Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon and a collection of consciousness is the noosphere. Even though each of your organs make their own decisions and contribute individually to your "consciousness", you still consider the entire thing your "self". Your decisions are made based on analyzing multiple conflicting distributed signals given off by your organs.
Organizations are no different, assuming identity, autonomy, and motivation.
But my theory falls apart with the reproduction system. We don't really reproduce other 'countries'. While with ant colonies, a single entity produces all the "cells", and also all the "embryos" to start their own ant colonies.
In that sense an ant colony uses asexual reproduction if looked at as a whole.
Thanks for the new insights! :)
Sure we do. The UK has a whole lot of offspring, for instance.
Partly reproduction, partly conquering. As usual the place is not empty.
Countries definitely do reproduce, usually on a longer cycle than that of the humans that make them up.
Oh, we still lay the eggs of new countries in the corpses of ones we kill.
It is a fascinating book, and I can recommend reading it, though having been published in 1925, it is possible some of the information is out-of-date.
https://www.amazon.com/Soul-White-Ant-Complete-Unabridged/dp...
"White Ant" actually refers to termites, though the same principles apply. The book was originally published in Afrikaans. According to Wikipedia:
> [The book] was plagiarised by Nobel laureate Maurice Maeterlinck, who published La Vie des Termites (translated into English as The Life of Termites or The Life of White Ants), an entomological book,[3] in what has been called "a classic example of academic plagiarism" by University of London's professor of biology, David Bignell.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Marais#Theft_of_hi...
Following reference [4] led to this page which I unfortunately don't have the time to read in its entirety right now, but from a skim seems to have some interesting further information on termites:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070915005006/http://www.biolog...
I thought it's a data entry error, but no, it looks like that's the legitimate price range for the NEW hardcovers (the actual listed ones are even more!):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0007JVUSK/ref=dp_ol...
It's either a ripoff, or some sort of collector's edition original versions. Though if it were the latter, I'd have expected it to be advertised as such.
The great E.O. Wilson has had similar ruminations: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/books/review/Jones-t.html
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/09/how-termites-...
I think this is the main argument for looking at a colony as a distributed individual organism.
Indeed. I've long thought that an ant colony should be seen as a single individual, rather than a group. One part which can procreate, like the reproductive system. Another which can fight off invaders, like white blood cells, or perhaps muscles. The anthill, in turn, is like a body; constructed by the cells and neurons, and protecting the system as a whole.