at once both individual and social. Because both individuality and sociality are fundamental to the human species, we are fundamentally interdependent, connected by invisible, yet powerful, threads. In exploring these threads, we have also been led to questions about how social forces can have effects on individuals, how the meaning that individuals (and groups) apply to particular phenomena or relationships affect both behavior and biology, and how our biology makes social connection possible. We have used the phrase “invisible forces” to describe the mechanisms that account for these effects that we essentially take for granted, and to suggest by analogy that they can be investigated rigorously just as other phenomena, such as gravity or autonomic regulation, that also are not immediately present to our visual or other senses can be studied.
Human minds are unparalleled at discerning patterns in what they see against a background of noise and variation, and they are equally adept at attributing meaning to them. As the essays in this volume demonstrate repeatedly, we readily ascribe patterns we encounter (or seek to encounter) to invisible forces of nature, of God, of kinship, of genes, of culture, of love, of social connection. A common premise underlying the work of the network is that what we know (or what we think we know), and how we come to know it, are social endeavors embedded in a shared view of both the world and how one talks meaningfully about the world. And mindful of our human facility to see patterns (even where none exist!), we are acutely aware that constant rigorous testing of assumptions, methods, and arguments is necessary to make sure that
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we are not fooling ourselves into seeing only what we hope to see.
Humans have a deep need to create meaning in their interactions with the world and with each other. We also have a deep need for making connections beyond ourselves. The biological structure we call our brain has evolved to reward social connection, just as it rewards the satisfaction of hunger or thirst. The human biology that directs and reflects these human needs is what we have termed the “social brain.”
It is worthwhile to reflect on the range of invisible forces that we have considered here. These forces operate at several different levels, from the molecular, to individual bodily functions, to social groups, to societies, to species. They include such disparate ideas as evolutionary selective pressure favoring social connectedness, anthropomorphism, loneliness, social connection, emergent phenomena, connection to a higher being, transcendence, empathy, language as carrier for meaning, belief, collective will, group synchrony, autonomic regulation, and neural resonance. These forces interact with one another, too: loneliness, for instance, acting as an internal signal of the inadequacy of one’s bonds of social connection, with consequent effects on health, mediated through autonomic regulation, or the role of belief in mediating scientific objectivity and empathy.
It is tempting to view individuals, both souls and bodies, as arising from lower-level forces within, such as the operation of specialized neurons and regulatory biological processes. And it is tempting to view social structures and the forces that tend to maintain them as arising, perhaps emergently, from the
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