It is these days a widely accepted view among geneticists that small cells and amino acids in the human body drive evolution.

The most important thing affecting such minute bodily objects is environmental change. These little sensors will notice everything from the terrain in which the animal lives, the heat upon it, the diet it eats and even how quickly it moves. They are minuscule monitors of where the animal lives and the effects of that location upon it.

So for example, they will spot temperature rises in the skin, changing elements in the stomach, and the composition of earwax. They do it purely by being there – and thus ‘noticing’ it.

But there’s one thing nobody has as yet worked out: if they haven’t got brains or eyes, how exactly do these cells do that?

In truth, they have no sensory equipment at all beyond just being.

At first, scientists in the field thought perhaps they relayed these changes to the brain, which then worked out the why part, and what to do about it. But that has so far drawn a blank. Despite rapid advances in mapping the brain, as yet there doesn’t seem to be a place called the Amino Acid Signal Receiving Centre.

Buddhists, of course, will tell you that this only goes to illustrate what they’ve always said: that separation is an illusion. Neuroscientists agree: what we perceive through the senses, they aver, is merely a gross simplification of billions of electromagnetic signals zapping our antennae every microsecond.

What does all this mean?

Fire away….