EVOLUTION AND HUMAN DESTINY 



should be of great theoretical significance. It relates 

 the survival problems of bio-social organisms to those 

 established for systems on lower levels of complexity. 



On this basis one can ask the question, does not much 

 of this transformed material actually constitute an in- 

 tegral component of the "body" of the developing so- 

 cietal organism? The answer to this is a qualified yes, 

 although much does of course depend on the definition 

 of the nature of the boundaries of the organism. This 

 situation is even further complicated by the fact that 

 the development of the human societal organism is 

 presently still in its initial stages. This fact alone would 

 make the drawing of boundaries nearly impossible at 

 this time. 



Finally, clearly fixed spacial limits of a societal or- 

 ganism may not exist in the same sense in which they 

 are known to exist for other living creatures, since we 

 are really dealing with an evolving organism on an 

 entirely new level of complexity. In any event the con- 

 cept of non-living matter constituting part of the body 

 of a living creature should not be too difficult to ac- 

 cept. After all, part of the bodies of many animals are 

 constructed out of "non-living matter," much of which 

 is not even composed of proteins. Examples of this are 

 the bones and teeth of the higher animals, and the 

 shells of many of the invertebrates. As an example, the 

 shell of a lobster is very much part of the creature, yet 

 its chemical composition is chitin and it is not organ- 

 ized into living cells. 



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