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Topic: Superorganism

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	Encyclopedia: Superorganism
		A superorganism is an organism consisting of many organisms.
		This is usually meant to be a social unit of eusocial animals, where division of labour is highly specialised and where individuals are not able to survive by themselves for extended periods of time.
		The concept of superorganism is under dispute, as many biologists maintain that in order for a social unit to be considered an organism by itself, the individuals should be in permanent physical connection to each other, and its evolution should be governed by selection to the whole society instead of individuals.
	www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/Superorganism (565 words)

	Excerpt: Superorganism
		The term superorganism slid into obscurity until it was revived by Sloan Kettering head Lewis Thomas in his influential 1974 book Lives Of A Cell.
		They are unaware that someday they, like their parents, will have to cluster with their fellows in a desperate cooperative measure on which the future of their children will depend.
		Another creature enlisted in a superorganism is the citizen of a society called the sponge.
	dosel.botany.ufl.edu /Biology/supplements/Communities/superorganism.htm (807 words)

	Grey Lodge Occult Review :: Issue #6 :: The Lucifer Principle
		Because the superorganism nourishes every cell within it, allowing a robustness none of its individual components could achieve on its own.
		The superorganism is often a vile and loathsome beast.
		Superorganism, ideas and the pecking order--these are the primary forces behind much of human creativity and earthly good.
	www.greylodge.org /occultreview/glor_006/lucifer.htm (1041 words)

	Grey Lodge Occult Review :: Issue #11 :: Ideology is Theft ::
		Superorganisms are hungry creatures, attempting to break down the boundaries of their competitors, chew off chunks of their opponents' substance and digest and redistribute it as part of themselves.
		Ideology is not only the mechanism that allows a superorganism to pounce, it is the indispensable armor with which one group inside a society girds its loins for warfare against another.
		All these skills were desperately needed in a superorganism that would go from the possession of one town to the digestion of Persia, Armenia, Syria and Egypt in only 33 years.
	www.greylodge.org /occultreview/glor_011/ideology_theft.htm (17404 words)

	Kevin Kelly -- Chapter 6: The Natural Flux
		In his words, a climax formation is a superorganism because it "arises, grows, matures, and dies....comparable in its chief features with the life history of an individual plant." Since a forest could reseed itself on an abandoned Michigan field, Clements portrayed that act as reproduction, a further characteristic of an organism.
		Superorganism was a buzz word among biologists in the 1920s.
		Along the rocky coast of the Pacific Northwest, for instance, the demarcation between the high tide seaweed community and the watery edge of the spruce forest is an extreme no-man's-land of barren beach.
	www.kk.org /outofcontrol/ch6-c.html (1303 words)

	The Second Law of Pain: Society as a Superorganism
		The billions of people in society form the "cells" of the superorganism and the government and industries form the larger symbolic structures of organs, tissues, and bone.
		And because people tend to work in areas that allow them to express their personalities, this phenomenon also applies to the work environment: so a lawyer is left brained, while an artist is right brained.
		Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd have developed a theory of the human species as a superorganism based on comparing the complexity of human societies to those of insect societies.
	members.tripod.com /superpsychology/law2.html (3875 words)

	Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism
		This superorganism has the fundamentals of life: It has specialization and integration of the various parts, it metabolizes and converts energy into activity, it has an integrated response to the environment, and it evolves, albeit by reshaping itself rather than reproducing.
		The way in which the superorganism evolves is illustrated fancifully by a story of automobiles in the distant future looking back and recounting their automotive history from their perspective.
		The story goes, "The earliest automobiles--frail and unremarkable descendants of animal-drawn vehicles--first appeared in Europe in the late l9th century." It goes on to say that wherever cars roamed, they found sustenance, and states that it is still something of a mystery how automobiles maintained the unwavering support of the human population.
	www.project2061.org /publications/rsl/online/TRADEBKS/REVS/Metaman.htm (570 words)

	www.overchai.com/mayank (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		A superorganism is defined as a set of beliefs held as absolutely true by a group of individuals (the members of a society).
		Superorganism, such as families, social groups, religions, and cultures, etc. define the individual intellectually, morally, psychologically, and artistically.
		Yet, all superorganisms aspire to the ideal and everyone believes their own superorganisms are ideal.
	www.overchai.com /mayank/mayank.html (784 words)

	What are the necessary conditions for something's being alive?
		There are, to be sure, some cases of symbiosis where the degree of co-operation is far closer: the host organism acquires new genes from the symbiont by a process of lateral transfer, and the symbiont becomes so integrated into the host that it is effectively a part of the host cell (an organelle).
		The unity of the superorganism is guaranteed by its master program, which controls all the parts.
		Two superorganisms are individuated by their possession of different master programs.
	www.angelfire.com /linux/vjtorley/chapter1finalbapp.html (5209 words)

	Accounting for number of Linux & NT Clusters in the world
		The thing being optimized and protected is a superorganism -- a collection of individuals who appear on the service to be behaving rationally and will argue that they are doing so, but in fact are defending the integrity of the superorganism of which they are a part.
		It is totally unconcerned about overall economies as its budget (usually received from "outside" this superorganism) is representative of the power and importance of the superorganism in the larger superorganism of which it is but a part.
		In each and every case (and the many subcases ignored) an entrenched superorganism was met with an economically more efficient competitor and responded with a class hostile and protective rejection.
	www.beowulf.org /pipermail/test/1999-October/008077.html (784 words)

	The Impact of the Internet on the Global Brain
		By examining a significant trend throughout the development of living creatures and humanity, in particular, it is possible to extrapolate the development of the human superorganism.
		Such a superorganism would result from the highly complex interactions and cooperation of the human individuals as they each act naturally in their own best interests.
		Just as a cell cannot comprehend the concept of a human or of sentience, we may not be able to fully understand the nature of the superorganism and the global brain.
	www.chem.vt.edu /chem-dept/dessy/honors/papers98/CWENGER.htm (2203 words)

	Social homeostasis in termite colonies (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Social homeostasis is an interesting philosphical problem because it implies the colony is a 'superorganism', with a function, integration, and perhaps even a consciousness that supersedes the organism.
		The superorganism idea has fallen out of favor in ecology, but it has enjoyed more acceptance among students of social insects, in which homeostasis of colony function is a demonstrable phenomenon, susceptible to experimental manipulation and test.
		William Morton Wheeler (right) pioneered the idea of the insect colony as a superorganism, with coordinated function and physiology that cannot be explained by the capabilities of the individuals by themselves.
	www.esf.edu /efb/turner/research/sochomeo.htm (791 words)

	The Social Superorganism and its Global Brain
		Biologists agree that social insect colonies, such as ant nests or beehives, are best seen as such superorganisms.
		The activities of a single ant, bee or termite are meaningless unless they are understood in function of the survival of the colony.
		Although many people tend to see the super-organism philosophy as a totalitarian or collectivist ideology, the opposite is true: further integration will basically increase individual freedom and diversity.
	pespmc1.vub.ac.be /SUPORGLI.html (644 words)

	Welcome (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Accordingly, human superorganisms (and their political systems) are not sui generis but are variations on a major evolutionary theme.
		Paradoxical as it may seem, the current, dualistic trend toward both more and less inclusive superorganisms may continue as the economic and political topography and the functional needs for governance continue to evolve.
		Accordingly, a global superorganism may well be emerging even as traditional nation-states are devolving.
	futurepositive.synearth.net /2002/09/24?print-friendly=true (456 words)

	[No title]
		Through the sanctification of romantic love, which is the greatest human drama of the superorganism, the holocracy can then continue to rejuvenate its divinity, century after century, as the universal chord of romantic love reveals itself.
		Yes, all is superorganism, but agape leads to global totalitarianism when people are unable to break the incest barrier with the Virgin Mother and must obey God, the Father.
		Since our new knowledge of the bacterial superorganism pro- mises to open up infinite possibilities for the creation and improvement of genes, we are beginning to have a new, mature, even divine relationship with the microorganisms as human beings become the co-creators of life forms and new worlds.
	www.etext.org /Politics/Neutopians/g5 (13330 words)

	From Superhighway to Superorganism
		This concept of a superorganism is not a new one.
		Insect societies such as ant colonies are sometimes characterised as superorganisms.
		All of these have in common that they are highly complex, that each cell of the superorganism is an organism in and of itself.
	www.ucs.mun.ca /~emurphy/metaphor.html (3386 words)

	Edge: A UNITED BIOLOGY
		By enriching the databases of each of those biological levels of organization, and developing middle level theory in concert with that data accumulation as we go along, we can get a much clearer and quicker picture through the social insect of how social behavior evolved in the higher vertebrates.
		A superorganism is an aggregation of highly organized individuals into colonies.
		Superorganisms are superior as an experimental object, because you can do experiments in the laboratory much faster with a bunch of ants.
	www.edge.org /3rd_culture/wilson03/wilson_print.html (3881 words)

	[No title]
		Brown writes, "Hence according to the Epistle to the Ephesians the true meaning of the mystery of sexual intercourse is that is a symbolic representation, or adumbration, of that mystical body in which we are all members of one body" (84).
		Such a superorganism will have unity-in-variety, not by means of denying the individual, but by allowing the individual the chance to reach her or his greatest potential for the greatest good.
		Their mission is to make cities into works of art by weaving together the endless number of creative activities of their inhabitants so that all may make a proper contribution to the balance of life in the city qua arcology.
	www.etext.org /Religious.Texts/Gaia/gaia6.8 (6588 words)

	[meme] the social superorganism ...
		the fact that complex organisms, like our own bodies, are built up from individual cells, led to the concept of superorganism.
		individual humans may seem similar to the cells of a social superorganism, but they are still much more independent than ants or cells [HeCa95].
		as technological and social systems develop into a more closely knit tissue of interactions, transcending the old boundaries between countries and cultures, the social superorganism seems to turn from a metaphor into a reality.
	cartoon.iguw.tuwien.ac.at /tom/meme/superorganism-1.html (368 words)

	Kevin Kelly -- Chapter 2: Hive Mind
		Wheeler, the ant pioneer, started calling the bustling cooperation of an insect colony a "superorganism" to clearly distinguish it from the metaphorical use of "organism." He was influenced by a philosophical strain at the turn of the century that saw holistic patterns overlaying the individual behavior of smaller parts.
		Wheeler and colleagues were an essential part of this reductionist perspective, as the 50 Wheeler monographs on specific esoteric ant behaviors testify.
		Wheeler said the superorganism of the hive "emerges" from the mass of ordinary insect organisms.
	www.kk.org /outofcontrol/ch2-c.html (1168 words)

	Nikos Salingaros - Development of the Urban Superorganism
		Buildings, infrastructure, human beings, their activity nodes, and all their interconnections combine to form a "superorganism" -- that is, a complex, dynamic whole that is the size of the city.
		An urban node is some location where a person wants to be -- one's bedroom; one's office at work; a park bench to sit for five minutes when the weather is nice; a particular spot on the sidewalk to stand for ten seconds and enjoy the view.
		Urban connections are created on every scale through roads, isolated bicycle lanes, footpaths, etc. Section 3 proposes the human-mind/urban-web analogy, in which a living city works through its connections to acquire the properties of a "superorganism".
	www.katarxis3.com /Salingaros-Urban_Superorganism.htm (4299 words)

	Rupert Sheldrake Online
		A superorganism concept of animal societies dominated behavioral biology until about the early 1960s.
		The superorganism concept has not been forgotten, however, and forces itself again and again upon people who think about animal societies.
		As another familiar example of the superorganism concept, consider schools of fish: when predators swim into a school, the fish dart quickly to the side in a coordinated way in order to clear a path through the middle.
	www.sheldrake.org /papers/Morphic/morphic2_paper.html (4645 words)

	Escapable Logic (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Nations and cultures are superorganisms, like the collection of bees called a hive and the collection of surprisingly self-sufficient cells called a human.
		Individuals in a superorganism (you and I) depend on the superorganism's status in its superorganistic pecking order.
		I want a new superorganism - a culture - that reflects my values and beliefs, and I want that culture to take over the world as soon as possible.
	www.blaserco.com /blogs/2002/10/19.html (1233 words)

	Metaman: The Merging of Humans and Machines into a Global Superorganism
		He develops the provocative thesis that human society has become an immense living being -- a global superorganism in which we humans, knitted together by our modern technology and communication, are like the cells in an animal's body.
		Drawing on impressive research, Stock shows this newly formed superorganism to be more than metaphor; it is an actual living creature, which he has named "Metaman," meaning "beyond and transcending humans."
		This name acknowledges humanity's key role in the superorganism but also stresses that Metaman is more than humanity alone.
	www.innovationwatch.com /books/bks_038525380X.htm (345 words)

	METAMAN (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		Where Gaia places humanity as one of many components, to be eliminated if its depredations grow too great for the superorganism's good, Stock places humanity at the core and soul of the Metaman superorganism, its purposes of paramount importance.
		This superorganism calls upon the planet's natural resources, circulates and processes this material through itself, and then co-ordinates its activities through a complex nervous system comprising telecommunications, computer technology and people.
		If the purposes and goals of a global superorganism are to be served, both humans and computers will choose to live together in a co-operative relationship, each helping the other to survive and thrive.
	research.arc2.ucla.edu /pmts/metaman2.htm (2594 words)

	Excerpt: Isolation (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		But what happens if you remove a human from his social bonds, wrenching him from the superorganism of which he or she is a part?
		In all probability, the youngster's death had been caused by the simian equivalent of that voice which tells humans going through a similar loss that there's nothing left to live for.
		Even the well-being of the men we would imagine to be most invulnerable to social forces depends on the sense that the superorganism needs them.
	www.bookworld.com /lucifer/excerpt2.html (2214 words)

	Amazon.com: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History: Books (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-21)
		The superorganism was once a popular theme of old structuralist anthropologists like Claude Levi-Strauss, who saw society as a complex machine driven with the help of a common cognitive structure of individuals in terms of certain themes.
		We have superorganisms vying for their place in the pecking order, having a collective shift in perception, becoming bullies when they are frustrated.
		Another characteristic of superorganisms, according to Bloom, is that they give themselves myths and identify enemies, in order to create an identity and a social cohesion.
	www.amazon.com /exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0871135329?v=glance (3886 words)

	January 31, 1999, Sunday, sunny, 5-18C
		In fact, the story of the superorganism concept, from its origin as a philosophical idea sixty years ago to its present sharp decline in contemporary thinking, should prove instructive to historians of science as well as to biologists with a more immediate interest in the subject.
		[The superorganism concept faded not because it was wrong but because it no longer seemed relevant.
		If a termite mound is a superorganism and the termite is an organism, what then would they call a termite cell, or an amoeba for that matter?” said Anne.
	www.geocities.com /omniscience001/1999_01_31_fall_of_the_superorganism.htm (1581 words)

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