This is coolbert: Now, another contributor to this blog has mentioned the behavior of the army ant. And it is true, army ants engage in behavior that can only be defined as "war". That is the reason they are called army ants. Now, Edwin O. Wilson, Harvard professor, called affectionately the "ant man", has written extensively about ants. Ants are social insects. Live in colonies, have structured societies with structured forms of behavior. Very complex. And from time to time, these ant societies go on the "warpath". A famous short story called "Leinengen and the Ants" is based upon a mass of army ants going on the "warpath", destroying everything in their path. A movie starring Charlton Heston was based upon this short story. Now, professor Wilson did come to some interesting observations and conclusions regarding ants and their behavior. Well, thought the professor, these ants have these complex social societies. But they do not possess brains. They cannot have thought all this out and organized themselves according to some well thought out plan. So how has this all happened?? Well, it is all chemical reactions within the ants that is causing them to do what they do. They are not thinking animals, but responding animals. These chemical flows in their bodies compel them to act as they do. Based upon the conclusions of Wilson, others have reasoned that the complex structures we see in human society are also nothing more than reactions to chemical stimuli. Even if this is not totally so, perhaps it is so, but at what level, we just cannot be sure? What we humans have convinced ourselves as being evidence of our innate superiority over the rest of the animal kingdom, our ability to think and reason, and our reactions to that thinking and reasoning, maybe are just reactions to chemical stimuli at some level. A whole lot of people also reject this theory. But they do so primarily, from my observations, out of what they desire to be so, not what may be so. They want to believe that what we define as good or bad, chaos or organization, are part of the human thought process, and not merely chemical reactions. And of course, what action is rejected as being not an innate part of our nature? Why the aggressive tendency of course. Whereas it can be observed that army ants are acting according to their true nature by responding to a chemical reaction, this could not ever be true in the human being. I just don't know?

coolbert.