of
interaction between elements around a 'singular' theme: survival. This means every behavioral state of an organism is itself the 'singularity'
that hold's the elements of the parts in question together.
The above diagram shows how the world we live and experience is upheld by 5 interacting 'spheres'. The first three, the lithosphere, hydrosphere,
and atmosphere, seem 'immaterial', but they are essential background conditions for biological processes to operate. The fourth, or the biosphere,
is the expression of cellular activity and cellular expression around higher and higher forms. But what are the 'higher forms'? What are the
dynamical processes forming around?
The reading of patterns, or discriminating the coherence of a signal, could have to do with finding a geometrical 'continuity' with the outside
world. The cell is a dynamical construction which self organizes with reference to a 'field' of external energies that are constantly shifting in
tandem with the shifting's of the cell. The cell grows, always in terms of the 'proximal zone of development' (Vygotsky's term for any sort of
developmental progression in living systems). But it's growth is almost like a puzzle. The world yields what it yields, and it's very random at what
gets what and what becomes realized. In any case, the realization of morphological form is determined by physical constants imposed by the laws of
thermodynamics and the law of gravity on the molecular behavior of the cells dynamics. The higher level 'wave' seems to have an entraining function
on the lower level 'waves'. Its fractal like; and yet, at the observational level, a spider is a weird looking creepy sort of creature which has
genetically 'locked in' this way of being 300 million years ago. It's higher order 'structuring' includes influences from many different domains;
but there is also a great deal of continuity - a transforming of behavior from one functional use to another functional use is the modus operandi of
evolution.
This higher level wave is identical to semiosis - or meaning making. Each animal constitutes its own semiosphere, yet it appears to be only the human
which lives in a semiosphere which is populated by perceptions, feelings and meanings, all of which are dynamically contiguous with the physiological
processes of the body itself.
The humans entrance into a 'semiosphere', or the awareness of itself in the process of perceiving, feeling, and cognizing, carries the quality of
the 'existential' - or the awareness of our awareness, and the exploration of our awareness.
The human semiosphere was borne at least 200,000 years ago, but it had important antecedents in Homo Heidelbergensis, and back to Homo Erectus one
million years ago. The transformation of meaning in humans follows the 'nodes' of 'association'. Association, however, follows the larger scale
contours of 'functional' motivational states - i.e. hunger, sex, anger, etc. The modes of being we adaptively assume in relation to the objects of
the external world constitute 'nodes' in the expression of a very complex web of relations that are embodied in the real space-time environment of
your social existence. The changing of the feeling changes the architectural nodes of your awareness.
The above description is the description of an archetype. Archetypes are clichés. They are past patterns which, based upon vital interactional
symmetry processes, become psychologically embodied in the neurological architecture of cell-networks. The archetype IS the body, whereas the mental
subjective experience is the 'most inner part' of the pyramidal type ontology which hierarchically places existential meaning at the 'top' of the
ladder.
Whatever meaning a power has assumed, anywhere, since the emergence of our species, has always been generated bottom-up in the sense that it is fed by
material from real life experiences. 200,000 years ago, the environment was drastically different from today, and so its extremely hard to imagine
what human consciousness was like back then. But its not impossible to allow yourself to imaginatively infer what, based upon your own human
experience, would be just as important to them as it is to modern day humans: affect regulation around the theme of existential meaning - 'why do I
exist'? This is what the human be IS: the being created by the universe which contemplates its existence.
The objects of the world the mind picks up, plus the way these objects are transformed by archetypes, constitutes, it would seem, an 'ontological
symmetry' between the world 'out there' and the 'mind' in here. 'Ideas' do exist, in the sense that a falcon manifests an 'idea' in its mode
of 'aggressing'. Its general look also screams 'predator'. Yet, the falcon is as much the falcon
for itself. When the human contemplates,
or perceives in an animal a certain 'archetypal mode of being', we may legitimately read it as a 'sign' of 'nature', and also, illegitimately
ignore its own existence and semiosis. The humans mode of 'existential knowing' lends the quality of 'divinity' to it. The eagle is no longer an
eagle, but a metaphor for
being better than. The quality of a human interest is projected into the animal, or perhaps, the quality
quasi-present (and not fully and completely describing), but nevertheless, for the human, this is a symmetry between self and world. Ontologically,
reality 'out there' is already implicitly present