International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

According to G. SOMMERHOFF social integration results from the existence of directive correlations between individuals. He writes: "Complex patterns of directive correlations may exist not only between an organism and its environment, but also between members of an aggregate of individual organisms… they can impart a measure of organic integration and unity to such an aggregate" (1969, p.190).

If the existence of directive correlations is permanent and "… if one of the ultimate goals of these directive correlation systems is to preserve the continued existence of the social aggregate for its own sake, the aggregate itself may come to function as a biological unit in a way formally not unlike that of a single organism" (Ibid).

SOMMERHOFF adds:"A social aggregate as a colony of insects is not a physical unit in the above sense (i.e. in the sense of an organism), but it can still be a biological unit in the same sense as above. Provided there is communication between its members, the physical prerequisites are satisfied that enable the activities of one member to become functions of the activities of the others" (Ibid).

Translevel isomorphies described by J.G. MILLER from the cell to the social planetary levels finds here a very basic explanation. One may also anticipate the possibility of a general theory of associativity, or sociality, whatever the nature of social components may be.

Another interesting connexion can be made with W.R. ASHBY's Markovian matrixes of statistical individual and collective behaviors of animal species.

Finally, the very recent emergence of collaborating automata seems to announce the possibility of future automata societies endowed with distributed abilities, able to organize themselves in a collective way by directive correlations in order to execute complex tasks in common.