E.O. Wilson

ants, collaboration, collective intentionality, collective knowledge, complexity, distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, Fukuyama, hobbes, human nature, locke, rousseau, social cognition, sociobiology, sociocognition, spontaneous order, stigmergic, stigmergic cognition, stigmergy

Here’s an article in this month’s Atlantic.

Rejecting the views of classic political philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau that primitive humankind started out as a collection of scattered, unorganized individuals, Fukuyama writes: “Human sociability is not a historical or cultural acquisition, but something hardwired into human nature.” Nowhere is Wilson, who pioneered this view, even mentioned.

Wilson is of course famous for his work on stigmergy:

•  Sematectonic stigmergy.

•  Sign-, cue-, or marker-based stigmergy.

Sematectonic stigmergy denotes communication via modification of a physical  environment, an elementary example being the carving out of trails. One needs only to cast an eye around any public space, a park or a college quadrangle for instance, to see the grass being worn away, revealing a dirt pathway that is a well-traveled, unplanned and thus indicates an ‘‘unofficial’’ intimation of a shortcut to some salient destination.

Marker-based stigmergy denotes communication via a signaling mechanism. A standard example is the phenomenon of pheromones laid by social insects. Pheromone imbued trails increase the likelihood of other ants following the aforementioned trails. Unlike sematectonic stigmergy  which is a response to an environmental modification , marker-based stigmergy does not  make any direct contribution to a given task.

Wilson, E. O. (1975/2000). Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.