Planta Sapiens: Unmasking Plant Intelligence

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In the course of his book, Calvo describes many experiments that reveal plants’ remarkable range, including the way they communicate with others nearby using “chemical talk”, a language encoded in about 1,700 volatile organic compounds. He also shows how, like animals, they can be anaesthetised. In lectures, he places a Venus flytrap under a glass bell jar with a cotton pad soaked in anaesthetic. After an hour the plant no longer responds to touch by closing its traps. Tests show the plant’s electrical activity has stopped. It is effectively asleep, just as a cat would be. He also notes that the process of germination in seeds can be halted under anaesthetic. If plants can be put to sleep, does that imply they also have a waking state? Calvo thinks it does, for he argues that plants are not just “photosynthetic machines” and that it’s quite possible that they have an individual experience of the world: “They may be aware.” Standing before the ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Paco Calvo was reminded of its legendary inscription – the Oracle’s request to Know Thyself – and in that moment had an epiphany; “I realised clearly that to ‘know thyself’, one had to think well beyond oneself, or even one’s species.” Having dedicated these past few years to researching the many ways in which animal senses and sentience shed light on what it means to be human, I agree. However, whereas my zoological training directs me towards the animal kingdom to better understand myself and others, Calvo – a professor of philosophy – looks to far more distant relations, a kingdom apart.

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The ideas we will explore in Planta Sapiens are at odds with most people’s perceptions of plants. They might even make you a little uncomfortable, or force you to wonder what words like “behaving” or “awareness” can possibly mean for a plant, never mind “intelligence.” You are not unusual. It is entirely normal, as an animal, to have reservations about applying to rooted photosynthetic organisms ideas that we normally apply only to mobile, animal-like creatures. Most people are probably more comfortable describing the behaviour of an amoeba than of a vine, or the awareness of a woodlouse than a sunflower. You would probably be perfectly happy thinking about a jay burying acorns as “planning ahead,” while a plant “planning for the future” might make you feel a little uneasy. We will look at the many sources of your discomfort in the next chapter, exploring the numerous zoocentric traps that limit your perception and the long history of animal-focused indoctrination that has shaped your ideas.” Is the potted cactus on your windowsill a cognitive being? When the lettuce in your sandwich was cut from its roots, did it feel pain? Looking deeply into possibilities of entering Jain-hood faiths as well as being a water-arian and/or Breatharian? How easy/difficult can lifestyle be? Realistic? Don’t know, really?)Calvo has a wonderfully infectious enthusiasm for his subject that makes this book, for all its complex science, a joy to read. He challenges us to set aside our “zoocentric” perspective and to change our view of plants radically: from mechanisms akin to robots to complex organisms with a range of behaviours, responding to and anticipating their environments. In doing so, he has written a genuinely mind‑expanding book. Calvo describes more sophisticated examples of plant behaviour; how some plants seem to “remember” previous droughts, for example, conserving water more effectively than plants that have never encountered long dry spells. Or how some behave differently when competing for resources against other species, rather than their own kind.

Scientific American What Is It Like to Be a Plant? - Scientific American

Si uno acepta IIT, entonces hay una buena base para creer en la consciencia vegetal. Sin embargo, IIT sigue siendo controvertida, incluso según los estándares rebeldes del debate sobre la consciencia. Esto no es lo mismo que decir que IIT es el único medio de defender la consciencia vegetal, pero necesitamos alguna base para inferir sensibilidad a partir de lo que sabemos sobre la biología de las plantas. Teorías rivales, tales como las que se conocen colectivamente como “teorías del pensamiento de nivel superior” (HOT, por sus siglas en inglés), por ejemplo, postulan que la consciencia requiere que el sistema genere “representaciones de orden superior”. A su vez, esto se asocia a menudo con formas más complejas de cognición, que no se dan en las plantas. La plausibilidad de la consciencia vegetal depende, así, de consideraciones más amplias y muy debatidas acerca de la naturaleza de la consciencia. (Mi impresión, por lo que valga, es que el término consciencia es profundamente vago y captura varios fenómenos muy diferentes entre sí, o al menos un único fenómeno de gran complejidad; teorías como IIT y HOT pueden ser ambas parcialmente correctas, capturando distintos aspectos de lo que ordinariamente llamamos consciencia). There are many peaks, many ways of solving the same problem or being highly adapted to the environment. To take a classic example, eyes of different kinds have evolved over forty times. Each type of eye is a slightly different solution to the same problem: how to turn light into information about an organism’s surroundings. This metaphor might be more helpful than the image of a tree in helping us to overcome our perceptions of “higher” and “lower” forms of life. The tree depicts branching relationships over time, but it is misleading in combination with our inherent tendency to ascribe values to things. The idea of a mountainous landscape, paradoxically, creates a level playing field, each species faced with its own task, beginning from the same substrate and climbing busily away. Consider the movements of Mimosa plants, for example. A poke from a human finger usually causes the plants' leaves to shrink and fold against the stem. This response takes mere seconds—an excellent defense against herbivores. But after a few minutes in a bell jar suffused with anesthetic fumes, Mimosa becomes unresponsive. The same drugs quiet the gyrations of pea tendrils and the clenching of Venus flytraps. This book leaned much more towards philosophy than science. I typically welcome that; however, Calvo’s main goal to prove plants’ intelligence and sentience felt weak. Many of the given examples didn’t feel relevant to the overall topic (albeit interesting). Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. Create AccountAquellos que vivieron los años 70 pueden tener la mala fortuna de asociar “sensibilidad vegetal” con el libro “The Secret Life of Plants”, una exploración exitosa en lo comercial, pero ampliamente pseudocientífica, de la vida emocional de las plantas, de las que se sugiere que se originaron en una realidad paralela habitada por otros “seres cósmicos” tales como elfos y gnomos. Más recientemente, sin embargo, un área de investigación en rápido desarrollo en la intersección entre la botánica y la ciencia cognitiva ha reclamado gradualmente la credibilidad del estudio de la inteligencia y la conducta de las plantas, con raíces en el trabajo de genios como Charles Darwin y Jagadish Chandra Bose, un pionero menos conocido pero igualmente consumado. En “Planta Sapiens”, Paco Calvo lleva las implicaciones de este trabajo hasta sus límites, invitando a los lectores a explorar un mundo diferente, donde las plantas aprenden, anticipan y quizá incluso tienen experiencias en su modo propio, idiosincrático. An astonishing window into the inner world of plants, and the cutting-edge science in plant intelligence. But merely posing the question makes this book part of a wider movement, beginning with Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (1975) and including Frans de Waal’s pioneering Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (2016) and Peter Godfrey-Smith’s masterly Other Minds (2016), which challenges anthropocentric ideas about intelligence, suggesting it’s not a uniquely human trait.

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I definitely enjoyed this book—it had a lot of information about plants and their history, global warming, and, in general, botany. The writing was user-friendly—not filled with jargon. I could feel Calvo’s enthusiasm and passion for the topic. The second issue is that there is just very little evidence. There is little study directed towards these topics, so small as to feel like a drop in the ocean. This means grand theories are being spun from a small and fragile base. Deeply thought-provoking. Planta Sapiens is a mind-opening meditation about the inner lives of plants. Whether you come away convinced that plants are conscious, or not, this book will change – and enrich – the way you look at the green life all around you" The debate is as much philosophical as scientific, fuelled by the meanings of words. It questions not only whether intelligence and awareness require a brain, but also what intelligence and awareness are. However, more is at stake than mere semantics. The penultimate chapter is incendiary. “Plant Liberation” rebuffs Peter Singer’s seminal book Animal Liberation, taking issue with its exclusion of plants from feeling pain. “Plants show actively avoidant behaviour,’ says Calvo, “and pain should be no less useful in the evolutionary history of rooted organisms than for those who can run away from it.” I endeavour to be ethical, but am not persuaded.Plant life is, above all, decentralized and engaged in reciprocal relationships with other species. And our species has homogenized and destroyed many of these formerly effervescent plant communities, throwing them into crisis. With this erasure, we lose the intelligence—however we choose to speak of it—brought to us by hundreds of millions of years of evolution.