Proprioception, the perception of movement and spatial orientation arising from stimuli inside the body, is a medical concept. Although the name for it is not well known, the phenomemon is familiar to all of us. Our proprioceptors incessantly inform us that we are standing up, inclining our head, squinting our eyes, or clenching our fists. Proprioceptors work as sensory systems not for outside information about others or the environment but inside the body. Nerves attached to muscles fire when they detect motion such as change in positioning of the body. These self-monitoring nerves tell us whether we are standing on our feet or our head or are on the bus at a standstill or jogging along at thirty-five miles an hour. The Earth has enjoyed a proprioceptive system for millennia, since long before humans evolved. Small mammals communicate the comming earthquake or cloudburst. Trees release “volatiles,” substances that warn their neighbors that gypsy moth larvae are attacking their leaves. Proprioception, the sensing of self, probably is as old as self itself. I like to think that we people augment and continue to accelerate Gaia’s newfangled proprioceptor capability. A fire in the Borneo forest and a crash of a U.S. helicopter in the Italian Alps are broadcast on televised news in New York City. Yet extinct packs of wolves and flocks of dinosaurs enjoyed their own proprioceptive social communication; the global nervous system certainly did not begin with the origin of people. Gaia, the physiologically regulated Earth, enjoyed proprioceptive global communication long before people evolved. The air circulated gas emissions and soluble chemical from tropical trees, mating-ready insects, and life-threatened bacteria. Love compounds have wafted in spring breezes since the Archean age. But the speed of proprioception has greatly increased with the electronic age.
Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution, 1998, pp. 113-4.
