Since the dawn of recorded history, a pervasive metaphor has permeated across cultures and ages in the quest to understand society: That of the social organism. This is the idea that human society could be considered an organism in its own right, similar to a plant or an animal. Arguably one of the earliest records of this is to be found in Hinduism’s division of society’s members into four major castes, which, according to the origin myth behind it, come from the body parts of a deity. ¹ In the West, the roots of the social organism theory school of thought can be found as early as Plato and his vision of the body politic, where he likens a just state to a just soul.² Aristotle also makes use of the metaphor in his work, stating for example that a proper functioning of the whole state is required for the well-being of the people, since “If the whole body be destroyed, there will not be a foot or a hand".³ The metaphor of the body politic continued through to the Middle Ages, where it was used by scholars such as Oresme, who stated that “The state or kingdom, is like a human body”.⁴ In our era, the social organism theory has played a notable role in sociology, from its roots with Auguste Comte, who used it extensively in his work and called society a “collective organism”⁵ through to Herbert Spencer, who famously referred to society as the “social organism”⁶, and all the way through to Emile Durkheim and other sociologists.⁷ Closer to the 21st century, a notable iteration of the social organism theory is to be found in the work of Lovelock and Margulis on the Gaia hypothesis, which proposes that the entire planet is a system-like organism that self-regulates.⁸

Social organism theories were not without their detractors, such as Max Weber, who believed that an overuse of the analogy between biological organisms and human society could actually be detrimental, and advised against it.⁷

Nevertheless, all major additions to the social organism school of thought took place before the advent of many modern technological tools available since the end of the 20th century that look both at organic life, as well as at human society. These tools include the Hubble telescope, the increased refinement of in vivo microscopy, the framework of systems biology, and so many others. This work builds upon the massive breath of knowledge about both cellular life as well as about human society produced by these tools to formulate a novel social organism theory.

Human society as a biological organism

What is human society? The dictionary lists “society” as being a collection of individuals that live as members of a community.⁹ Here, we propose that human society can be best understood as a multizoa organism ¹⁰ – an organism made of many animals. Linguistically, “multizoa” is a compound word. “Multi-“ derives from the latin “multus”, which means many, and “zoa” derives from “zoon”, the latin plural for animals. So “multizoa” etymologically means “many animals”. The word draws a parallel to “multicellular”, which is how organisms made of many cells are defined biologically. This similarity is not unintentional, for, as we shall see, multicellular and multizoa organisms share many features, in general terms.

The organic aspect of human society is easiest to see from space. Using satellite footage of human society, our worldwide society appears similar to be a bioluminescent moss-like organism growing on Earth’s surface, and that’s what a multizoa organism looks like from afar (Figure 1a). If we zoom in, we can see that this organism is made of people (Figure 1b), other plants and animals (Figure 1c), and things people made, like buildings, roads and cars (Figure 1d)

This is not unlike the perception and make-up of a multicellular organism, like an animal or a plant. Let’s take the human body as an example. From afar, a human body looks like one entity (Figure 2a). Zoom in however using a microscope, and we can see that in reality, the body is made up of human cells (Figure 2b), bacteria (Figure 2c) and things that human cells make, like the collagen in joints (Figure 2d).

The fundamental structural and functional unit of multicellular organism is the cell. Likewise, the fundamental structural and functional unit of multizoa organisms is considered the human. That’s not to say that multizoa organisms can survive without animals or plants – indeed, multicellular organisms can scarcely survive without bacteria, which fulfils such essential roles as breaking down food and helping with digestion.10 Likewise, multizoa organisms are very much dependent upon the animals and plants that are included in its body, but its basic unit remains the human, for reasons that will be explored.

As a multizoa organism, human society’s body stretches wherever humans live. This means that its body can be found on virtually every surface landmass of Earth, especially where the climate conditions are ideal for human survival. Thus, areas with temperate climates see a much higher density of people, whereas areas which have extreme temperatures, such as deserts or Earth’s poles, sees a much lower human density. Crucially, multizoa theory considers the worldwide human society living on the surface of Earth as a single multizoa organism ¹¹, mainly due to the process of integration and interdependence that has been brought about by technological development. This integration and interdependence can be observed from a number of angles – from the physical, such as the constant and high-volume transportation of goods and people between countries around the world, or the speed at which a pandemic can spread globally; To the informational, such as the speed at which news can spread from one corner of the globe to another, the emergence of globally circulating languages, or the global popularity of particular artworks such as movies, music, and other pieces of media. Therefore, this paper will use the term “human society” to mean the worldwide human society spanning the entire globe.

The following section will proceed to list some of the basic physiological processes that human society displays as a multizoa organism