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14

Superorganism

Over a hundred years ago, Matthias Schleiden, the German

botanist, was pondering the recently discovered fact that beings as

simple as water fleas and as complex as human beings are made up of

individual cells.  Each of those cells has all the apparatus necessary to

lead a life of its own.  It is walled off in its own mini-world by the

surrounding hedge of a membrane, carries its own metabolic power

plants, and seems quite capable of going about its own business,

ruggedly declaring its independence.  Yet the individual cells, in

pursuing their own goals, cooperate to create an entity much larger

than themselves.  Schleiden declared that each cell has an individual

existence, and that the life of an organism comes from the way in

which the cells work together.34

In 1858, pathologist Rudolf Virchow took Schleiden's observation

a step further.  He declared that "the composition of the major

organism, the so-called individual, must be likened to a kind of social

arrangement or society, in which a number of separate existencies are

dependent upon one another, in such a way, however, that each

element possesses its own peculiar activity and carries out its own task

by its own powers."  A creature like you and me, said Virchow, is

actually a society of separate cells.35

As we've already seen, the reasoning also works in reverse--a

society acts like an organism.  Half a century after Virchow,

entomologist William Morton Wheeler was observing the lives of ants.

No ant is an island.  Wheeler saw the tiny beasts maintaining constant

contact, greeting each other as they passed on their walkways,

swapping bits of regurgitated food, adopting social roles that ranged

from  warrior or royal handmaiden to garbage handler and file clerk.

(Yes, at the heart of many ant colonies is a room to which all incoming

workers bring their discoveries.  Seated at the chamber's center is a

staff of insect bureaucrats who examine the new find, determine where

it is needed in the colony, and send it off to the queen's chamber if it is

14

Superorganism

Over a hundred years ago, Matthias Schleiden, the German

botanist, was pondering the recently discovered fact that beings as

simple as water fleas and as complex as human beings are made up of

individual cells.  Each of those cells has all the apparatus necessary to

lead a life of its own.  It is walled off in its own mini-world by the

surrounding hedge of a membrane, carries its own metabolic power

plants, and seems quite capable of going about its own business,

ruggedly declaring its independence.  Yet the individual cells, in

pursuing their own goals, cooperate to create an entity much larger

than themselves.  Schleiden declared that each cell has an individual

existence, and that the life of an organism comes from the way in

which the cells work together.34

In 1858, pathologist Rudolf Virchow took Schleiden's observation

a step further.  He declared that "the composition of the major

organism, the so-called individual, must be likened to a kind of social

arrangement or society, in which a number of separate existencies are

dependent upon one another, in such a way, however, that each

element possesses its own peculiar activity and carries out its own task

by its own powers."  A creature like you and me, said Virchow, is

actually a society of separate cells.35

As we've already seen, the reasoning also works in reverse--a

society acts like an organism.  Half a century after Virchow,

entomologist William Morton Wheeler was observing the lives of ants.

No ant is an island.  Wheeler saw the tiny beasts maintaining constant

contact, greeting each other as they passed on their walkways,

swapping bits of regurgitated food, adopting social roles that ranged

from  warrior or royal handmaiden to garbage handler and file clerk.

(Yes, at the heart of many ant colonies is a room to which all incoming

workers bring their discoveries.  Seated at the chamber's center is a

staff of insect bureaucrats who examine the new find, determine where

it is needed in the colony, and send it off to the queen's chamber if it is