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Fractal organization and the self-organization in the ants' colonies.

May there be a relationship between the idea of fractal organization and the observation of Dr. Deborah Gordon in the ants colonies where there is no central command?

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    Sep 22 2013: At least it seems to have good starting conditions to be of fractal nature in certain areas and degrees.

    What didn't become clear to me is, how precisely it is possible to measure 'chemical languages' with the technology of our time in general and what was available to her studies, and how 'articulate' we are to decipher the complexity of those languages. Without this knowing, I am a bit careful to take her word that ants do not 'talk' in order to coordinate themselves. Maybe our knowledge isn't just fine enough to 'hear' what is said in between all of them.

    If I compare that to our linguistic knowledge about dolphins, which is still little, even though we can actually hear them, it gives me an idea of the task to get to understand 'molecular speech' in general. But that's just a thought.

    On fractal organization I have no idea about its capacity of 'information transport' within its forming pattern and if and how this could be directed (direction of information transport) and about its susceptibility and 'clearness'.

    For a non-communicative 'inbuilt' behavior 'by fractal design' I would think, that it could not respond appropriate to an always changing environment of food availability, dangers, and other necessities which are event-related. This would mean, that the fractal 'geometry' had to contain all possible situations to know how to respond to and to do this in coordinated ways, even though each individual was 'informational isolated' of the whole. This much of prefetched organization out of fractals would truly surprise me if that was the case... Yet again, thats just a thought.
    • Sep 22 2013: Very interesting.
      By the way, Dr. D. Gordon didn't say that "ants do not 'talk'". To the countrary, all along her demonstration, she evokes communication among ants. She just assumed that there was no Central Command, and that countrary to what most people believe, the Queen ant doesn't "manage" the community.
      The reason I made a parallel between the two scientists' theories is, first that I watched them one after the other or almost so, and that the way ants (and perhaps bees, and why not other living creatures, fish, plants, etc.) organize their communities requires precisely very efficient communications systems, which could benefit from fractal organizations that seem to enhance the way information spreads, in a non-linear way (exactly like Facebook now allows information allover the globe almost at the speed of light!!!). Except that in the African habitat there is always a central point (the chief).
      Don't ask me more, because I'm not a scientist of this specialization. It was just a thought, as you said.
      Many thanks!
  • Sep 22 2013: Could you define fractal organization?