Emergence

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Ants, fireflies, our brains, neighborhoods, and Google all demonstrate this phenomenon dramatically. I thought the example of the peasants guessing the weight of the oxen and the students guessing the number of jellybeans was particuarly striking. Collectively we are smarter than any single individual. This seems obvious, but it is good to see it confirmed in a real life experiment. And I think it was a legitimate comparison they were drawing between the meanderings of ants and humans, leaving random trails (swerving) to reach a common goal. I think wasps leave pheromone trails too; when I was filming a nest this weekend I started getting buzzed more and more frequently by guard bees as they discovered my location.
The ultimate question Radiolab was trying to answer in the Emergence episode is, "What is behind it all?" What or who is the coordinating consciousness in all of this? Who am I and who are you? Science is really no closer to answering these same basic questions that humans have been asking for millenia. I am excited by the exponential, technological evolution that is allowing us to connect as a race to an unprecedented degree, though wary also. This radio episode reminds me of the theory I ascribe to, that somehow we are all connected in a very real, almost physical way. I am literally you, you are literally me, Gandhi is President Bush, and Mother Teresa is Hitler - one collective, enduring consciousness. The way I think of it is like a human body, so Mother Teresa would be a white blood cell and Hitler a cancer. Of course this is just as unprovable as any world view, but I really enjoyed the episode from this perspective.