What Is a Human?

Language, Mind, and Culture

James Paul Gee

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030503819
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030503826
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociolinguistics
• Index: Social Sciences

In a sweeping synthesis of new research in a number of different disciplines, this book argues that we humans are not who we think we are. As he explores the interconnections between cutting-edge work in bioanthropology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, human language and learning, and beyond, James Paul Gee advances, also, a personal philosophy of language, learning, and culture, informed by his decades of work across linguistics and the social sciences. Gee argues that our schools, institutions, legal systems, and societies are designed for creatures that do not exist, thus resulting in multiple, interacting crises, such as climate change, failing institutions, and the rise of nationalist nationalism.  As Gee constructs an understanding of the human that takes into account our social, collective, and historical nature, as established by recent research, he inspires readers to reflect for themselves on the very question of who we are—a key consideration for anyone interested in society, government, schools, health, activism, culture and diversity, or even just survival.

Part I

© The Author(s) 2020

J. P. GeeWhat Is a Human?https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50382-6_1

Begin Abstract

1. Terman

James Paul Gee¹

(1)

Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

James Paul Gee

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

TermitesHumanMicrobiomeProcessesComplexity

End Abstract

This book asks the question: “What is a human?”. However, in this first chapter, we will start with a different question, the question will be: “What is a termite?”. We humans are extraordinarily good at deceiving ourselves about ourselves, so it is better to start with a different creature. Termites are, of course, quite different from us humans, but they are also surprisingly much like us in important ways. There are few creatures on earth that can be quite social and collaborative in large groups but still retain a good deal of individual difference. Most of the creatures, aside from us (and, as it happens, naked mole rats), are insects, ants, termites, and bees.

Think of one termite who we can call “Little Terman”. Little Terman could be a male, female, or something else, it doesn’t matter. Little Terman lives with many other termites in what is called, by us, not Little Terman, a “mound”.

The word “mound”, as I use it, does not mean just the tall dirt structure termites build. It means a composite living thing. This thing is made up of termites, dirt, water, air, chemicals and chemical trails, chewed-up wood, plant material, micro-organisms of all different sorts, branching networks of ever-changing tunnels, and, in Little Terman’s case, a fungus at the very bottom of the mound.

In the mound, as a living breathing thing there are lots and lots of different kinds of stuff. All these elements are in it together. One for all; all for one. If one fails, they all do.

Just as we have named Little Terman “Little Terman”, we could name the whole mound—which is itself a composite living animal, in a sense—”Big Terman”. Little Terman is Little Terman, our favorite termite. Big Terman is the mound that Little Terman and a great many other termites, and many other things as well, are part and parcel of. Little Terman (one termite) and Big Terman (the mound) are not really separate. If Big Terman goes, Little Terman goes, too, and if all the termites go, then Big Terman goes as well.

The mound—Big Terman—is dynamically changing all the time as its various elements interact, intertwine, and sometimes enter into and out of each other. So, the mound is not really a thing, not really an object, not a static entity. In reality, it is a giant process made up of many sub-processes; it is a process of processes. Things are always going on with smaller goings-on inside and part of bigger ones. If things ever stop going on, the whole “thing” dies.

The fungus eats chewed-up wood at the bottom of the mound (a process). This process causes the production of sugar (a process). The termites eat and digest the sugar (a process). They use the energy they get from the sugar to build and maintain the mound (a process). The mound channels and refreshes air throughout the tunnels and chambers in the mound (a process). Each process is part of a bigger one, and all the processes together (interconnected as they all are) are one big process. If any one process fails, they can all fail.

The mound’s elements are always moving, acting, interacting, entering, exiting, making, unmaking, changing, assimilating, and adapting all together. So, we really need a verb name for a process (of processes) not a noun name for a static thing. It would better to call the mound, not Big Terman, but “Big Termaning”, using a process term (a verb) and not a thing term (a noun). Instead of saying “Big Terman is there”, we should really say “Big Termaning is happening there”. The mound is a happening of happenings never ceasing until death.

Big Termaning (the mound) is a process of many different sub-processes interacting in different ways at different levels. These processes all use, cycle, recycle, and are affected by a myriad of different elements such as dirt, air, light, moisture, chemicals, micro-organisms, termites, and a fungus. Let’s call such processes of processes (like Big Termaning, the mound), to have a short and dramatic way to say it, a “Transacting Swarm”.

Now, what about Little Terman, just one little (blind) termite in the mound? Well, actually Little Terman is not all that little. Just as Big Termaning is a Transacting Swarm, so, too, is Little Terman on a smaller scale. Little Terman, like all the other termites, is made up of Little Terman’s “own” cells and genes and those of millions of micro-organisms (little animals like bacteria, archaea, protists, fungi, and viruses) making up hundreds of species that are in, on, and around Little Terman.

Some of these micro-organisms are inside Little Terman, a great many are in Little Terman’s gut. Some are inside Little Terman’s cells, and some have long ago become embedded in Little Terman’s genetic code (which is, thus too, a composite). Some of the micro-organisms in Little Terman themselves have smaller micro-organisms inside them. Little Terman is not one; Little Terman is many; Little Terman is legion. All Little Terman’s cells and genes and all those of Little Terman’s micro-organisms are always doing things in constant interaction with each other.

Little Terman also has a whole bunch of chemicals going into, on, around, and through him and produces chemicals himself, as do all the other termites. In fact, Little Terman “reads” many of these chemicals (when they are spread in the environment) to find his way around and what to do here and now. They are signals, a type of chemical language. Little Terman can write with these chemicals too, sending messages to other termites. Little Terman is literate, both a writer and a reader.

The micro-organisms within Little Terman and the chemicals around Little Terman allow Little Terman to do everything he does and to feel everything he feels (yes, Little Terman does have feelings). Little Terman could not do what he needs to do without his micro-organisms. Little Terman could not even live without them and many of them could not outlive Little Terman. They need Little Terman, and Little Terman needs them.

It’s not at all clear where Little Terman stops and where his micro-organisms start. There are no really tight boundaries between the two: Little Terman, a bug, and the millions of smaller bugs inside “him”. In reality, they aren’t two things but one. It really does not matter whether we say Little Terman controls his micro-organisms or that they control him. They are Little Terman and Little Terman is them and they are all one thing.

But, of course, Little Terman is not really a thing, any more than the mound (Big Terman) is, but a dynamic process of processes (like the mound) and so should properly be called Little Termaning. Everything in, on, around, and flowing through Little Terman is a process that is a part of bigger processes up to the whole Transacting Swarm that is Little Terman. Even when Little Terman sleeps, a million goings-on are going on inside and around Little Terman or he would die.

So, what we have in the world is Big Termaning and Little Termaning, both of them apart and together are Transacting Swarms. We have a Transacting Swarm (Little Terman) inside a bigger Transacting Swarm (the mound) inside a yet bigger Transacting Swarm (Little and Big Terman together as a system), inside a yet bigger Transacting Swarm (Little-Big Terman as part and parcel of the larger environment around the mound). It’s swarms all the way up and down.

Little Terman (kind of) eats wood, like all his termite friends. Now, eating wood is a very very hard thing to do. Cellulose is the basic ingredient in wood, grass, and shrubs and it is hard to digest. Cows and goats can do it, but they must chew it for a very long time and use very special stomachs in order to digest it.

Many species of termites use some of the micro-organisms in their gut to digest cellulose (the bugs turn the cellulose into sugar and the termites use the sugar for nutrition). But Little Terman proudly lives in Africa where he and his friends raise a special fungus together. They gather grass, twigs, and debris, chew them all up, bring it back to the mound, and form it into a pile at the bottom of the mound. Then, they spice up this growing pile of chewed-up woody pulp with spores of a fungus called Termitomyces (note the name). The fungus grows on the pile by digesting the cellulose in the chewed-up wood and grass and converting it into sugar and nitrogen. Presto. Termites collect and chew up food (wood) for the fungus and the fungus makes food (sugar) for the termites and they both survive. They cannot decide to go their own way unless they want to be dead termites and a dead fungus.

Other species of termites have their micro-organisms eat wood for them. Little Terman doesn’t. The fungus eats wood for Little Terman. The fungus is Little Terman’s external digestive tract. And Little Terman is part of the fungus’s external distributed body that fetches and prepares the fungus’s food.

So, we can ask (pointlessly): Is the fungus using the termites or are the termites us...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Part IV
• Back Matter