Abstract
The example we considered in the previous chapter dealt with the orientation of individuals in their (private) environments and only indirectly with their communication. The students in the classroom influence their environments and are influenced by them on various interrelated levels that are studied by different sciences (despite the fact that they cannot be fully and completely separated).
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Notes
- 1.
Without getting into too much detail, it is worth noting that treating the individual ant as a distinct biological entity is itself contestable on several counts. With the exception of the queen ant, for instance, ants are all sterile and thus do not pass on their genetic material to offspring. Just like our digestive system, which is so rich in creatures that are not us and without which we could not exist, ants, too, remind us that in nature, the concept of the individual entity is very vague, and that it is only a significant idealization—that is, a conscious limit on our tendency toward reduction—that allows us to render it scientifically useful.
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Bar-Am, N. (2016). Example #2: Stigmergy and Autonomy in the Cyber Age. In: In Search of a Simple Introduction to Communication. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25625-2_18
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