Convergence by Necessity: Sensory Systems and the Three-Level Architecture of Biological Organisation
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) July 20, 2026 Gary Norman George Bridgeman
A common three-level organisational structure appears across seven sensory systems, five of which evolved independently, suggesting a thermodynamically constrained principle rather than a contingent feature of vertebrate neuroanatomy. The first level contains three sub-functions: noise disposal, signal preservation, and signal transformation. Levels 1 and 2 reduce environmental uncertainty for viability; Level 3 addresses informational demands in complex environments at increased metabolic cost. The author argues that the ordered-vulnerability pattern observed in disorders of consciousness and the sensory convergence are independent manifestations of the same entropy-reducing organising principle. Simpler organisms implementing only Levels 1 and 2 represent evolutionary boundary conditions. The paper establishes groundwork for mapping these architectures to formal rate-distortion bounds.