Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Prelude . . . Ant Fugue 168involved. If an effort is initiated, perhaps at random, by a few ants in some locale, one of twothings can happen: either it will fizzle out after a brief sputtering startACHILLES: When there aren't enough ants to keep the thing rolling?ANTEATER: Exactly. The other thing that can happen is that a critical mass of ants ispresent, and the thing will snowball, bringing more and more ants into the picture. In thelatter case, a whole "team" is brought into being which works on a single project. Thatproject might be trail making, or food gathering, or it might involve nest keeping. Despite theextreme simplicity of this scheme on a small scale, it can give rise to very complexconsequences on a larger scale.ACHILLES: I can grasp .the general idea of order emerging from chaos, as you sketch it, butthat still is a long way from the ability to converse. After all, order also emerges from chaoswhen molecules of a gas bounce against each other randomly-yet all that results there is anamorphous mass with but three parameters to characterize it: volume, pressure, andtemperature. Now that's a far cry from the ability to understand the world, or to talk about it!ANTEATER: That highlights a very interesting difference between the explanation of thebehavior of an ant colony and the explanation of the behavior of gas inside a container. Onecan explain the behavior of the gas simply by calculating the statistical properties of themotions of its molecules. There is no need to discuss any higher elements of structure thanmolecules, except the full gas itself. On the other hand, in an ant colony, you can't even beginto understand the activities of the colony unless you go through several layers of structure.ACHILLES: I see what you mean. In a gas, one jump takes you from the lowest levelmolecules-tothe highest level-the full gas. There are no intermediate levels of organization.Now how do intermediate levels of organized activity arise in an ant colony?ANTEATER: It has to do with the existence of several different varieties of ants inside anycolony.ACHILLES: Oh, yes. I think I have heard about that. They are called "castes," aren't they?ANTEATER: That's correct. Aside from the queen, there are males, who do practicallynothing toward the upkeep of the nest, and then --ACHILLES: And of course there are soldiers-glorious fighters against communism!