Evolution of consciousness

Human being  has high level of consciousness with complexity of emotions and  well developed intelligence which are not observed in animals and lower living species. 

Animals also   have accumulated memory which influences their behavior. They can remember routes, behaviors of other animals and changes in nature. Domesticated animals show higher learning abilities due to constant more frequent exposure to human beings and try to learn or imitate human actions. 

 Birds could be trained to remember expected actions. Their skill in nest construction shows presence of inherited memory.

The insects like ants and bees show highly developed social working and discipline in actions. They anticipate food shortage in future and store food in advance. 

 Single cell microbes show change in behavior with changes in physical and chemical environment.

Plants respond to change in weather and season and can detect water and other chemicals and even though these responses can be explained based on purely physico-chemical reactions, still we can label it as some different kind of memory. 

 

All the above categories we classify as living as they have an important ability of reproduction, but still we generally do not attribute consciousness to plants. But suppose we use the term consciousness as response to external environment, we can extend the realm of consciousness to lowest possible level. 

Why plants, even the non living organic compounds show miraculous synthesis and transformation patterns. You know that virus behaves like nonliving matter but becomes active when attached to specific host cell. Virus exhibits a peculiar replication pattern resembling reproduction of living species.

The structure and activities of DNA and RNA exhibit presence of some sort of low level consciousness.

Minerals interact with environment and change structure. Crystals grow in shape typical to specific compound. Synthesis of molecules from atoms  and chemical reactions like corrosion and electron movements in magnetic fields is response to environment.

If we liberalize the definition of consciousness this way, we can say that there is  a  connection between living and nonliving and both are part of a continuous evolution in a time sequence right from energy to highly developed human being at the apex.