We may be able to adapt to the climate crises in the long run by taking in new understandings about how similar we are to other creatures, and by acceding “dominance” to some natural processes rather than arrogate to ourselves the role of the dominant ones. There will be much change.
Many of the posts in this blog have investigated and discussed who people are — how we function, think, emote, set ourselves apart as thinking individuals, and exercise informed consent. They have discussed writings about the mind and how it works, with occasional forays into whether there is something in us aside from the mind, aside from the electrochemical destination and arbiter of neural pathways, which intends, wills, decides, thinks, and is conscious.
But very recent research into the other inhabitants of this earth question whether some of the kinds of things we can do, can be done by other creatures without a brain or central nervous system. We learn more about how other animals, and insects, and now plants, behave.
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger, along with Planta Sapiens: the New Science of Plant Intelligence, by Paco Calvo, cite books on consciousness among animals1 but assert these possibilities among plants.
Schlanger, much as Calvo, argues that, as we understand or at least perceive more accurately what plants do and don’t do in their natural habitat (not in laboratories), we are forced to recognize that much of it strongly resembles intention and deliberate direction and action. As just one example, there is a rare vine in South America which can attach itself to a plant or tree, which by itself is remarkable, although not uncommon among vines: they sense something which will support them and manage to make their way over to it. How do they sense it? Plants have light receptors which, while we may not want to call them eyes, nonetheless perceive not just the thing but certain qualities about it, such as its ability to support them. (Similarly, shrews and snails perceive their world, but not necessarily as do creatures with eyes.2) Another possibility may be chemical cues or pheromones which are floating in the air, or which somehow interact with the vine’s receptors. Anyway, once wrapped around their target the portion of the vine attached mimics the plant: it changes its appearance, so it seems part of the plant. As the vine extends elsewhere, it will similarly mimic the next target at the same time.
How does it do this? One suggestion is that it has photoreceptors which can read the plant and which somehow lead the vine to change very quickly to match the appearance. But in some cases, the vine is attached to a plant which has a different appearance on the side not in “view”. So how does the vine perceive that part of the plant? Again, chemical signals are perhaps the answer, carrying with them instructions far superior to anything found in Ikea boxes. A third idea is that microbiomes in the target plant move from it to the vine and penetrate it, providing expert instructions about how to mimic the plant. This idea that microbiomes infiltrate various creatures including plants, leads to important questions about whether diverse things are far more similar to one another than we thought, in that they are guided by interchangeable microbiomes. It’s kind of woo-woo, and some of the scientists interviewed for this book are shunned by colleagues because of their research. Nonetheless, botany is becoming more acquainted with the way plants respond to various stimuli, seek out others, and change their very essence in a short period of time. This is called plasticity, as opposed to evolution, which takes more time.
Moreover, once a plant has made these adaptations, it can pass on the traits and abilities to its progeny.
Plants can perceive their “family,” i.e., the plants which result from their seeds. So plants which grow in patches with their own, may grow without competing, not interfering with others’ leaves’ exposure to sunlight, upon which they all depend for energy to thrive. But if they grow in patches with non-family, they may overshadow others’ leaves and grow taller and get more sunlight. If farmers can keep families together, they will have significantly more abundant harvests in total quantity, rather than great height.
How do the plants recognise their families? Presumably through pheromones and information passed among them through roots and fungus underground. How do they sense whether their positions relative to the others are competitive or not? By sensing the amount of light passing through leaves above their own, and reflected light from below their own leaves –photoreceptors again, if not what we would call eyes. Of course, they do all this without thinking, although their structures pass along nutrition as well as electric signals much as neural networks do in animals. We just can’t identify a central processor or mind or centre of thought and intention. They sense much around them, change their appearance, change their abilities, and pass on these abilities to offspring. They also plan, e.g., they reorient their surfaces between sunset and sunrise, to be ready to receive direct light in the morning. So they act as if they remember where they must be. They can also “count,” keeping track of how many consecutive days have passed with warm enough temperatures for them to shirk off winter. Even seeds can do this, apparently. Does this make them sentient, intelligent, or what?
Of course if we grant any of these descriptions to them, as we are only recently begrudgingly doing with some animals and then a few more and a few more, what then are the differences between them and us? Should we grant legal personhood to them along with rights?
This is already happening with non-sentient things like water ways3. Water Always Wins: Thriving in an Age of Drought and Deluge, by Erica Gies, examines what we are learning about how we have obstructed water’s natural ways to our own disadvantage; how we must change by eliminating some dams and reservoirs, and by locating hyporheic zones, the channels beneath the bottom of rivers where water can mix with soil and bacteria, clarify, and move further down and surface in other areas; and by locating paleo-rivers, ancient glacier-dug channels deep within the earth which, if provided water by a deluge at one point, can transport it vast distances, moving water from areas of ¸bounty to areas of drought. We need to uncover urban buried waterways, encourage beavers to construct more bogs and wetlands, and generally get used to, and respect, how water naturally behaves, to adapt to deluges and droughts. This book is replete with examples from our own time and from ancient times, in many locations, about how to learn from, and about, water.
In these times of extreme weather disasters – floods and droughts – and rapidly depleting species of animals and plant life all around the planet, we need to better understand and cooperate with what used to be the dominant natural processes of life, and fit in rather than master them.
Climate change is coming upon us much, much faster than predicted.3 Knowing these things will not avoid the terrible circumstances coming at us now and in the immediate future, but does offer us a way forward to eventually get with the program, so to speak.
These books, along with Rivers of Power: How a Natural Force Raised Kingdoms, Destroyed Civilizations, and Shapes Our World, by Laurence C. Smith (reviewed earlier,5) and much current scientific literature, pile examples upon examples by which we must be convinced and from which we must learn to act, for the sakes of our grandchildren and those after them. Perhaps the new ways in which we learn to understand our place in life, together with a better system of values learned during COVID (which I identified in earlier blogs6 ) will carry later generations of humans and all other life into the next century in a way beneficial to all.
But we must pay attention, change our ways and our self-understandings, and learn.
1Wild Rituals: Ten Lessons Animals Can Teach Us About Connection, Community, and Ourselves, Caitlin O’Connell
The Bird Way: a New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think, Jennifer Ackerman
Metazoa, Animal Life and the Birth of the Mind, Peter Godfrey-Smith
Sentient: How Animals Illuminate the Wonder of Our Human Senses, Jackie Higgins
Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: the Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change, Thor Hanson
The Hidden Life of Dogs, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas
Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace, Carl Safina
Other Minds: the Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, Peter Godfrey-Smith.
2The Forest Unseen: a Year’s Watch in Nature, David George Haskell
3This Canadian river is now legally a person. It’s not the only one. (nationalgeographic.com)
4https://www.ted.com/talks/johan_rockstrom_the_tipping_points_of_climate_change_and_where_we_stand
5Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear: In the Beginning – Upon reconsidering…
Upon reconsidering... 