Organizing the organism: a re-casting of the bio-social interface for our times

Abstract

I present a future‐oriented look at sociology and anthropology's historical appropriation of the concept of organism. The ‘future’ of which I speak is one in which the biological and technological are blending together. In cultural and science studies, the figure of the ‘cyborg’ is often discussed in this context. But the cyborg tends to be treated as a specifically ‘postmodern’ innovation, whereas the organism has always invited the cyborg's ontological ambivalence. This sensibility goes back to the dawn of both the modern biomedical sciences and the social sciences. I begin on the relatively familiar terrain of the role that emerging medical conceptions of the organism in the mid‐nineteenth century played in the formation of such founding figures of sociology and anthropology as Emile Durkheim and Franz Boas. I then move to the specific ‘relativization’ of Darwin's theory of evolution that fostered turn‐of‐the‐century conceptions of the social organism, including that emergent entity, the ‘superorganism’, which figures prominently – albeit differently – in the attempts to characterize the uniquely ‘human’ character of culture and technology. Finally I look at one very explicitly ‘constructivist’ approach to the social organism promoted by the distinguished chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, who was in turn anathematized by Max Weber in one of the original episodes of sociology's disciplinary boundary maintenance. The pride of place that Ostwald gave to ‘catalysts’ in consolidating and enhancing social organisms – from business firms to academic disciplines – earns his perspective a second look in our time. I end with directions for further exploration, which include reviving Norbert Wiener's cybernetic vision.

Reclaiming Arnold Van Gennep’s Les rites de passage (1909): The structure of openness and the openness of structure

“…Nicole Hochner (2018) shows that Van Gennep’s concepts and method can serve to bridge the social and the life sciences, bringing together cosmological, social, and biological insights for considering regenerative processes, such as metabolism. Indeed, Van Gennep’s concepts illuminate sociology’s continual temptation to uncover how the social realm connects to biology (Fitzgerald et al, 2016; Fuller, 2016; Keller, 2017).…”

The brain as artificial intelligence: prospecting the frontiers of neuroscience

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Maurizio Meloni’s Political Biology

“…Potentially helpful here are two concepts, one from the social and the other from the biological sciences, which draw attention to the capacity of populations to stabilize or alter their selection environment with long-term effects: Alfred Kroeber’s ‘superorganic’ and Richard Dawkins’ ‘extended phenotype’ (Fuller, 2016). Kroeber’s way of putting it is especially perspicuous: the longer we live after producing offspring, the less time our offspring will need to spend directly learning our lessons because we will have spent our time creating indirect ways for them to acquire that knowledge more quickly (i.e.…”