Essays · No. 9

Facing the World

The Evolutionary Invention of the Oriented Body

156 + 231 + 386 p.

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An essay in twenty chapters on the branch of the tree of life we inhabit: the bilateral animals. Why does an animal have a front? Why are most built around a single axis, with a mouth at one end and a gut running through to the other? Why do senses and brain gather at the leading end? Tracing the story from the Burgess Shale back through the Cambrian and forward through a cascade of inventions, through-gut, head, coelom, segmentation, skeletons, walking, the warm body, the book argues that bilaterality is the widest answer ever found to a single problem: how to extract energy from the world.

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Contents

Overture: The Question of Energy

Living means eating the world · The Cambrian feast

Act I: The Preconditions

A body without a face · The division of labour · The wheel-shaped body · The third layer

Act II: The Invention of the Front

Front and back · The tube · The head · The interior · The repeated body

Act III: The Great Crossroads

Mouth first, mouth second

Act IV: The Three Great Ways

The armour · The shell and the tentacles · The inner scaffolding

Act V: Out of the Water

Walking · The liberated egg · The warm body

Act VI: The Directional Animal

The forward-looking mind · Being an animal with a front

Colophon

CollectionEssays · No. 9EditionEnglish edition · 156 + 231 + 386 p.Versionv1.0 · errataFormat105 × 170 mm · pocketTypesettingEB Garamond · ivory background · old-style numeralsFilePDF · DRM-free · corrected editions for lifeDeliveryDownload link by e-mail