There is a study in ecology, which concludes that the bees do not have much individual intelligence but when they are in a group, the group shows the signs of more intelligent behaviour. This phenomenon is called “collective intelligence”. It is believed that the collection of bees is not merely just a pow
er in number but more like its a super organism, which is capable of doing things individual bees can’t do.
LIGO, VIRGO, ATLAS, CMS, FERMI, Borexino, Kamiokande etc are the names which are quite familiar to all of us in the scientific community. These are the names of so-called collaborations working on a particular scientific goal(s). People involved have well defined roles, there is some sense of hierarchy (seniority) and this super organism (collaboration) produces science which was thought of as impossible, neutrino oscillation, gravitational waves detection, higgs boson detection to name a few. Not only the scientific progress is impressive with this super organism, the sense of community and working inter culturally seems fluent and natural. The things that divide us politically are no longer in effect while doing science.
Recently the two LIGO detectors in the US detected the first gravitational waves, gravitational waves which Einstein himself thought can never be detected, seemingly impossible job was done with ease. Sure there were amazing individual contributions but always the detection of gravitational waves was attributed not only to few people but all who were involved in the process.
The name given to the first detection was GW150914, isn’t it shocking after Hulse-taylor pulsar, Higgs Boson etc the name to this event was given as GW150914, Gravitational Waves 15/09/14, no names of any great scientist. I don’t know if this is true, its just a theory of mine, that this achievement was not really an achievement of an individual but this is attributed to the achievement of the human race. Which is beautiful. Individualism is far gone, we work now as super organisms in science.
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