Swarm Intelligence

Culture in Theory and Practice

We have been hinting that the mind of the individual can be considered

as if it were a single cell in a larger superorganism. Because of our lack of

perspective, it is most difficult for us to see clearly how the superorgan-

ism is composed, how it functions—how can the cell see the whole

beast? The larger entity that we are talking about, culture, presents partic-

ular problems to a scientific inquirer.

The first problem is simply to determine whether culture is really

something that exists or an abstraction. We have no difficulty (as we are

not solipsists) stating that things exist, solid physical things, and even

though