Questions

1. What is the main purpose of the lecture?

A. To illustrate patterns of animal behavior

B. To explain why reductionism has replaced holism as a scientific method

C. To explain the origins and development of holism

D. To explain the difference between holism and reductionism

2. According to the professor, what assumption might a reductionist make when analyzing ant
colonies?

A. Each ant colony as a single entity acts in its own interest

B. The colony's behavior can be understood by analyzing individual ants' behavior

C. Small ant colonies are more efficient than large ones

D. Individual ants know how much food the colony needs

3. What does the professor say about the way the ant communicates the location of food to one
another?

A. It is an example of how reductionists predict group behavior.

B. It is a type of behavior that reductionists tend to ignore.

C. It is an example of a behavior that supports only the holistic approach.

D. It is a behavior that scientists have not observed in other insect species.

4. What does the professor imply about collective intelligence?

A. It is an important factor in the reductionist analysis of ant colonies

B. It is an important factor in ant survival.

C. It is a phenomenon that occurs in few animal species.

D. It is a phenomenon that is well understood with regard to ant colonies.

5. What misconception about ants does the professor believe the students might have?

A. Ants must live in a colony to survive.

B. Ants have no way to communicate with one another.

C. The queen is the leader of the colony.

D. The task performed by an ant does not vary during its lifetime.

6. What ant behavior does the professor mention that supports the holistic approach?

A. Ants from one colony find food in a different colony.

B. Ants imitate the behavior of the leader in the colony.

C. Ants switch from taking care of the nest to food-gathering.

D. Ants work together to protect the queen.

Answerkey

1. D
2. B
3. A
4. B
5. C
6. C

Today we're going to talk about two important philosophical concepts; two basically different

ways of looking at things that have wide ranging influence on many disciplines, like psychology,
sociology, and animal behavior and these approaches, actually guide the way scientists do their
research. They're called holism and reductionism. That's holism, focusing on how an entity functions as a
unit and reductionism: reducing the whole to its parts. Suppose you're looking at an ant colony and the
ant colony would be the whole, the whole system as it were and the ants are the parts, with each
individual ant representing the smallest part of that system. Reductionism is the belief that the workings
of the system, any system, can be understood through an understanding of its smallest parts, how those
parts work individually and also, the way any particular part interacts with another part, so in the case of
the ant colony, a reductionist would investigate the behavior of individual ants within the colony and the
way they interact with other ants in that colony. From that they would make generalizations about the
behavior of the colony as a whole. Take food for example. When an ant finds food it takes that food
back to the nest and on its way back, it secretes a chemical, which leaves a trail that can be detected by
other ants. That's the way it communicates about the location of food and this behavior, this
communication describes an important way in which ants in a colony interact. To the extent that we
understand the rule governing this behavior of that smallest part, the individual, then we can generalize
about the behavior of larger groups of ants; following trails, finding food, leaving more trails, and so on
and eventually we'll understand the behavior of the entire colony and then, and this is an important part
of the reductionist approach, we can predict what will happen in that colony. Now, on the other hand, a
holist believes that a system cannot really be understood by just understanding how the parts function.
In other words, an old saying you might have heard before, the whole is more than the sum of its parts.
So, when looking at an ant colony, the holist sees it from two perspectives; of the individual ant and of
the whole colony. Because the behavior of the individual ants taken together has an impact on the
colony as a whole and the colony as a total system has an impact on the individual ants. You have to
view the behavior of the colony as more than simply the total of the individual behaviors. One reason
for looking at the behavior of the colony is that the colony as a whole seems to know what to do, to act
for its own benefit in a way that any given individuals could not. The holist believes that the collective
behavior of the colony as a whole cannot be traced to
specific individuals. In animal behavior, we refer to this as collective intelligence and it's a good thing
ants have this collective intelligence because the individual ant is ill-suited to life outside the colony. So,
what's an example of this collective intelligence? Well, sometimes the ants switch tasks, let’s say from
taking care of the nest to gathering food and we don't know exactly what triggers this behavior, but
somehow they just know when more food gatherers are needed. There's no leader in an ant colony, no
one giving orders and don't confuse ant society with human society. There is a queen, but all she does is
lay eggs and of course, no single ant could possibly know how much food is needed in the whole colony,
but somehow, as a group, they know to supply the colony with enough food. It probably has something
to do with chemical signals from ants in the colony.