According to conventional biology life has produced and is producing an endless proliferation of different forms. Each form is called a species, descended from a parental stock. It was Linnaeus who worked out the basis for the classification into phyla, classes, orders, famines, genera and species. His classification appears to describe a world in which each life form has irrevocably departed from the others in a multitude of hazardous ventures. Darwin's discovery of the mechanism of natural selection further emphasised the competative pressures. Both systems, it is interesting to note, appeared among people obsessed by trade and industry. Life, from the theories at least, appears to be an endless series of titanic struggles in which one of the two (or more) contestants are vanquished and the hero who remains has a short breather before the next terrible encounter. An Odessy and an Illiad lies at the root.
But there is a flaw in this view, perhaps simply an over emphasis on 'competition' rather than 'adaption', for we only have to look around us to see it. Life generally gets along quite happily. Tragedies are the exceptions which capture the headlines. Meanwhile the gardens flourish and we go about our business. No single great hero has taken over the world, as one would expect from this scenario. Variety seems to be still the spice of life.

We now know that the Linnaean picture of irrevocably diverging species is not wholly tru.e There are many examples of cooperation between species. In many cases forms have combined 'symbiotically', and just such a combination may have been the basis of the complex cell as we know it. Moreover the interdependance of species is becoming understood more clearly, as we look at the delicate balance of ecosystems.

Many of the species in the Linnaean classification are multicellular, that is to say, their bodies are formed of masses of living cells. Many different types of cells within each body are arranged in inner organs and systems of wonderful and intricate complexity. In these inner worlds we are far from the cut and thrust of market forces or nature red in tooth and claw. We are in a world of sublime harmony and breathtaking interactive complexity and multiplicity. As the 'species' of the the Linnaean system evolved apart, the 'individuals' grew inner worlds of vast populations of differing types of living cells that remained firmly committed to life together.

But another and more mysterious phenomena is at work As the individuals evolve ever larger and more complex inner worlds, many of them have begun to form complex outer worlds made of many individual.s These are called 'societies' of which manv thousands of kinds have developed. Many of the societies are transient complexities, others are permanent communities, clad in their own particular body form, with inner systems where specialist activities are performed. Many of these social groups have led biologists to coin the term 'Macroorgamsms' or 'Superorganisms'.

Like Russian dolls, cooperating life-forms are contributing to the development of huge living complexes, the limits of which may not yet be fully understood. Our towns and cities represent only one dimension in this pattern, but sufficiently close and well known to us to allow for a thorough investigation. This exhibition tries to do just that.