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We have loosely used the informal concept
of the "organism" as a distinct kind of living entity. We must recognize
that this distinction is largely arbitrary, and only useful in limited
domains. A number of examples, such as viruses, beehives, slime molds, and
other symbiotic and parasitic relationships threaten to blur the
distinction between the living organism and the community as the elemental
living system.
Yet if we assume the existence of distinct organisms, then the
hierarchy of neural evolution is marked by a series of metasystem transitions within organisms. But at the same time, metasystem transitions also occur which bring
organisms together in groups. Some simple examples include breeding
populations and the dynamics of fish schools and bird flocks. When these
group controls are very strong, some of the more marked transitions (e.g. the development of multicellular organisms) result.
But when the group controls are considerably weaker, we have the existence
of societies of organisms. The most integrated form of such societies can be found in the social insects: ants, bees and termites. Human society is much less strongly integrated but much more complex. Higher-level societies are usually marked by culture, which can be defined simply as models which are inherited between
organisms in a non-genetic manner. We can define such non-genetic
information, when carried between people, as memes. Memes, similar to
genes, undergo a variation and selection type of evolution, characterized
by mutations and recombinations of ideas, and by their spreading and
selective reproduction or retention.
As outlined in our discussion of cognitive evolution, thought can be understood as the ability to
control the production, reproduction and association of memes in the minds
of humans. What follows is the possibility of evolution at the memetic
level. The emergence of human thought marks the appearance of a new
mechanism of evolution: conscious human effort instead of natural
selection. The variation and selection necessary for the increase of
complexity of the organization of matter now takes place in the human
brain; it becomes inseparable from the willed act of the human being.
Thus the emergence of human intelligence and memetic evolution precipitated
a further, currently ongoing, Metasystem Transition, which is the integration of people into
human societies. Human societies are qualitatively different from societies
of animals because of the ability of the human being to create (not just
use) language. Language serves two functions: communication between
individuals and modeling of reality. These two functions are, on the level
of social integration, analogous to those of the nervous system on the
level of integration of cells into a multicellular organism. The body of a
society is the bodies of all people plus the things made by them. Its
"physiology" is the culture of society.
Using the material of language, people make new --- symbolic --- models of
reality (scientific theories, in particular) such as never existed as
neural models given us by nature. Language
is, as it were, an extension of the human brain. Moreover, it is a unitary
common extension of the brains of all members of society. It is a
collective model of reality that all members of society labor to improve,
and one that preserves the experience of preceding generations.
