Chapter 27 Variety of vocabulary

One view is that swarming social insects are in some sense equivalent to large, multi-lived organisms.These creatures have a collective intelligence and adaptive nature far greater than the sum of their individual parts.The idea started in some papers by the famous entomologist William Morton Wheeler.He coined the term "Superorganism" to describe this organization.From 1911 to the early 1950s, this idea was listed as one of the important ideas of entomology, attracting the attention of many enthusiastic people outside the circle of entomology.Maeterlinck (M.) and Marais (EN ) have written several best-selling books, the basic idea of ​​which is that somewhere in the ant nest and termite nest, there must be a spirit.

Then, out of nowhere, the idea suddenly faded and disappeared.In the literature that has proliferated in insect science over the past quarter century, it is hardly mentioned anywhere, and nobody talks about it.It's not just that this thought has been forgotten; it seems that this thought cannot be mentioned, and it is embarrassing to mention it. This incident is difficult to explain.That idea didn't seem wrong, nor did it conflict with any other more acceptable ideas.It's just because no one can figure out what to do with such an abstract theory.It occupied an important place in the intellectual world at the time when entomology was just emerging as a powerful pioneering science capable of solving complex and delicate problems.It has become a paradigm of neo-reductionism.The gigantic idea—that individual organisms could transcend themselves in connection with a dense society—was beyond the reach of new technology, nor did it suggest new experiments or methods.It just sits there, covered in leafy papers that require enlightened value measures to survive.What's missing is this.

The coined word Holism has been used for concepts like "superorganism".One wonders if the very word scares off some researchers.The word is indeed formidable.General Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870-1950, South Africa) coined the term in 1926.At that time, it might be better to write it as wholism. Wholism is fully qualified etymologically, and in a century like ours it would be secular enough to survive.However, since it is written as it is now, its future is worrying. The word Holism appears in some scientific dictionaries, but is not included in most standard English dictionaries.Its inclusion in the OED addendum is important, but not enough to guarantee its survival.Otherwise, it will perish together with the superorganism theory.

I can't say a word about this.It's no use pushing a theory if it doesn't develop on its own.Better to just let it stay there. The problem, however, may be that someone pushed it, but in the wrong direction.By Wheeler's standards, colonies of ants or termites, bees, or social wasps may actually be superorganisms.But at the moment, as far as insects are concerned, that may well be the end of the line of information.Perhaps if you apply this theory to another social species or a species that is easier to deal with, it will work better.Such species exist, for example, us. One thing has long vexed entomologists.That is, we laymen always meddle in their affairs: always use human behavior to provide explanations for insect behavior.Entomologists have gone to great lengths to explain to us that ants are not at all little mechanical models of humans.I agree with them.Nothing we know for certain about human behavior can possibly explain what ants do.We shouldn't ask about ants, that's for entomologists.As for the ants themselves, it is obvious that they do not need our instruction.

However, that doesn't mean we can't use it the other way around.For example, with any luck, the collective behavior of ants may help us understand human problems. There are many possibilities in this regard.But just think of a colony of millions of ants building a nest.Every ant is working constantly and compulsively, doing its part of the work to perfection, but has no idea what is being built elsewhere.Thus the ant lives its short life, but the cause it works for is eternal to it (three to four percent of the ant colony dies every day; in about a month, a generation of ants disappears, and the nest It can last for sixty years; if there is no natural disaster, it will last forever).Working with precision and single-minded concentration amidst the chaos, the ants staggered past their fellow ants, fetching bits of twigs and soil, and arranging them in exactly the right shape for eggs and young. They are warm and ventilated.But in isolation, they are all so weak and weak.In this way, there is only one thing comparable in human activity, and that is language.

We make language, generation after generation, for countless generations, without knowing how it was made or what it will be like when it is finished—if it is ever made at all.Of all the things we do, it is the most compulsively collective, the most genetically programmed, the most unique to our species, and at the same time the most spontaneous, and we do it with precision.This is a natural thing.We have DNA that manages grammar, and neurons that manage syntax, and we must not stop at any time.We climb and climb, through civilization after civilization, changing shape, creating tools and cities here and there, and new words are stumbling and crowding out all the time.

The words themselves are also amazing.Every word is perfectly designed for its purpose.Old words and stronger words are membranous, packed with layers of different meanings, like a poem made of one word.For example, articulated originally meant to be divided into small joints, but later unconsciously, it meant to speak in sentences.Some words change gradually in daily use, and we don't know a change has taken place until the change is complete.The -ly in some adverbs today, such as the suffix -ly in ably (effectively), benignly (kindly), etc., was used to replace like (as if) when it first appeared hundreds of years ago.Later, like became a suffix after grinding.Through a similar process, love-did (past tense of Old English love) later became loved.

No word is coined by anyone we know.They just appear in the language when needed.Sometimes a familiar word is suddenly picked up to refer to a very strange thing: today, the word strange is such a word itself.Atomic physicists need it to represent the properties of a particle that decays extremely slowly.These particles are now called "strange particles" and they have "strangeness numbers".We already think that it is commonplace for old familiar words to suddenly appear in unfamiliar faces.This process has been going on for thousands of years. Several words were created by our contemporary solitary people, such as Holism was created by Smuts, and Quark (quark particle) was created by Joyce.But most of these words are exotic and ephemeral.For a word to really be a tenable word, it takes a lot of application.

Most new words are derived from other original words.The creation of language is a conservative process: old things are refurbished, and little is wasted.Every time a new word stands out from the old word, the original meaning often lingers around the new word like a smell, mysterious and indistinguishable. The meaning of the person who created Holism is very simple, but it means the complete combination of several life units.Just because it looks holy (sacred), it implies the meaning of "supernatural in biology".Tracing back to its origin, the word comes from the root kailo in Indo-European, which means whole (whole), and also means unbeaten and uninjured.For thousands of years, it has evolved into hail (ancient word for whole), hale (whole), health (sound), hallow (sacred), holy (sacred), whole, and heal (healing). In our minds we are still going the same way.

"Heuristic" is a more specialized, single-purpose word, derived from the Indo-European word wer, which means to seek.Later, it appeared in Greek and became heuriskein, so when Archimedes discovered the law of buoyancy, he shouted Heureka (I found it)! There are also two words of considerable capacity from Indo-European: gene and bheu.Every word is literally an anthill.We have constructed the concept of everything from these two words.At first, or from the time they were documented, they were to the effect that they existed. Gene means beginning, birth, while bheu means existence and growth. Gene in turn becomes kundjaz (Germanic) and gecynd (Old English), meaning kin (relative) or kind (kindness). Kind began to refer to kinship, then referred to high social status, and later became Kindly (kindly) and gentle (elegant).Meanwhile, another branch of the gene became the Latin gens (clan), which later became gentle.It also manifests as genus (species), genius (genius), genital (reproductive) and generous (magnanimous).It then becomes nature (from gnas ci), but still contains its intrinsic meaning.

Just when gene evolved into nature and kind, bheu underwent similar changes.One of these became bowan in Germanic and bua in Old Norse, meaning to live and dwell, which then became build in English.Into the Greek, it became phuein, which means to produce and make grow, and later became phusis, which is another word for nature.Phusis gave birth to physics, which at first meant natural science, then referred to medicine, and then became physics (physics). These two words have developed and evolved to this day. It is no exaggeration to say that they can be combined to include everything in the universe.Words like this are not easy to find.Nor can they be built from scratch.They need to live a long time to be meaningful. CS Lewis, discussing vocabulary, writes: "All things are topics that cannot be spoken." Words themselves must exhibit inner marks of long use; they must contain their own internal dialogue. The words nature and physics, in their extant meanings, have been linked together by some sort of conjecture in our minds over the years; it is reassuring to know that at a time like this.The other words that hang around them are confusing, but interesting to watch.If you loosen the seeds, all these words will blend together and become a lovely, puzzling thing. "Kind" is a relative, but it also means nature. Kind and gentle were originally the same word, ah, God, physics is natural, but kindness (kind) is also the same word.In this fascinating structure is contained extremely old speculation, and many ancient thoughts reverberate in it. Perhaps partly due to the magic of language, some people can use completely different words to achieve the same goal.A 14th-century hermit named Julian of Norwich said something so brilliantly about it that a physicist recently wrote in the introduction to a scientific review of contemporary cosmological physics This passage is quoted in: "He showed me a small thing, the size of a hazelnut, which in my hand was as round as a ball. I just held it in my hand, looked at it with my eyes, and thought: What is this?" Stuff? The general answer is: it is everything that was created."