Superorganism
Encyclopedia
Organism
In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...
consisting of many organisms. This is usually meant to be a social unit
Social unit
Social unit is a term used in sociology, anthropology, ethnology, and also in animal behaviour studies, zoology and biology to describe a social entity which is part of and participates in a larger social group or society....
of eusocial
Eusociality
Eusociality is a term used for the highest level of social organization in a hierarchical classification....
animals, where division of labour
Division of labour
Division of labour is the specialisation of cooperative labour in specific, circumscribed tasks and likeroles. Historically an increasingly complex division of labour is closely associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialisation...
is highly specialised and where individuals are not able to survive by themselves for extended periods of time. Ants are the best-known example of such a superorganism, while the naked mole rat
Naked Mole Rat
The naked mole rat , also known as the sand puppy or desert mole rat, is a burrowing rodent native to parts of East Africa and the only species currently classified in the genus Heterocephalus...
is a famous example of the eusocial
Eusociality
Eusociality is a term used for the highest level of social organization in a hierarchical classification....
mammal
Mammal
Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...
. The technical definition of a superorganism is "a collection of agents which can act in concert to produce phenomena governed by the collective," phenomena being any activity "the hive wants" such as ants collecting food or bees choosing a new nest site.
The Gaia hypothesis
Gaia hypothesis
The Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.The scientific investigation of the...
of James Lovelock
James Lovelock
James Lovelock, CH, CBE, FRS is an independent scientist, environmentalist and futurologist who lives in Devon, England. He is best known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the biosphere is a self-regulating entity with the capacity to keep our planet healthy by controlling...
and the work of James Hutton
James Hutton
James Hutton was a Scottish physician, geologist, naturalist, chemical manufacturer and experimental agriculturalist. He is considered the father of modern geology...
, Vladimir Vernadsky
Vladimir Vernadsky
Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky was a Russian/Ukrainian and Soviet mineralogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and of radiogeology. His ideas of noosphere were an important contribution to Russian cosmism. He also worked in Ukraine where he...
and Guy Murchie
Guy Murchie
Guy Murchie , the son of Ethel A. and Guy Murchie Sr., was a Chicago Tribune photographer, staff artist and reporter, who had served as a war correspondent in England and Iceland from 1940 to 1942. He was briefly married to Barbara Cooney , with whom he shared two children...
, have suggested that the biosphere
Biosphere
The biosphere is the global sum of all ecosystems. It can also be called the zone of life on Earth, a closed and self-regulating system...
can be considered a superorganism. This view relates to Systems Theory
Systems theory
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
and the dynamics of a complex system
Complex system
A complex system is a system composed of interconnected parts that as a whole exhibit one or more properties not obvious from the properties of the individual parts....
.
Superorganisms are important in cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
, particularly biocybernetics
Biocybernetics
Biocybernetics is the application of cybernetics to biological science, composed of biological disciplines that benefit from the application of cybernetics: neurology, multicellular systems and others...
. They exhibit a form of "distributed intelligence," a system in which many individual agents with limited intelligence and information are able to pool resources to accomplish a goal beyond the capabilities of the individuals. Existence of such behavior in organisms has many implications for military and management applications, and is being actively researched.
Superorganic in social theory
Nineteenth century thinker Herbert SpencerHerbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
coined the term super-organic to focus on social organization (the first chapter of his Principles of Sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
is entitled "Super-organic Evolution"), though this was apparently a distinction between the organic and the social, not an identity: Spencer explored the holistic
Holism in science
Holism in science, or Holistic science, is an approach to research that emphasizes the study of complex systems. This practice is in contrast to a purely analytic tradition which aims to gain understanding of systems by dividing them into smaller composing elements and gaining understanding of the...
nature of society as a social organism
Social organism
In sociology, the social organism is theoretical concept in which a society or social structure is viewed as a “living organism.” From this perspective, typically, the relation of social features, e.g. law, family, crime, etc., are examined as they interact with other features of society to meet...
while distinguishing the ways in which society did not behave like an organism. For Spencer, the super-organic was an emergent
Emergentism
In philosophy, emergentism is the belief in emergence, particularly as it involves consciousness and the philosophy of mind, and as it contrasts with reductionism. A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is in some sense more than the "sum" of the properties of the system's parts...
property of interacting organisms, that is, human beings. And, as has been argued by D. C. Phillips, there is a "difference between emergence and reductionism."
Similarly, economist Carl Menger
Carl Menger
Carl Menger was the founder of the Austrian School of economics, famous for contributing to the development of the theory of marginal utility, which contested the cost-of-production theories of value, developed by the classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo.- Biography :Menger...
expanded upon the evolutionary nature of much social growth, but without ever abandoning methodological individualism
Methodological individualism
Methodological individualism is the theory that social phenomena can only be accurately explained by showing how they result from the intentional states that motivate the individual actors. The idea has been used to criticize historicism, structural functionalism, and the roles of social class,...
. Many social institutions arose, Menger argued, not as "the result of socially teleological causes, but the unintended result of innumerable efforts of economic subjects pursuing 'individual' interests."
Spencer and Menger both argued that because it is individuals who choose and act, any social whole should be considered less than an organism, though Menger emphasized this more emphatically. Spencer used the organistic idea to engage in extended analysis of social structure
Social structure
Social structure is a term used in the social sciences to refer to patterned social arrangements in society that are both emergent from and determinant of the actions of the individuals. The usage of the term "social structure" has changed over time and may reflect the various levels of analysis...
, conceding that it was primarily an analogy. So, for Spencer, the idea of the super-organic best designated a distinct level of social reality
Social reality
Social reality is distinct from biological reality or individual cognitive reality, and has been defined as 'a level of phenomena that emerges through social interactions and that cannot be reduced to the intentions of individuals'....
above that of biology and psychology, and not a one-to-one identity with an organism.
Nevertheless, Spencer also argued that "every organism of appreciable size is a society," which has suggested to some that the issue may be terminological.
The term superorganic was adopted by anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber
Alfred L. Kroeber
Alfred Louis Kroeber was an American anthropologist. He was the first professor appointed to the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, and played an integral role in the early days of its Museum of Anthropology, where he served as director from 1909 through...
in 1917. Social aspects of the superorganism concept are analysed in Marshall (2002).
Problems and criticisms
The question remains "What is to be considered the individualIndividualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
?" Some biologist
Biologist
A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
s such as Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
suggest that the individual selected is the selfish gene, while computer simulation
Simulation
Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....
s like Daisyworld
Daisyworld
Daisyworld, a computer simulation, is a hypothetical world orbiting a star whose radiant energy is slowly increasing. It is meant to mimic important elements of the Earth-Sun system, and was introduced by James Lovelock and Andrew Watson in a paper published in 1983 to illustrate the plausibility...
suggest that biological selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
occurs at multiple levels simultaneously.
Some scientists have suggested that individual human beings can be thought of as
"superorganisms"; as a typical human digestive system contains 1013
to 1014 microorganisms whose collective genome
Genome
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....
("microbiome
Microbiome
A microbiome is the totality of microbes, their genetic elements , and environmental interactions in a defined environment. A defined environment could, for example, be the gut of a human being or a soil sample. Thus, microbiome usually includes microbiota and their complete genetic elements...
")
contains at least 100 times as many genes as our own (see also Human microbiome project
Human microbiome project
The Human Microbiome Project is a United States National Institutes of Health initiative with the goal of identifying and characterizing the microorganisms which are found in association with both healthy and diseased humans . Launched in 2008, it is a five-year project, best characterized as a...
).
Literature
- Jürgen Tautz, Helga R. Heilmann: The Buzz about Bees - Biology of a Superorganism, 284 pages : Springer-Verlag 2008. ISBN 978-3-540-78727-3
- Bert Hölldobler, E.O. Wilson: "The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies", 576 pages : W.W. Norton, 2008. ISBN 978-0393067040
See also
- Collective intelligenceCollective intelligenceCollective intelligence is a shared or group intelligence that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, animals, humans and computer networks....
- CyberneticsCyberneticsCybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
- EarthEarthEarth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
- Gaia hypothesisGaia hypothesisThe Gaia hypothesis, also known as Gaia theory or Gaia principle, proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet.The scientific investigation of the...
- List of human diseases associated with infectious pathogens
- MemeMemeA meme is "an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture."A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena...
- Naked mole ratNaked Mole RatThe naked mole rat , also known as the sand puppy or desert mole rat, is a burrowing rodent native to parts of East Africa and the only species currently classified in the genus Heterocephalus...
- Social organismSocial organismIn sociology, the social organism is theoretical concept in which a society or social structure is viewed as a “living organism.” From this perspective, typically, the relation of social features, e.g. law, family, crime, etc., are examined as they interact with other features of society to meet...
- StigmergyStigmergyStigmergy is a mechanism of indirect coordination between agents or actions. The principle is that the trace left in the environment by an action stimulates the performance of a next action, by the same or a different agent...
- SymbiosisSymbiosisSymbiosis is close and often long-term interaction between different biological species. In 1877 Bennett used the word symbiosis to describe the mutualistic relationship in lichens...