stigmergy
n.— «His hypothesis of “stigmergy” is that building behavior is at first uncoordinated…when the construction at any one point reaches a certain critical density it attracts other termites topochemically. These focuses of the building material determine where the new pellets of earth used in the building are to be deposited. The constructions built thus act as new determinant stimuli for further construction.» —“Urinary Metabolites in Congenital Hyperuricosuria” by M. Earl Balis, Irwin H. Krakoff, Peter H. Berman, Joseph Dancis Science May 26, 1967. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
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