" Protoplasm creates organs like a magician...The amoeba is continuous birth, pure production...The protozoans offer us a marvelous spectacle, as if our machines and our houses were born of a sort of purée, and each room in the house contained a reserve of this purée, in a way to assure the repair of the machine, or better, in a way to assure the reproduction and multiplication of the machine...The central nervous system is thus far from being the origin and ground of the unity of the organism. The central nervous system is exactly a particular organ like any other, or a sum of partial organs and, according to need, we use such and such an organ, but everywhere the prevalence of protoplasm weighs on the ensemble...The machine is in effect surrounded by a protoplasm capable of plasticity...The unity of the organism does not rest on the central nervous system; it must rest on an activity. "
― Maurice Merleau-Ponty , Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France