X-Message-Number: 25591 Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:49:36 -0500 From: Robin Helweg-Larsen <> Subject: Duplicates paradox - amoebas and bees References: <> Regarding the duplicates paradox, I wonder if this seems particularly paradoxical to humans because we think of ourselves as being so clearly individual. If we reproduced by fission like amoebas I suspect we would think differently about the individual/continuity issue. Another area that interests me is that of the bee hive. According to my memories of Maurice Maeterlinck's century-old book, "The Life of the Bee", which I read a couple of years ago, the hive operates in some ways as a single mind. Faced with ingenious human-devised difficulties, bees devise a practical or engineering solution which can be shown to be beyond the ability of any individual bee to conceptualize, let alone to create. The hive itself appears to be a mind which can think and make decisions at an animal level, a mind made up of the processing units of the individual bees, just as a human mind is made of individual cells which can communicate with each other, but no one of which is 'the mind'. Particularly interesting is what happens when a swarm occurs, and the mind divides in two. I strongly recommend the book to anyone who hasn't read it, as a meditation on the mind if nothing else. (You can find the text on line, Google: Maeterlinck bee.) And if anyone can point me to recent scientific studies of the bee, I would be grateful. (One limitation to Maeterlinck's work is that he knew the bees were communicating, but not how. The use of the dance for communication had not yet been identified.) Robin HL Robin Helweg-Larsen President Andromeda Training, Inc. www.income-outcome.com t: 1.919.933.6555 f: 1.919.933.1968 e: Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25591