Erwin Schrödinger, Mind and Matter. Schrödinger, a Nobel laureate physicist of renown, concludes this from the fact that adaptive evolutionary consciousness functions thusly: “consciousness is associated with the learning of the living substance; its knowing how is unconscious.”
That is to say: in the discord of novel but periodically repeating situations the organism adapts, and it is in this adaptation that life reflects its environment with increasing complexity until what we call consciousness emerges from the interplay.
As such, in instances of success we achieve stagnation, and “places of stagnancy slip from consciousness.” This relationship between discord, growth, vitality, awareness, change, suffering and ease, stagnation, somnambulance, comfort, existential arrest is evident in our lives, but I’d not previously thought of its evolutionary grounding.
I cannot recommend this book enough. I’ve written about Schrödinger before; he is a striking thinker across many fields, and I’m sure I’ll have cause to further quote him.
