''superorganism'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260708194133-00-⌔

superorganism - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

superorganism (plural superorganisms)

• (biology) A social colony of individuals who, through division of labour, effective communication and self-organization, form a highly connected community that functions as if it were a single organism.
  • ✤ A superorganism is an ensemble of living and non-living matter, which acts as a single self-regulating system. […] Gaia is the largest and most complex superorganism we know.¹
  • ✤ To grasp why Metaman—our strange amalgam of concrete, humans, computer chips, and various plants and animals—is a superorganism rather than merely an elaborate “social grouping” of humans, look at another, far simpler grouping of organisms—a termite colony.²

Etymology

From super- + organism.

Pronunciation

• Audio (US): 🔊

Printed 2026-07-08.

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Footnotes

1. 1991, James Lovelock, Healing Gaia, New York: Harmony Books, →ISBN, page 64: ↩

2. 1993, Gregory Stock, Metaman: the Merging of Humans and Machines Into a Global Superorganism, New York: Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 43: ↩