Huge entities that behave in a way similar to living organisms plants or animals and form self-regulating systems. In response to some disturbance of a superorganism’s normal state, it reacts in such a way that it readjusts to a new equilibrium state. An example of such a system, which has been much discussed in recent years, is the Gaia hypothesis of Professor James Lovelock (1919- ).
Traditional ideas held that all living things plants and animals evolved on but were distinct from the inanimate planet Earth. Lovelock postulated that the whole Earth the rocks, the oceans and rivers, the atmosphere and climate, plus all living things are part of one great organism functioning as a whole, a superorganism. He also proposed the idea that living things and physical conditions evolved together with the biota, the totality of all living organisms, regulating everything. The name he gave to his theory of a self-regulating Earth was “Gaia.” The theory has a mathematical basis in the model “Daisyworld.”