Small is beautiful

ants, artificial intelligence, cognition, cognitive modeling, cognitive systems, collective intentionality, complexity, computational intelligence, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, extended cognitive systems, robotics, robots, situated cognition, social cognition, sociocognition, spontaneous order, stigmergic, stigmergy, swarm, swarm behavior, swarm intelligence, the lives of ants, Vitorino Ramos

Over at Vitorino Ramos’ ever thoughtful blog is a post extolling the virtues of the “small”. The point is twofold:

First, the superb detail afforded by the photographs that Vitorino has assembled shows a rather complexly “designed” creature – a design that belies the supposedly simple life-form that ants are typically taken to be. The engineering challenges required to even roughly approximate such creatures is formidable.

Second, the study of ant sociality is of central interest to researchers in A.I. – the concept of stigmergy offers those of us with an interest in complex systems (human sociality being the paradigm) – a very fertile vein of inquiry.

So, next time you are about to snuff out this creature, at the very least, stop and spare a thought for this creature – we have much to learn from the small and the “simple.”  To adapt Shakespeare:

As ants (flies) to wanton boys are we to th’ gods,

They kill us for their sport.