A Design Contest
By Maureen McHugh
Once upon a time in the evolution of life, there was a design contest. Teams of eager young life forms were challenged to generate different ways to provide rigid levers against which a new type of motor could pull.
The new motor was a muscle, called striated. Its predecessor was smooth
muscle. Both are still in use today. A metaphor can help to understand the
differences between the two
The smooth muscle can be thought of as a "herd" muscle. Its action is slow and steady, and all muscles in a region do the same thing. It is well suited to the first creatures, which lived in water and were small, soft, and stayed close to home. It is still used today in large animals, such as humans, in the mostly invisible, continuous functioning of the internal organs and blood vessels.
The striated muscle, by contrast, is an "individual" muscle. It is capable of very
strong exertions, but only for a limited time, and specific muscle groups can perform actions strongly differentiated from their neighbors. Such muscles became needed as life forms became larger and acquired sophisticated sensory organs that gave them a larger vista. The new creatures wanted muscles that could propel them as far as the eye could see. The striated muscle provided that new engine, but it needed something to pull against.Thus arose the Rigid Structure Design Contest. Two teams provided ingenious, contrasting solutions. One team called their entry, "Arthropoda," and the other, "Vertebrata." Team Arthropoda generated centipedes, spiders, insects, and crustacea, such as lobsters. In this design, the rigid levers are outside, and the soft animal inside. Team Vertebrata generated fish and frogs, cats and dogs, and you and me. In this solution, the arrangement of soft and stiff is reversed: the rigid levers are inside, and the soft animal on the outside.
Although both teams generated successful solutions, in the long view, Vertebrata have vastly outpaced Arthropoda. To summarize, the triumph of Vertebrata can be seen in the fact that we humans eat more lobsters than lobsters eat humans. Why so? Nicholai Bernstein (1896-1966), a Russian specialist in the evolution of the control of movement and the originator of this design contest metaphor, has an interesting hypothesis. He notes that vertebrates are harder to control: the nervous system must pay attention and the muscle must do some work to maintain the uprightness of the structure. Lobsters, however, inside their shells, can just lounge. In Bernstein’s interpretation, in Arthropoda, the evolutionary impulse sputtered out in complacency. Vertebrates, however, were continually challenged, and so continued to grow.
As I look around, the Rigid Structure Design Contest is being repeated. Today, the question is "How shall I sit?" Or, "What kind of chair should I buy?" In this contest, too, there are two leading designs. One way is like a lobster: the person sits inside a rigid structure. In the other way, the person uses the chair to take weight off the feet, but still relies on the inner rigidity to support uprightness.
Musicians
often sit in an upright way. Some computer users take support from the skeleton,
too. But at the end of the evening, and in cars and airplanes, most everybody
leans into the support of the furniture. And what about you, dear Reader? Do you
sometimes sit like an Athropoda? Sometimes like a Vertebrata? How does each
choice feel, and where does each choice lead?
By taking classes in the Feldenkrais Method, you can refine your ability to distinguish between each choice. You can learn to feel more distinctly, especially, what it is like to take support from the structure inside. This, after all, was the winning solution, and it is how we are designed to be.
Bernstein, Nicholai A., On Dexterity and Its Development, Essay 3. Published within the larger volume, Dexterity and Its Development. Edited by Mark L. Latash and Michael T. Turvey. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996.