Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

of the superorganism’s components. He endorsed ideas that were later popularized
by Gestalt psychology, such as the notion that the whole is not merely the sum of its
parts (Koffka, 1935; Köhler, 1947).
The unique qualitative character of organic wholes is due to the peculiar nonadditive
relations or interactions among their parts. In other words, the whole is
not merely a sum, or resultant, but also an emergent novelty, or creative synthesis.
(Wheeler, 1926, p. 433)
Wheeler’s theory is an example of holism (Sawyer, 2002), in which the regularities
governing a whole system cannot be easily reduced to a theory that appeals to
the properties of the system’s parts. Holistic theories have often been criticized as
being nonscientific (Wilson & Lumsden, 1991). The problem with these theories is
that in many instances they resist traditional, reductionist approaches to defining
the laws responsible for emerging regularities. “Holism is an idea that has haunted
biology and philosophy for nearly a century, without coming into clear focus”
(Wilson & Lumsden, 1991, p. 401).
Theorists who rejected Wheeler’s proposal of the superorganism proposed alternative
theories that reduced colonial intelligence to the actions of individual colony
members. A pioneer of this alternative was a contemporary of Wheeler, French
biologist Etienne Rabaud. “His entire work on insect societies was an attempt to
demonstrate that each individual insect in a society behaves as if it were alone”
(Theraulaz & Bonabeau, 1999). Wilson and Lumsden adopted a similar position:
It is tempting to postulate some very complex force distinct from individual repertories
and operating at the level of the colony. But a closer look shows that the
superorganismic order is actually a straightforward summation of often surprisingly
simple individual responses. (Wilson & Lumsden, 1991, p. 402)
Of interest to embodied cognitive science are theories which propose that dynamic
environmental control guides the construction of the elaborate nests.
The first concern of such a theory is the general account that it provides of
the behaviour of each individual. For example, consider one influential theory of
wasp behaviour (Evans, 1966; Evans & West-Eberhard, 1970), in which a hierarchy
of internal drives serves to release behaviours. For instance, high-level drives might
include mating, feeding, and brood-rearing. Such drives set in motion lower-level
sequences of behaviour, which in turn might activate even lower-level behavioural
sequences. In short, Evans views wasp behaviour as being rooted in innate programs,
where a program is a set of behaviours that are produced in a particular sequence,
and where the sequence is dictated by the control of a hierarchical arrangement of
drives. For example, a brood-rearing drive might activate a drive for capturing prey,
which in turn activates a set of behaviours that produces a hunting flight.
Elements of Embodied Cognitive Science 213