Isn't this true of humans too when we rely on entire supply chains for our food, water, and electricity?
Human societies aren't like that; the humans are free to reproduce on their own. It is a mistake to generalize from the ant colony to human society, much less to the entire world.
No, there are clonal organisms.
> Would human reproduction to human societies be similar to mitosis to cells?
No; all the cells in a body divide on the terms the body sets and they die when the body does. (Or earlier, when so directed.) The only way for them to reproduce is indirectly, through the production of gametes. They do not and generally cannot have an independent existence. Human reproduction within human societies is the analogue of a cell within the body becoming cancerous. At that point, the cancer's uncontrolled mitosis is a form of independent reproduction, though it tends not to work out for the cancer because they almost never develop a way to leave the body, and end up killing themselves.
There are some exceptions, such as HeLa and the cancer that lives in Tasmanian devils.
You'll notice that what I said was that humans do reproduce.
> Human societies aren't like that; the humans are free to reproduce on their own.
It doesn't match your description of what I said. What are you trying to say?
This is not even an attempt to approximate what I said. I said that humans are composed of cells which cannot reproduce, colonies are composed of ants which cannot reproduce, and human societies -- unlike humans and ant colonies -- are composed of humans which reproduce independently of the society. When I specifically indicate that what distinguishes human societies from ant colonies is that ants can't reproduce and humans can, what else could that mean?
This makes nonsense of the idea that a human society could be viewed as a superorganism. They don't have the coherence; they are constantly subject to betrayal by the humans of which they are composed. There are historical processes which look like the reproduction of a society: in the wake of Alexander the Great, northern India received a bunch of Greek colonists who built theaters, spoke Greek, practiced Greco-paganism, and wrote a lot of history, which marked a big contrast with the existing societies which built stepwells, spoke Sanskrit, practiced Buddhism, and wrote almost no history. And then the Greeks took up Buddhism. And they started speaking Sanskrit. And they stopped writing history. And they stopped building theaters. But they didn't go anywhere.
If societies were superorganisms, that couldn't have happened. The loss of Greek culture in India would have simultaneously been the loss of all the Greeks.
(Except sometimes human societies do really reproduce, like by colonization of foreign lands.)
It's not nearly that simple. If you take away "society" (running water, sewage, electricity, traffic lights, medical treatment, fresh diverse food, security, etc) most people would die off and the few survivors would find childrearing very burdensome.
The study of how human organizations can reproduce themselves and maintain vitality, rather than dying off when a leader or generation dies off, is critically important. Classical biology doesn't have a monopoly on "reproduction".
The prokaryotes beg to differ. If we are talking about human cells then the cancer cells would also like to raise an objection.
I honestly don't know if you're trying to be rhetorical here or what, but individual cells DO reproduce and individual humans do not.
That’s Aunt Hillary from Gödel, Escher, Bach :)
I forget the specific line, but at some point Achilles asks the Anteater if it hurts the Colony when he eats some ants, and the response is along the lines of “Does it hurt Achilles when he gets a haircut?”
Anteater: [...] I am on the best of terms with ant colonies. It's just ANTS that I eat, not colonies--and that is good for both parties: me, and the colony.
Achilles: How is it possible that--
Tortoise: How is it possible that--
Achilles: --having its ants eaten can do an ant colony any good?
Crab: How is it possible that--
Tortoise: --having a forest fire can do a forest any good?
Anteater: How is it possible that--
Crab: --having its branches pruned can do a tree any good?
Anteater: --having a haircut can do Achilles any good?
I should try reading that again, I last read it when I was like eight.
Yes, of course. The ant queen mates only once in her life, and the colony she starts right after is made from the genetic material collected during this one foundational act.
Genetically speaking, all the ants in the colony are one organism. (Lots of different and weird ways to express the genetics phenotypically, though.)