A Broader Horizon for the Term “Symbiosis”

The definition of the term “symbiosis” has lingered in an ambiguous realm for more than a century. In its broadest sense, symbiosis refers to the dynamic that arises when two organisms of different species live together. This scientific definition includes all classifications of biological relationships, ranging from parasitism to mutualism. An alternative definition of symbiosis exclusively denotes mutualism, a dynamic in which both species benefit from living together. The scientific community uses this less frequently, but it’s more often used colloquially and in contexts outside the field of biology. This paper seeks to understand why “symbiosis” remains a technical, scientific word applied mainly to non-human biological interactions. It also explores how the broader usage of symbiosis could provide for a better understanding of the biological and sociocultural realms.

The word “symbiosis” originates from the Greek sumbiōsis (companionship) and sumbioun (to live together). It first recirculated in German and English languages in the early seventeenth century, to characterize “communal or social life,” including “the union of living together of distinct individuals as companions or in marriage as husband and wife.”1 From the seventeenth century onward, this positive definition of symbiosis, with connotations of mutualism and interdependence, was broadly used in this sociocultural sense. In his 1622 book Free Trade, Edward Misselden, an English merchant, argued for more tightly regulated international trade and discussed the urgency “to study and invent things profitable for the publique Symbiosis.”2 Later usage of the word reveals more about symbiosis’ ties to concepts of mutualism; in 1910, an English political magazine described “the savage with his… sense of ‘participation,’ of ‘symbiosis.’”3 Given that punishment for individual crimes was enforced on the group level and many community tools and items were used and owned collectively in so-called “savage” Native American societies, they can be described as more pro-mutual aid and pro-interdependence than European ones at the time.4 Symbiosis, in this context, was used to describe a form of social organization that was deeply participatory, founded on interdependence. In 1920, another English journal published a book that held that “so long as the [indigenous people living in tribes] can talk freely together, they form one spiritual symbiosis, and their culture will be the same.”5 In this excerpt, a journalist argues the cultural benefits, in the form of a “spiritual symbiosis,” that come from community participation, like the participation observed by the English in indigenous societies. In 1951, the term appeared in a social anthropology textbook6 to refer to indigenous examples of friendly cooperation between socially different, and often ethnically different, groups: “It is most evident in the case of an African tribe having its members living intermingled with those of other tribes and in symbiotic relationships with them.”7 Symbiosis has been colloquially used up until the present to describe interdependent, often mutualistic and positive relationships in human societies, though it has been used in this sociocultural context less frequently than in the biological sciences.

1 Gontier, N. (2016). Symbiosis, History of. In Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology (Vol. 4, p. 274 ). Oxford.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, “symbiosis” declined in popularity in the sociocultural sphere and saturated the scientific language of biology. One definition of “symbiosis” used by biologists exclusively denotes mutualism. In 1895, natural historian Anton Kerner von Marilaun observed how “several plants… live symbiotically with certain… ants. The plants afford the ants lodging… and give them nourishment…; the ants in return defend the foliage against the attacks of leaf-eating animals.”8 This dynamic can be compared to the symbiotic interactions between African tribes, who would trade and gift specialized goods to one another. It can also be found in the division of labor in industrialized economies that Adam Smith famously identified as the most important source of economic progress; as laborers specialize in increasingly narrow parts of the production of a good (pins, for example), and rely on other workers for different goods and services, all workers have access to more, high-quality resources overall.9 A similarly mutualistic relationship was defined as symbiosis by a naturalist in 1882: “Certain animals have embedded in their tissues numbers of unicellular algae, which are not to be regarded as parasites, but which thrive in the waste products of the animal, while the animal feeds upon the compounds elaborated by the algae. This combined condition of existence has been named by Dr. Brandt symbiosis.”10

2 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

3 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

4 Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The dawn of everything: A new history of humanity Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

5 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

6 Firth, R. (1951). Elements of social organization. Routledge.

7 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

8 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2022, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

9 Smith, A. (2009). Wealth of Nations. Classic House Books.

Over time, a broader use of this word, expanding beyond just mutualism, became dominant. In 1879, botanist Heinrich Anton de Bary defined it as “the living together of unlike organisms.”11 This definition of “symbiosis” encompasses all types of biological relationships, from neutralism to parasitism to mutualism. It is important to note that these are artificial categories constructed by biologists to sort species and relationships into smaller, more easily studied buckets. In many cases, interactions between species are not static and will present differently under different conditions. Although many biological relationships are not perfectly captured by biology’s scientific terms, “symbiosis” and its (according to de Bary) subcategories of mutualism, neutralism, commensalism, parasitism, predation, and amensalism, provide formal linguistic tools with which to analyze complex intraspecies and interspecies interactions.

While the scope of “symbiosis” has been an issue of contention in the biological community for more than 130 years, the word’s use seems to converge towards de Bary’s definition. In a 2013 study published in the International Journal of Biology, 100% of general biology (GB) textbooks surveyed used an explicit or implicit “de Bary” definition of “symbiosis,” while only 40% of general ecology (GE) textbooks did the same. When combining GB and GE textbooks to analyze usage of the word, 85% defined mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism as symbiotic interactions.12 Not only has “symbiosis” become an increasingly technical, scientific term that does not exclusively imply mutualism, “at the beginning of the twentieth century, parallels between the sociocultural and natural world appear to have come into disuse.”13

Symbiosis may have been divorced from its original sociocultural context and strong connotations of mutualism because the concept of mutualistic symbiosis and its importance was antithetical to popular Enlightenment thought. Key natural philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, Thomas Malthus, and Adam Smith14 conceived of humans as individuals in direct competition with one another for scarce resources. For Hobbes (1651), “humans were like wolves, who in a ‘natural state’ found themselves at ‘war’ with other humans because they wanted to defend their individual freedom.” A struggle for existence

10 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

11 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

12 Martin, B. (2013). Current Usage of Symbiosis and Associated Terminology . International Journal of Biology, 5. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijb.v5n1p32 resulting from a scarcity of resources (similar to that outlined by Malthus) would lead to a natural selection of the fit, at the expense of the maladaptive. The biological sciences had access not only to “symbiosis” as it refers to mutualistic relationships, but an arsenal of additional words—parasitism, commensalism, neutralism, synnecrosis, symbiont—that serve to compose an entire framework for conceptualizing intraspecies and interspecies relations in non-human forms of life such as lichens, fungi, and fish. However, since the critical Enlightenment-period conceptions of individualistic social behavior, it has been increasingly politically subversive for ideas of symbiosis to be applied formally to the sociocultural realm in the field of biology.

13 Gontier, N. (2016). History of Symbiosis. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology, 4, 272–281.

14 While Adam Smith did acknowledge the positive-sum advantages of dividing labor (mentioned earlier in the paper), his broader writings about selfishness and competition would go on to be used as the foundation for social theories of individualism.

Additionally, notions of symbiotic relationships’ evolutionary advantages were brought up as early as the early twentieth century, but did not gain footing in scientific discourse until the past two decades. In 1902, historian and natural scientist Peter Kropotkin postulated that symbiotic relationships might offer evolutionary advantages. While peer scientists painted organismal beings as “naturally amoral and asocial beings, Kropotkin [made] the case that mutual aid and the division of labor is as ‘instinctive’ and ‘natural’ as the [competitive] ‘struggle for existence’ is. For Kropotkin, the law of mutual aid helps eliminate competition and aids in the struggle for existence, enabling the establishment of social and political laws that bond organisms in communal lifestyles characterized by reciprocal altruism and cooperation.”15 Kropotkin’s socialist ideas about symbiosis and evolution, and their implications for humans’ social and political life, are only just being rediscovered.16 Similarly, the term symbiogenesis, first used by Russian biologist Konstantin Mereschkowski in 1905, is gaining popularity now17 and can be used to describe the crucial role of symbiosis in evolutionary success and development.

Nathalie Gontier, an evolutionary-sciences scholar, writes that “symbiosis is increasingly recognized as an important selective force behind evolution; many species have a long history of interdependent co-evolution.” For example, over the past couple of decades, biologists have come to recognize the role of symbiosis in human health. The human gut microbiome is a community of commensal organisms—gut flora—that prevent the entry of harmful non-commensal organisms; contribute to the human body’s metabolism, immunity, and adaptability to stress; and regulate nutrient and fluid reclamation.18 This idea that levels of competition and cooperation can be nested—running from an individ-

15 Gontier, N. (2016). History of Symbiosis. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology, 4, 275

16

Gontier, N. (2016). History of Symbiosis. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology, 4, 275 ual’s gut microbiome up to their relationships with other people—provides a more holistic picture of symbiosis, and its explanatory power concerning natural and social laws. In an 1894 natural history of plants, American biologists stated that “Animals and Plants [could be] considered as a great symbiotic community.”19 Their use of the word “community,” as opposed to another word such as “ecosystem,” to describe the symbiotic relationships between plants and animals carries social implications of fellowship, union, and common-ownership. This transference of terminology emphasizes the parallels between humans and the natural world.

17 Gontier, N. (2016). History of Symbiosis. Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Biology, 4, 272–281.

18 Hedayat, K. M., & Lapraz, J.-C. (2019). Chapter 5 - Symbiosis. The Theory of Endobiogeny, 2, 63–75.

Using the same terminology for animal, plant, and human interactions, whether they be cooperative or competitive, might facilitate more thought around how we may be similar to animals and ecosystems, as well as our own mutualistic, commensal, or parasitic relationship as humans with the natural world. Broader usage of “symbiosis” and its accompanying biological terminology, in the sociocultural realm where it originated, would provide a linguistic avenue for exploration into human relationships, where they may fall on the spectrum from mutualism to parasitism, and what this says about more fundamental natural, social, and political laws.

In this paper, Julia K. (class of 2022) explores her interests in the philosophy of science, environmental studies, and anthropology. She is especially interested in social scientists’ and biologists’ approaches to understanding competition and cooperation, and had fun taking an interdisciplinary angle in this paper.

19 Symbiosis, n. Oxford English Dictionary. (2020, December). Retrieved 2021, from https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/196194?redirectedFrom=symbiosis#eid.

Selina M.