The Quasi-Organic Society Living Culture Body and Its Business Applications

This paper delves into the idea of society as a quasi-organic entity, exploring how culture, through its verbal, material, and spatial expressions, forms a physical-phenotypic manifestation. While culture has historically been an abstract concept and material surrounding, it is a concept separate from biology, and it is deeply interwoven into human experience, both shaping and being shaped by our neuroplastic brains. Dawkins’ “extended phenotype” concept hints at this connection, suggesting that culture can be perceived as the phenotype of collective human behavior, an extension of our biological nature—our quasi-organic society. From the beginning of civilization, humans have been influenced and molded by evolving cultural norms. Nevertheless, the nexus between culture and biology still needs to be discussed. Drawing parallels between organisms that modify their environment and humans who shape their surroundings driven by cultural “memes,” we emphasize that culture does not merely influence biology—it resides within it. Grounded in Émile Durkheim's idea that societies operate like organisms and Dawkins’ understanding of the extended phenotype, this work asserts that our material culture is the tangible expression of the cultural memes within our brains. This perspective challenges traditional notions, urging a more integrated understanding of culture and biology.