ANIMAL ORGANIZATION AND NEURAL ORGANIZATION

Constructional morphology conceives of organisms as mechanical constructions which act by energy conversion on the macromolecular level. It can be shown that the primordial nervous system which developed from muscle-like forerunnerstructures in the tethering contractile apparatus must have been from the beginning coextensive with the form-determining muscular (contractile) apparatus. The transition to muscle driven activity required repeated, usually rhythmical, nervous activity and synthetic coordination patterns that encompassed the whole muscle-apparatus. The pattern of nervous activity can only have developed in selectively enforced harmony with the biomechanical construction. For the development of the chordate and vertebrate constructions it is shown that the concentration of neuronal structures in the spinal chord presupposed the suppression of deformability in the central part of the working machine by the newly developped notochord. The metameric pattern of the spinal nerves is enforced and determined by the somitic pattern and the dense arrangement of the transverse tethering connective tissue structures.