Very little is understood about this kind of collective behavior.It is out of fashion these days to talk of "superorganisms",but there simply aren't enough reductionist details in hand to explain away the phenomenon of termites and other social insects:some very good guesses can be made about their chemical signaling systems,but the plain fact that they exhibit something like a collective intelligence is a mystery,or anyway an unsolved problem, that might contain important implications for social life in general.This mystery is the best introduction I can think of to biological science in college.It should be taught for its strangeness, and for the ambiguity of its meaning.It should be taught to premedical students,who need lessons early in their careers about the uncertainties in science.College students, and for that matter high school students, should be exposed very early, perhaps at the outset,to the big arguments currently going on among scientists.Big arguments stimulate their interest, and with luck engage their absorbed attention.Few things in life are as engrossing as a good fight between highly trained and skilled adversaries.But the young students are told very little about the major disagreements of the day;they may be taught something about the arguments between Darwinians and their opponents a century ago,but they do not realize that similar disputes about other matters,
