There's a great phrase from Eric Jantsch ... and he says, "these self-organizing dynamics are in every place in the universe, waiting at their marks". I love that phrase because you get that ... the power for making water exists everywhere in the universe but the conditions have to be right. But if the conditions are right, then these self-organizing dynamics leap to it. So I think it's something like that, that the possibility for sentience has always been there but has been waiting for a chance to really display.