Originally the term collective means a social entity of living beings. However, the term is also applied in the Natural Sciences to describe properties of matter not limited to living beings, e. g. living cells or quantum materials. A term used frequently in very different disciplines is hive mind. A question crossing disciplines in this context is how decision processes in collectives emerge. This topic is being addressed apart by each discipline in the Natural Sciences, Medicine, Social Sciences, Humanities, and has initiated current research approaches. A more detailed analysis, however, leads to the hypothesis that across all disciplines common rules of behavior can be found that lead to the decisions of the respective collective. The environment of an Academy is ideal for developing these rules.
A few examples and questions
How can authoritarian or totalitarian forms develop from the collective decisions of a democratic form of state? Is this a decision of the collective, of groups of the collective or of an individual? How do these decision-making processes start – perhaps long before our current powers of perception can detect such a paradigm shift of a collective?
How can it be that collective forms of society support narcissist aspirations?
Decisions regarding leaders, which emerge from mobile groups of humans and animals through collective decision making, require the active participation of an individual and his/her interaction with the environment. Such behavior can be found in a similar manner at the singular cell level, which constitutes the smallest living entity. Collective cell migration drives many critical biological processes, including wound healing, organogenesis and cancer development. During collective migration cells move as a coordinated and connected group where each single cell interacts strongly with neighboring cells and the environment. Collective cell migration requires decisions for processes to form functions, e. g. identifying leader cells.
In the Arts and Literary Studies the practice and decision making of authors' collectives, schools of painters or groups of poets could be analyzed and historically compared. It could be discussed how changes in style, taste or epochs with respect to the aesthetics of production and reception are prompted by exchanges between individual and collective, and integrated into different constellations. The concept of decision making should be problematized philosophically and in relation to the history of concepts. The role of free will in decision-making processes and what characterizes human decisions could be elucidated through exchange with the Natural Sciences.
Collective phenomena are also the determining attribute for the formation of perceptible functions in the area of inanimate condensed matter. Can emerging behavior in many-particle systems be traced back to scale-independent processes with identical physical or mathematical principles? Or put the other way round: is the analytical breaking down of phenomena and the subsequent synthesis of partial findings for understanding the whole sufficient to understand the interactions leading to emerging behavior in collectives? Examples can be found in the development of ordered quantum states, e. g. quantum hall systems, superconductors, Bose-Einstein condensation of gases, and excitons in semiconductors as well as quantum-critical phenomena in general.
In summary, it can be seen that the patterns of interactions and decisions of cells, living beings and parts of inanimate matter share commonalities which can be identified by apparently completely different mechanisms. What are their commonalities? Apart from exploring such interesting questions in the different disciplines, the WIN College - unlike other research funding - also offers the opportunity of doing transdisciplinary research on this topic in the unique interdisciplinary environment provided by the Academy.