27:
164:. Toby Tyrrell's critique of the Gaia hypothesis argues that Earth's climate system does not resemble an animal's physiological system. Planetary biospheres are not tightly regulated in the same way that animal bodies are: "planets, unlike animals, are not products of evolution. Therefore we are entitled to be highly skeptical (or even outright dismissive) about whether to expect something akin to a 'superorganism'". He concludes that "the superorganism analogy is unwarranted".
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179:, contains at least 100 times as many genes as the human genome itself. Salvucci wrote that superorganism is another level of integration that is observed in nature. These levels include the genomic, the organismal and the ecological levels. The genomic structure of organisms reveals the fundamental role of integration and gene shuffling along evolution.
285:
Superorganisms are also considered dependent upon cybernetic governance and processes. This is based on the idea that a biological system – in order to be effective – needs a sub-system of cybernetic communications and control. This is demonstrated in the way a mole rat colony uses functional synergy
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If Col. Thorpe has his way, the four divisions of the US military and hundreds of industrial subcontractors will become a single interconnected superorganism. The immediate step to this world of distributed intelligence is an engineering protocol developed by a consortium of defense simulation
363:. Springer, 2016, p. 223. “Note that etymologically, the Latin word ‘supra’ means ‘higher’ in the sense of ordination, whereas ‘super’ implies a spatial order. Thus, in contrast to the mainly used notion of ‘superorganism’, we prefer to stay with the notion of a ‘supraorganism’.”
93:
are the best-known example of such a superorganism. A superorganism can be defined as "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 and
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in his 2002 book "The Unity of Nature". Finally, recent work in social psychology has offered the superorganism metaphor as a unifying framework to understand diverse aspects of human sociality, such as religion, conformity, and social identity processes.
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Both
Spencer and Menger argued that because individuals choose and act, any social whole should be considered less than an organism, but Menger emphasized that more strongly. Spencer used the organistic idea to engage in extended analysis of
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above that of biology and psychology, not a one-to-one identity with an organism. Nevertheless, Spencer maintained that "every organism of appreciable size is a society", which has suggested to some that the issue may be terminological.
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102:("eating together") might be linked to the evolution of eukaryote cells and involved in the emergence or maintenance of life forms in challenging environments on Earth and possibly other planets. Superorganisms tend to exhibit
278:", a system composed of individual agents that have limited intelligence and information. They can pool resources and so can complete goals that are beyond reach of the individuals on their own. Existence of such
229:. 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".
98:, or bees choosing a new nest site. In challenging environments, micro organisms collaborate and evolve together to process unlikely sources of nutrients such as methane. This process called
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Some scientists have suggested that individual human beings can be thought of as "superorganisms"; as a typical human digestive system contains 10 to 10 microorganisms whose collective
218:
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".
700:
Gill, S. R.; Pop, M.; Deboy, R. T.; Eckburg, P. B.; Turnbaugh, P. J.; Samuel, B. S.; Gordon, J. I.; Relman, D. A.; et al. (2 June 2006).
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First Bees and Ants, and Now People: This
Evolutionary Transition Might Be Coming for Humanity, Haaretz Magazine, November 19, 2022
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and conceded that it was primarily an analogy. For
Spencer, the idea of the super-organic best designated a distinct level of
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also introduced a concept called "cybionte" to describe cybernetic superorganism. The notion associates superorganism with
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while distinguishing the ways in which society did not behave like an organism. For
Spencer, the super-organic was an
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is entitled "Super-organic
Evolution"), though this was apparently a distinction between the organic and the social,
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1164:
Selin
Kesebir (2012). "The Superorganism Account of Human Sociality How and When Human Groups Are Like Beehives".
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637:"Humans as Superorganisms: How Microbes, Viruses, Imprinted Genes, and Other Selfish Entities Shape Our Behavior"
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in organisms has many implications for military and management applications and is being actively researched.
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875:, Vol. 1, Part 2, Chapter II, "A Society Is an Organism" (sections 222 and 223), Herbert Spencer, 1876
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Deneubourg JL, et al. (1989). "The Self-Organizing
Exploratory Pattern of the Argentine Ant".
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itself can be considered a superorganism, but that has been disputed. This view relates to
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Psychology and the
Internet: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, and Transpersonal Implications
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The
Superorganism Account of Human Sociality: How and When Human Groups are Like Beehives
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Investigations into the Method of the Social
Sciences with Special Reference to Economics
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is highly specialised and individuals cannot survive by themselves for extended periods.
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Out of control: the new biology of machines, social systems and the economic world
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Out of control: the new biology of machines, social systems and the economic world
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The concept of a superorganism raises the question of what is to be considered an
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expanded upon the evolutionary nature of much social growth but never abandoned
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The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies
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On Gaia: A Critical Investigation of the Relationship between Life and Earth
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Holistic Darwinism: Synergy, Cybernetics, and the Bioeconomics of Evolution
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Lüttge, Ulrich (ed.); Cánovas, Francisco M. (ed.); Matyssek, Rainer (ed.).
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of synergetically-interacting organisms of different species is called a
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The term superorganism is used most often to describe a social unit of
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Salvucci, E. (May 2016). "Microbiome, Holobiont and the net of life".
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in 1917. Social aspects of the superorganism concept are analysed by
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International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, Second edition
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People Are Human-Bacteria Hybrid, Wired Magazine, October 11, 2004
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863:, Vol. 1, Part 1. "The Data of Sociology", Herbert Spencer, 1876
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973:. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2012, 16, 233-261.
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453:"Differentiated Anti-Predation Responses in a Superorganism"
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scaling, persistent disequilibrium and emergent behaviours.
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to focus on social organization (the first chapter of his
887:, D. C. Phillips, Stanford University Press, 1976, p. 123
702:"Metagenomic Analysis of the Human Distal Gut Microbiome"
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615:, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 209,
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The Buzz about Bees – Biology of a Superorganism
1080:. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 199.
296:, multimedia technology, and other new developments.
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1055:. Hackensack, NJ: World Scientific. p. 211.
514:"Deciding on a new home: how do honeybees agree?"
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763:Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology
923:, Ruth Benedict, Houghton Mifflin, 1934, p. 231
596:, James Lovelock, Oxford University Press, 1979
583:Technium Unbound, SALT The Long Now Foundation
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1030:. Munchen: Walter de Gruyter. p. 428.
909:The Political Philosophy of Herbert Spencer
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641:Perspectives on Psychological Science
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1105:. Amsterdam: Elsevier. p. 319.
1301:Evolutionary models of food sharing
379:. Boston: Addison-Wesley. pp.
286:and cybernetic processes together.
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61:-interacting organisms of the same
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994:. Boston: Addison-Wesley. p.
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885:Holistic Thought in Social Science
519:Proceedings of the Royal Society B
328:, collective behaviour of bacteria
249:was adopted by the anthropologist
206:an identity: Spencer explored the
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311:Group mind (science fiction)
227:methodological individualism
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1526:Evolutionary biology portal
911:, Tim S. Gray, 1996, p. 211
873:The Principles of Sociology
861:The Principles of Sociology
757:Salvucci, E. (1 May 2012).
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407:Journal of Insect Behavior
145:, have suggested that the
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1051:A, Corning Peter (2017).
187:The 19th-century thinker
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1132:, Springer-Verlag 2008.
776:10.3389/fcimb.2012.00054
653:10.1177/1745691615583131
276:distributed intelligence
177:Human Microbiome Project
1580:Collective intelligence
1321:Male warrior hypothesis
1291:Evolutionary psychology
1281:Dual inheritance theory
1076:Corning, Peter (2010).
933:Marshall, Alan (2002).
726:10.1126/science.1124234
306:Collective intelligence
210:nature of society as a
1605:Management cybernetics
1153:", W.W. Norton, 2008.
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609:Tyrrell, Toby (2013),
532:10.1098/rspb.2002.2001
153:and the dynamics of a
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988:Kelly, Kevin (1994).
373:Kelly, Kevin (1994).
361:Progress in Botany 77
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1276:Challenge hypothesis
1271:Behavioural genetics
321:Organismic computing
19:For other uses, see
1326:Reciprocal altruism
936:The Unity of Nature
921:Patterns of Culture
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1414:Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
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139:Vladimir Vernadsky
121:in the context of
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87:division of labour
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