"When you're looking in the mirror, what you're really looking at is there are 10 times more microbial cells than human cells," Proctor says. "In almost every measure you can think of, we're more microbial than human."
The horde of microbes is so vast that their genes swamp our genes. In fact, 99 percent of the genes contained in and on our bodies are microbial genes.
This expanding view of the microbiome is changing how some people think about humans — not as individual entities but as what philosopher Rosamond Rhodes calls a "supraorganism."
For the rest of the article, link HERE. This brings to mind the Whiteheadian concept of organism as nexus. In particular, this thought from a post I wrote some time back comes to mind:
Hartshorne's ethical treatment of Leibnizian monads in Whiteheadian vein - that is, as societies of occasions guided by a dominant monarchical monad, is something that I look favorably upon due to my metaphysical commitment to panpsychism and panentheism. For more information on that, see the section "Social Process," HERE.
