Plant scientists are wondering if plants really communicate with each other (and with insects and other organisms) or if they just “eavesdrop” on each other’s “soliloquies.”
At stake in the debate are the definitions of communication (e.g., is it necessarily intentional, and is intentionality necessarily conscious intentionality?) and behavior (is it something that only animals do?).
What seems certain is that plants can and sometimes do share information. This article from Quanta summarizes recent research.
Some quotes:
“It turns out almost every green plant that’s been studied releases its own cocktail of volatile chemicals, and many species register and respond to these plumes.”
[. . .]
“Just a few months ago, the plant signaling pioneer Ted Farmer of the University of Lausanne discovered an almost entirely unrecognized way that plants transmit information — with electrical pulses and a system of voltage-based signaling that is eerily reminiscent of the animal nervous system. ‘It’s pretty spectacular what plants do,’ said Farmer. ‘The more I work on them, the more I’m amazed.'”
[. . .]
“Does this really happen among wild plants, or is it an unusual phenomenon induced by lab conditions?”
(One might speculate that it’s those yucky lab conditions that trigger some compulsion among plants to cooperate in finding a way out, like prisoners who need each other’s help in digging out an escape route. Rhizomes seeking release from the stratified prison.)
“[…] the science of plant talk is challenging long-held definitions of communication and behavior as the sole province of animals. Each discovery erodes what we thought we knew about what plants do and what they can do. To learn what else they’re capable of, we have to stop anthropomorphizing plants, said Baldwin, who is now at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, and try instead to think like them, to phytomorphize ourselves. Imagining what it’s like to be a plant, he said, will be the way to understand how and why they communicate — and make their secret lives a mystery no longer.” [emphasis added]
Phytomorphosis, yes. Becoming-plant is the way to understand how a seed turns into a tree, a wood grows from a field and defends itself against threats. Maybe even how a planet might regenerate itself after a climatic shock.
Somehow this seems a fitting thing to celebrate when people are gathering to sing songs like “The Holly and the Ivy” (that version or the standard one).
Happy Christmas and merry Yule to all who wish it. May the seed of empathic wisdom grow in all of us, crossing species boundaries as swiftly as it crosses boundaries between giver, gift, and recipient. And a happy new beginning for the coming year. (This blog will remain dormant over the next several days.)
See also Karban, Yang, and Edwards, “Volatile communication between plants that affects herbivory: a meta-analysis,” Ecology Letters 17.1 (2014), 44-52.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/plant-thinking/5149044
DMF digs “Plant Thinking”, a la Michael Marder, but Marder is a bit knotted up with Hegel. Of course, ‘yule trees’ are supposed to be entrancing (and lead us away from the angel at the top ; ) but, as the link to QUANTA, “Could Knots Unravel Mysteries of Fluid Flow?” reveals, the devil is in the details. By this I mean to rebuke theories of ‘Negativity’, which tie us up in ‘truth’ vs ‘other’ knots.
As Wolchover reports in the QUANTA article, “Some researchers hypothesize that link or knot helicity is converted into ‘twist helicity’, or faster swirling of the vortices, keeping the total helicity constant. However, preliminary work … suggests that helicity dissipates during reconnection” (oops, no Accelerationism ; )
Oh no! What happens to dialectical sublimation? If ‘all’ (what’s rationally optimal) is not gained, does that mean that ‘all’ is lost? Of course knot! Let us wrap the strings about this tree of life relentlessly! – Mark
plant thinking (or any non-critter thinking/feeling) isn’t my thing and not a Hegelian,
just my happy phytomorphisis gift for our good host
Sorry DMF, I don’t usually have time to watch lecture links when they’re posted (and the one I’ve watched by Marder was less impressive than his articles). Marder’s online articles that stick to what science is learning about plant sociology are excellent! My complaint comes when he tries to address Hegelians and other Phenomenologists – the philosophical masses who don’t celebrate plant thinking. His book and a few of the articles explore how this plant thinking is the ‘negation’ of anthropocentrism. That may be true; but 2 issues motivated my comment:
1) First, my increasing realization that Negativity is the absolute flaw of Continental philosophy. In particular, I’d just been reading Wendell Kisner’s 1996 “The Category of Life: Mechanistic Reduction, and the Uniqueness of Biology” (online in the 2008 #4.1-2 COSMOS & HISTORY) which explains Hegel’s LOGIC as a premonition of OOP: “The closed up totality whereby the object is self-subsistent through indifference is for that reason externally determined… Therefore, the closed system can only maintain its closure by being open… Thus the determinacy passes from one object to another unimpeded”. I think this sort of LOGIC is naive! I don’t think Marder follows this sort of logic, but his books take pains to inoculate us to it.
2) Also, just as Our Gracious Host made this post, I’d been catching up with AFTER NATURE and “A review of Brassier’s That Which is Not: Philosophy as Entwinement of Truth and Negativity”. So, my comment was partially a reaction to THAT, in addition to Marder.
But, thanks for all the links, and “Happy Phytomorphosis” to us all! Mark
no worries, yeah there are still uses I think for some aspects of negation but Negativity strikes me as wrongheaded as talk of “lack” and such, we are getting into this some over @ http://darkecologies.com/2013/12/26/happy-holidays-and-my-continued-readings/
but ya know I’m a bit humbug on ontology in general so take my reservations for what their worth as I for one wouldn’t miss the end of Philosophy…
Appreciate it for helping out, fantastic info.