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Social Organism
Social organism is a sociological concept, or model, wherein a society or social structure is regarded as a "living organism". Individuals interacting through the various entities comprising a society, such as law, family, crime, etc., are considered as they interact with other entities of the society to meet its needs. Every entity of a society, or social organism, has a function in helping maintain the organism's stability and cohesiveness. History The model, or concept, of society-as-organism is traced by Walter M. Simon from Plato ('the organic theory of society'), and by George R. MacLay from Aristotle (384–322 BCE) through 19th-century and later thinkers, including the French philosopher and founder of sociology, Auguste Comte, the Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle, the English philosopher and polymath Herbert Spencer, and the French sociologist Émile Durkheim.George R. MacLay, ''The Social Organism: A Short History of the Idea that a Human So ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sociological
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociology was coined in the late 18th century to describe the scientific study of society. Regarded as a part of both the social sciences and humanities, sociology uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. Sociological subject matter ranges from micro-level analyses of individual interaction and agency to macro-level analyses of social systems and social structure. Applied sociological research may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, whereas theoretical approaches may focus on the understanding of social processes and phenomenological method. Traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economics
Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of Agent (economics), economic agents and how economy, economies work. Microeconomics analyses what is viewed as basic elements within economy, economies, including individual agents and market (economics), markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses economies as systems where production, distribution, consumption, savings, and Expenditure, investment expenditure interact; and the factors of production affecting them, such as: Labour (human activity), labour, Capital (economics), capital, Land (economics), land, and Entrepreneurship, enterprise, inflation, economic growth, and public policies that impact gloss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oliver Luckett
William Oliver Luckett (born 1974) is an American entrepreneur. He founded Revver, DigiSynd, and theAudience, all of which have since been sold. He currently lives in Iceland, where he heads the marketing startup, EFNI. Early life and education Luckett grew up in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He attended Vanderbilt University, where he received a BA in French literature in 1996. His father, Bill, co-owned the Ground Zero blues club with actor Morgan Freeman. Career After graduating from Vanderbilt, Luckett moved to San Francisco. He began working at telecommunications provider Qwest, rising to the position of chief IP services architect. He left the company in 1999 to co-found the wireless data broadcasting network iBlast with television entrepreneur Michael Lambert. Luckett departed the company after three years and traveled in Spain. He returned to L.A. in 2003 and worked at Declare Yourself, a nonpartisan, nonprofit online voter-registration initiative established by television pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superorganism
A superorganism, or supraorganism, is a group of synergetically interacting organisms of the same species. A community of synergetically interacting organisms of different species is called a '' holobiont''. Concept The term superorganism is used most often to describe a social unit of eusocial animals in which division of labour is highly specialised and individuals cannot survive by themselves for extended periods. Ants are the best-known example of such a superorganism. A superorganism can be defined as "a collection of agents which can act in concert to produce phenomena governed by the collective", phenomena being any activity "the hive wants" such as ants collecting food and avoiding predators, or bees choosing a new nest site. In challenging environments, micro organisms collaborate and evolve together to process unlikely sources of nutrients such as methane. This process called syntrophy ("eating together") might be linked to the evolution of eukaryote cells and in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Organic Theory Of Societies
Paul Frommhold Ignatius von Lilienfeld-Toal (; ; 1829–1903) was a Baltic German statesman and social scientist of imperial Russia. He was governor of the Courland Governorate from 1868 till 1885. During that time, he developed his ''Thoughts on the Social Science of the Future'', first in Russian as ''Мысли о социальной науке будущего'' (Mysli o sotsial'noi naukie budushchego; 1872), and then in German as ''Gedanken über die Socialwissenschaft der Zukunft'' (1873–1881). Lilienfeld's thoughts, which he later articulated in compressed form in both French and Italian, laid out his organic theory of societies, also known as the social organism theory, organicist sociology, or simply organicism. He later became a senator in the Russian parliament, as well as vice-president (1896), then president (1897), of the Institut International de Sociologie (International Institute of Sociology) in Paris. Political career Capozzi (2004: 92) describes Lilien ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noosphere
The noosphere (alternate spelling noösphere) is a philosophical concept developed and popularized by the biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky and philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Vernadsky defined the noosphere as the new state of the biosphere, and described it as the planetary "sphere of reason". The noosphere represents the highest stage of biospheric development, that of humankind's rational activities. The word is derived from the Greek νόος ("nous, mind, reason") and σφαῖρα ("sphere"), in lexical analogy to "atmosphere" and "biosphere". The concept cannot be accredited to a single author. The founding authors Vernadsky and de Chardin developed two related but starkly different concepts, the former grounded in the geological sciences, and the latter in theology. Both conceptions of the noosphere share the common thesis that together human reason and scientific thought have created, and will continue to create, the next evolutionary geologi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Historic Recurrence
Historic recurrence is the repetition of similar events in history. The concept of historic recurrence has variously been applied to overall human history (''e.g.'', to the rises and falls of empires), to repetitive patterns in the history of a given polity, and to any two specific events which bear a striking similarity.G.W. Trompf, ''The Idea of Historical Recurrence in Western Thought'', ''passim''. Hypothetically, in the extreme, the concept of historic recurrence assumes the form of the Eternal return, Doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, which has been written about in various forms since Ancient times, antiquity and was described in the 19th century by Heinrich Heine and Friedrich Nietzsche. While it is often remarked that "history repeats itself", in cycles of less than physical cosmology, cosmological duration this cannot be strictly true. In this interpretation of recurrence, as opposed perhaps to the Nietzschean interpretation, there is no metaphysics. Recurrences take ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Global Brain
The global brain is a neuroscience-inspired and futurological vision of the planetary information and communications technology network that interconnects all humans and their technological artifacts. As this network stores ever more information, takes over ever more functions of coordination and communication from traditional organizations, and becomes increasingly intelligent, it increasingly plays the role of a brain for the planet Earth. In the philosophy of mind, global brain finds an analog in Averroes's theory of the unity of the intellect. Basic ideas Proponents of the global brain hypothesis claim that the Internet increasingly ties its users together into a single information processing system that functions as part of the collective nervous system of the planet. The intelligence of this network is collective or distributed: it is not centralized or localized in any particular individual, organization or computer system. Therefore, no one can command or control it. Ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Body Politic
The body politic is a polity—such as a city, realm, or state—considered metaphorically as a physical body. Historically, the sovereign is typically portrayed as the body's head, and the analogy may also be extended to other anatomical parts, as in political readings of Aesop's fable of " The Belly and the Members". The image originates in ancient Greek philosophy, beginning in the 6th century BC, and was later extended in Roman philosophy. Following the high and late medieval revival of the Byzantine ''Corpus Juris Civilis'' in Latin Europe, the "body politic" took on a jurisprudential significance by being identified with the legal theory of the corporation, gaining salience in political thought from the 13th century on. In English law the image of the body politic developed into the theory of the king's two bodies and the Crown as corporation sole. The metaphor was elaborated further from the Renaissance onwards, as medical knowledge based on Galen was challenged by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multilevel Selection Theory
Group selection is a proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of at the level of the individual or gene. Early authors such as V. C. Wynne-Edwards and Konrad Lorenz argued that the behavior of animals could affect their survival and reproduction as groups, speaking for instance of actions for the good of the species. In the 1930s, Ronald Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane proposed the concept of kin selection, a form of biological altruism from the gene-centered view of evolution, arguing that animals should sacrifice for their relatives, and thereby implying that they should not sacrifice for non-relatives. From the mid-1960s, evolutionary biologists such as John Maynard Smith, W. D. Hamilton, George C. Williams, and Richard Dawkins argued that natural selection acted primarily at the level of the gene. They argued on the basis of mathematical models that individuals would not altruistically sacrifice fitness for the sake of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Darwin's Cathedral
''Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society'' () is a 2002 book by David Sloan Wilson which proposes that religion is a multi-level adaptation—i.e., a product of cultural evolution developed through multi-level selection.Andrew Brown"'I wanted to show how niceness evolves'" ''The Guardian'', July 24, 2003.Natalie Angier"A Conversation with David Sloan Wilson; The Origin of Religions, From a Distinctly Darwinian View" ''The New York Times'', December 24, 2002. Summary of the book Wilson posits that religions are adaptive systems that have evolved to enhance their adherents' survival and reproductive success. He draws parallels between religious practices and biological traits, suggesting that religious behaviors can be understood as mechanisms that promote group cooperation and cohesion. The book applies multilevel selection theory (a theory developed by Wilson), which considers the evolutionary impact of selection operating at various levels (e.g., genes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Sloan Wilson
David Sloan Wilson (born 1949) is an American evolutionary biologist and a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University. He is a son of author Sloan Wilson, a co-founder of Evolution Institute and a co-founder of Prosocial World. He has studied social evolution in Binghamton. Early life and academic career David Sloan Wilson is the son of the writer Sloan Wilson. He graduated with a B.A. with high honors in 1971 from the University of Rochester. He completed his Ph.D. in 1975 at Michigan State University. Wilson then worked as a research fellow in the Biological Laboratories at Harvard University from 1974 to 1975. He held a dual position as research associate in zoology at the University of the Witwatersrand and the University of Washington from 1975 to 1976. After this he was a senior research officer at the South African National Research Institute for the Mathematical Sciences from 1976 to 1977. Wilson moved back to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
