ABSTRACT
We have encountered the question of whether or not such and such can be regarded as an individual in a number of contexts. ‘Deep Ecology’ suggests that we and nature should be regarded as one. Ecology pioneer F.E.Clements said that we should see a developing ‘formation’ as not a collection of organisms but as a super-organism in its own right. Individualism insists that there is nothing to a society beyond the individuals making it up. The Gaia hypothesis proposes that the earth is one enormous individual, a single organism of which again human beings would have to be thought of along the analogy of component cells.
