THE BIOME AS A SOCIAL ORGANISM 23 



Foundations of Behavior," as shown by the following excerpt: "In 

 short, whether we are primarily concerned with the organism or with 

 human society, we can not help but see the fundamental similarities 

 in the processes of integration in the two patterns. In fact, the defi- 

 nition of the organism to which the strictly physiological viewpoint 

 of the preceding chapters leads us will serve almost equally well as a 

 definition of society. The organism is a dynamic order, pattern, or 

 integration among living systems or units. A social organization is 

 exactly the same thing. The fundamental difference between the 

 organism and social integrations among human beings is apparently 

 one of degree or order of magnitude" (p. 270). 



The philosophical development of the concept of holism by Smuts 

 (1926) has much in common with the view of Child, as the following 

 statements indicate: "The plant or animal body is a social commu- 

 nity, but a community which allows a substantial development to its 

 members" (p. 82). "A whole is a synthesis or unity of parts, so close 

 that it affects the activities and interactions of these parts, impresses 

 on them a special character, and makes them different from what 

 they would have been in a combination devoid of such unity or 

 synthesis. It is a complex of parts, but so close and intimate, so 

 unified that the characters and relations and activities of the parts 

 are affected and changed by the synthesis" (p. 122). "The new 

 science of Ecology is simply a recognition of the fact that all organ- 

 isms feel the force and moulding effect of their environment as a 

 whole" (p. 340). 



The most recent, and in some ways the most significant, contri- 

 bution to the concept has been that of emergent evolution, as em- 

 bodied in the views of Henderson (1917), Spaulding (1918), Sellars 

 (1922), Broad (1925), Morgan (1926), Jennings (1927), Sumner and 

 Keller (1927), and Wheeler (1928, b) . While this development has 

 taken place more or less independently of ecology, it is in practically 

 complete accord with the earlier concept of the complex organism. 

 This essential harmony is well illustrated by the following extracts 

 from Wheeler's discussion. "Non-human societies ... no less than 

 human society, are as super-organisms obviously true emergents, in 

 which whole organisms, i.e., multicellular organisms, function as the 

 interacting determining parts" (p. 25). "Among the heterogeneous 

 associations we can distinguish the innumerable cases of predatism, 

 parasitism, symbiosis and the biocenoses, or animal and plant com- 

 munities, which constitute a vast series of emergents, varying from 

 those of very low to those of very high integration" (p. 27) . 



A similar conclusion is reached by Summer and Keller (1927) in 



