Planta Sapiens: De ontdekking van plantintelligentie

by Paco Calvo

Planta Sapiens neemt ons mee in een nieuw wetenschapsgebied: plantenneurobiologie. Planten beschikken over cellen die elektrische signalen versturen en ontvangen. Deze cellen fungeren feitelijk als neuronen en stellen planten in staat om complexe problemen op te lossen.

Zijn planten dan ook bewust? Jazeker. Hebben ze herinneringen? Jazeker! Ze hebben een eigen vorm van intelligentie, die tot nu toe onderbelicht is gebleven. Planten kunnen vooruitplannen, leren, familieleden herkennen, risico’s inschatten en beslissingen nemen. Ze kunnen zelfs in slaap worden gebracht.

Plantenonderzoeker en filosoof Paco Calvo vertelt in dit boek over zijn baanbrekende onderzoek naar plantbewustzijn. Hij vertelt over opmerkelijke proeven waarbij planten al even opmerkelijk gedrag vertonen.

Paco Calvo is cognitiewetenschapper en filosoof. Hij is hoogleraar aan de Universiteit van Murcia in Spanje waar hij leidinggeeft aan het Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINT Lab), dat zich richt op de studie van cognitie bij planten. Uniek aan zijn onderzoek is dat hij inzichten uit de biologie, filosofie en cognitieve wetenschap combineert.

Vertaald door Rutger H. Cornets de Groot. Met illustraties van Natalie Lawrence

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Nature, Biology, Plants, Environment, Natural History

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2022

About the author

Paco Calvo is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINTLab) in the University of Murcia, Spain, where his research is primarily in exploring and experimenting with the possibility of plant intelligence. In his research atMINTLab, he studies the ecological basis of plant intelligence by conducting experimental studies at the intersection of plant neurobiology and ecological psychology. He has given many talks on the topic of plant intelligence to academic and non-academic audiences around the world during the last decade.

Reviews

[Jenna Leone · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate this author's enthusiasm for studying the many interesting behaviors of plants, but unfortunately, this book wasn't written very well. It's a strange mix of personal anecdotes that are only tangentially related to the main topics, lengthy jokes that fall flat (they really aren't funny at all), and overly technical descriptions that are difficult for laypeople to understand.

The structure of the book also strikes me as very...unfocused. It seems to jump around randomly from point to point, round back on the same topic multiple times, describe the same idea numerous times in slightly different ways, etc. I felt like I was retreading the same ground chapter after chapter without ever quite reaching any real conclusions.

In short, this was a letdown for me. I really did want to learn about complex plant behaviors and the idea of plant intelligence, but this book didn't work for me.

Disclaimer: I received an eARC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Thijs · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a plant scientist myself, I was super excited to start this book. I've long been intrigued by cognition in other species and Planta Sapiens seemed to offer insights into one of my favorite branches of the tree of life! So I got this at the end of last year and was very excited about it.

And its been a weird feeling, but the ups and downs of this book kinda cancel out. The author presents some really interesting ideas about plant cognition, the philosophy behind it, and the implications it has for technology and society. He attempts to break free from traditional views of science and also points out several developments in the scientific world that frankly go deeper than just plant sciences.

However, the lows were very low. Connecting only loosely connected ideas from animal cognition and AI to plant sciences seems to be some of the strongest arguments the author musters for the cause of the subjective experience for plants. He focuses on the outward projection of plants and their macro behaviour, without so much considering the minute changes in growth and development in plants. He tends towards leaning on only the movement of vines, rather than the roots which he himself has indicated to be the more intelligent part of the plant.

This also bridges nicely in what others have said too, where the book seems to jump from topic to topic, without regard for what has been said in the previous chapters, or little where it is present. Some ideas are mentioned and never really explored, others are posited without much explanation or evidence. Some chapters seem wholly out of place, disrupting the narrative in strange ways. And lastly, my greatest gripe with the book: the author warns against anthrophomorphizing plants. How projecting human values may lead to wrongful conclusions in science. But subsequently, he ignores every bit of plant science that has been done on the molecular mechanisms of plant life. Instead of harnessing the wealth of information that is known about plants (plants can discern up from down, detect each other, tell infection from beneficial microbe) and discards it wholly! He even goes so far as to ascribe a new function to known phytohormones, with no evidence whatsoever.

So what I hoped to be a beautiful integrative piece of literature about the marvelous systems that plants have evolved and how those align to form cognition, essentially was a philosophy book with some interesting ideas. Therefore, 2.5 stars

[Emma Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

A philosophical thought experiment more than a hard science book. There are some interesting ideas in here, but the book is too scattered to really engage with them.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

** I received an advanced copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book is scheduled to be published on March 14, 2023 in the US. **

This was an interesting read, though a little more on the soft-science side. I enjoyed reading about the various tests that MINT lab has done in its efforts to prove plant intelligence and sentience and the subsequent challenge to ethics that would result. While it was interesting to see connections to their current studies to some other studies done in the past, I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced of their findings. The authors are leaning into multiple subjects that spur their interest/testing (philosophy, biology, psychology, physiology - to name a few) and such a wide variation of methodologies feels… conflicted. It does spur interesting thoughts however, so A++ for lighting up curiosity. Show me more science, more proof, more studies tested in different labs that support these fascinating leaps and I'd happily read them. As it stands, I like my science with more hard facts, so I was a little disappointed because the book didn’t support my expectations.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an intriguing book! I absolutely loved it. As a gardener, it’s always been obvious to me that plants have feelings. The way that hydrangeas perk up after being watered or the way zinnia leaves fold upward to shield their wound after being cut are obvious signs these species have feelings.

Consciousness, on the other hand, and the ability to think, are totally new, but not too far-fetched, concepts to me. The author explained it best with the comparison of the octopus. Octopuses can move their tentacles separately from each other, and the movement is controlled not by the brain itself but by each individual tentacle. It’s nearly impossible for humans to imagine living this way, and it’s similarly difficult for humans to imagine what it must be like to live as a plant. However, just because we do not interact with our environments in a certain manner doesn’t mean that other species do not.

The author gives some very credible evidence for plant consciousness and also addresses his critics’ viewpoints and their attempts to discredit him. Plants can be put to sleep. Mind BLOWN! If that’s not enough to get you interested in the possibility of plant consciousness, I don’t know what is. In addition to that fact, they also make choices, about which soil to send their roots to, which colored poles to grow up. Their children, or seedlings, also make choices and assumptions based on their parents’ experiences. I’ve heard plants can grow better in reaction to someone talking or singing to them. I’ve always thought that concept was a bit silly, but now it’s not that inconceivable.

The author uses all of this evidence to purport that plants need the same protection and ethical treatment as animals. In this regard, I don’t think he spent enough time explaining why or how. Sure, I think being lazy and not watering your houseplants until they die is unethical, but how would a farmer treat his crops differently when harvesting? Should humans avoid eating plants for the sake of their ability to feel and be harmed? And then what would we eat if not animals either? Or maybe the author is simply trying to make a point that self righteous vegans really have no moral ground to stand on as we are all dominating and harming our food sources regardless of our dietary habits.

The author leans heavily on Darwin’s research and seems to even worship him a bit. Although I don’t agree with all of Darwin’s theories, I appreciate that he made an enormous contribution to science and left behind so much research and knowledge for others to build on. As far as what I do or do not believe though, I think the thing I appreciate most about the author is his questioning of the “traditional scientist” and their inability to question widely-accepted theories or consider other possibilities. We know the Earth is not flat but those who claimed it was round were laughed at and called mad by the majority who believed that widely-accepted theory of that era. Similarly, perhaps scientists will look back on this book 200 years from now on and call the author the father of the study of plant consciousness. It’s so funny that scientists, who should be the most open-minded, unbiased people in the world, will often cling to previous theories hailed as truth by the majority until later being proven wrong by that one “crazy” person who dared to look at it differently and keep searching.

Scientist or not, I think it’s important for everyone to consider all possibilities, and this book is an excellent place to start if you want to challenge your own long-held beliefs.

Thank you, NetGalley and W. W. Norton and Company for the ARC!

[Olivia · Rating 5 out of 5]

"An astonishing window into the inner world of plants, and the cutting-edge science in plant intelligence". A very accurate way to describe this thought provoking book. I greatly appreciate any book based on evidence based science, but Calvo adds in the passion behind why scientists and researchers study what they do, making me appreciate this book even more. With an undergraduate degree in psychology, I am well aware of humans (and animals) thought processes, levels of consciousness, and adaptivity to an ever changing world. This book changed my view of plants and how they can have just as much power of thought as us. I genuinely enjoyed reading this book; it was an easy to read novel on a fascinating topic!

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has been fussing over a small hoard of plants I have long intuited that plants do more than just react to their environment that there is more to them than meet the eye so it was really interesting to read Calvo's arguments for plants having a form of sentience. It was also a very charming and engaging read, Calvo is really passionate about his topic and it shows in the best possible way. If you're looking for an easy nonfiction read that won't drown you in jargon Planta Sapiens would be a good pick.

[Casey Dorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of Thomas Nagel’s 1974 paper “What is it like to be a bat?” is often appropriated when a philosopher or scientist wants to muse about the possibility of some creature other than a human being conscious—and self-conscious. Nagel’s point was that consciousness is subjective and unable to be reduced to its physical components, be they a brain or a set of connections in an artificial neural network. Consciousness feels like something. You and I know what it’s like to be us. Probably your dog does too, and also your cat, your goldfish, your parakeet, a tiger stalking its prey in the jungle, a mouse hiding from a prowling cat. There are creatures, however, who are very different from us—bats, in fact, who use echo location rather than sight to navigate, or octopuses whose brains are distributed in their tentacles as well as their heads—and they complicate our usual attempt to understand a member of a species based on an assumption that they think more or less like we do. Even within the animal kingdom, the question arises as to how far down the phylogenetic scale we can go and still impute human-like motives and experiences to creatures such as flatworms, mosquitoes, polyps, bacteria, paramecia, amoeba.

Our tendency to attribute some sort of consciousness to other animals is mostly related to how similar they seem to us. A robot arm doesn’t seem to be aware of itself, but if we construct a human-like robot, an android, with a face and facial expressions and have it carry out human-like actions, it becomes easier to think that it may have an inner experience of being itself. This is why we can identify with Data, the android from Star Trek the Next Generation or Ava in the film Ex Machina. Some scientists and philosophers have not let the lack of similarity to ourselves hinder their exploration of the idea that both intelligence and consciousness exist in living entities far different from ourselves. In his book, The First Minds, psychologist Arthur Reber has suggested that even single cell prokaryotes may be aware of both their surroundings and themselves (2018). Prokaryotes preceded eukaryotes and if sentience were present in prokaryotes, it ought then to be present in both animals and plants, both of which are eukaryotic. In his book, Planta Sapiens, Paco Calvo, professor of the philosophy of science and principal investigator at the Universidad de Murcia’s Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINTLab) in Spain, and science writer, Natalie Lawrence, have taken this suggestion seriously and written a provocative account of why Calvo thinks plants are not only intelligent, but also conscious.

Calvo’s thesis is primarily inductive, in that he examines plant movement in vines and root growth, tropisms, electrical conduction, and “defensive” actions such as the closing of leaves and tries to imagine the cognitive “machinery” required to carry out such “behaviors.” His evidence is impressive and sometimes startling. Plants are known to orient toward the sun (you can see this in your own garden), and some plants, such as sunflowers, will orient toward the sun and follow it as it moves across the sky. At night, they re-orient themselves to anticipate the next day’s rising sun. Dig them up and turn them 180 degrees, and within a few days, they will re-orient their movements to match the path of the sun. By doing so, they maximize both photosynthesis and the likelihood of visitation by pollinating insects. Plants will also alter their growth patterns, in terms of their roots and their stems, trunks or leaves, depending on the plants surrounding them, all to the end of maximizing access to resources such as sunlight and nutrients. They can even affect and be affected by the growing conditions of their neighbors, so that they adopt some of each other’s growing patterns. Their roots can alter their direction of growth by turning horizontal or even upward to avoid a barrier, or to seek moisture.

Plants can learn, as demonstrated by the habituation and discrimination learning of leaf-closing in Mimosa pudica, described by both Calvo and Stefano Mancuso in his book The Revolutionary Genius of Plants (2018), which I recently reviewed (Dorman, 2023). Both Mancuso and Calvo spend a lot of time describing the sensitivity of plants to the same anesthetic chemicals that render animals’ unconscious. Automatic reactions such as leaf-closing in Mimosa pudica or the closing of a Venus Flytrap on an intruding insect are slowed, then stopped, with application of a substance such as chloroform. Not only that, but the electrical impulses that accompany a movement such as the snapping shut of the Flytrap, are muted or absent under anesthesia, similar to interfering with the electrical impulses in an animals’ brains, which are a part of Christof Koch’s indication of consciousness in humans and other animals (Koch, 2015). Not only that, but plants can also respond with chemicals such as dopamine to incidents of damage or destruction, as though they were attempting to relieve pain (which Calvo thinks should lead us to consider the ethical consequences of our actions toward plants).

The above are just a few of the remarkable findings reported by Calvo in his book. Underlying his hypothesis of plant cognition is the idea that, like humans and other animals, plants’ “phytonervous systems” as Calvo provocatively refers to them, contain models of the plant’s expected environment and base the plant’s actions on sampling the environment and adjusting itself to adapt to the actual environment in order to bring the predicted and the actual conditions as close together as possible. Calvo believes that, similar to animals’ nervous systems, the plant phytonervous system is based on electrical signals being passed from one location to another.

Even if there are similarities between the workings of plants’ and animals’ “nervous systems” (the quotation marks are to acknowledge the fact that plants don’t actually have neurons), Calvo is cautious about over-anthropomorphizing “what it is like to be a plant.” Plants are even less like us than either bats or octopuses. We can try to understand what the plant feels like “from the inside,” but it is doubtful that we will be very successful. But is the whole idea that there is something that it is to feel like a plant even warranted? I have to admit that I came away from reading Planta Sapiens impressed, but not convinced. To his credit, Calvo is a philosopher, but he thinks like a scientist. He expresses most of his conclusions tentatively, and labels them as speculations, not facts. Because of this, I don’t reject his conclusions outright, so much as I doubt them, but, in most cases, I allow that they are possibilities.

Plants display what may be termed “intelligent” behavior, but it is not clear that intelligent behavior requires a conscious agent to produce it. Artificial intelligences also produce intelligent behavior, and the author of Planta Sapiens, as well as other authors such as Arthur Reber, reject the idea that AIs are, or probably ever will be, conscious. Calvo makes a distinction between what he calls “adaptive responses” and those that require cognition. Some of those mentioned above, such as orienting toward the sun, are said to require no cognition on the part of the plant. But the distinction between those responses that require cognition and those that don’t is a fuzzy one. According to Calvo, adaptations are stereotyped, genetically encoded, and reactive, always producing the same response to a stimulus and not subject to modification by different circumstances, however even some of the most prosaic plant behaviors, such as extending roots toward more moist soil can be altered by different conditions. The climbing behaviors of plant tendrils can be described as exploratory searches for suitable objects around which to entwine themselves. Different plants have preferences for the size and color of the objects their tendrils choose as targets. If their target is moved, the tendrils will begin searching and, if possible, locate its new whereabouts and begin climbing anew. Although some plants use circular or ellipsoid motion of the tendrils in their searches, sometimes a plant that has already placed tendrils around a support will cut short a different tendril’s search and go straight to the target instead of using a more circuitous, exploratory route, as though it has learned from his predecessors. This appears to be flexible learning and decision making at work. But what is going on inside the plant that directs such behavior?

When a plant looks as if it’s making a plan based on an internal map, and seems to be making decisions to alter in plan in the face of obstacles, does this require a directing mind to guide the behavior? I am reminded of Peter Robin Heisinger’s statement, “We now have overwhelming evidence that there is no such thing as irreducible complexity in evolved biological structures. Rather, we are dealing with our own brain’s irreducibly failed intuition” (Heisinger, 2021). It seems to me that Paco Calvo is prone to assuming that complicated plant behaviors must require a mind to direct them, because such complicated actions could not have been programmed into the plant via its genes. But is that true?

Putting together an animal’s physical structure is complicated. The cells that make up the growing body are sensitive to nutrients, toxins, sights and sounds and a variety of early experiences. One of the most complicated processes in growing a human body is assembling a working brain from the growth of billions of individual neurons. No two brains are alike, because as neurons grow, they interact with the idiosyncrasies of the experiences of the organism that houses them. Their growth is determined by genes, but the genes produce a modifiable plan, and the elements that can modify it affect the selection of the genes that control the neuron’s growth, so that it looks as if it has a mind. A neuron doesn’t have a mind and is not, by itself conscious. It grows by following an algorithm that allows it to modify its growth pattern according to the circumstances of its owner’s experiences (Heisinger, 2021). Probably, roots follow similar genetically based algorithms and the tendrils of vines do also. Those algorithms were chosen because they produced a plant that was likely to survive in a certain environment. The plant itself doesn’t need to know what it’s doing to survive. Its components just need to follow a plan that was shaped by evolution.

I’m a skeptic and I have biases. In my opinion, the author of Planta Sapiens has leapt into the gap formed by our lack of knowledge of how and why plants do what they do and inserted an assumption that would fit a cognitive being. I don’t think that’s merited, although that doesn’t mean it isn’t correct. My bias is to limit minds and consciousness to more complicated, brain-possessing creatures. But I may be anthropomorphizing, because when I think of a mind, I think of a human mind, and, as Calvo reminds us, there’s no reason to think that, if a plant had a mind, it would resemble a human one in any way we can think of. Arthur Reber makes a strong argument for even single-cell creatures being aware of what impinges on them from their environment, that is, having something akin to sensations. If he’s right, then perhaps even plants are aware of some parts of their environment and can sense when it impinges upon them. Depending on what we mean by “sense,” that could mean they are conscious. I don’t think so, but Calvo has at least opened my mind to the idea.

References

Dorman, C. (2023). Genius in Your Garden. A Review of Stefano Mancuso’s “The Revolutionary Genius of Plants.” https://caseydorman.com/the-genius-in...

Heisinger, P.R. (2021). The Self-Assembling Brain: How Neural Networks Grow Smarter. Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press.

Koch, C. (2015). The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness is Widespread but Can’t be Computed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mancuso, S. (2018). The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior. New York: Atria Books.

Reber, A.S. (2018). The First Minds: Caterpillars, Karyotes and Consciousness. London: Oxford University Press.

[Liel · Rating 4 out of 5]

some of the stuff he says is interesting but the majority is bullshit. also i have no idea how you can argue that were destroying the environment and then a page before talk about how youre using ur knowledge of plants to help ai develop. he also claims that people that dont eat meat bc of ethical reasons never think abt if eating plants is also unethical bc were sort of killing them. huh? like literally what else is there to eat bestue

[charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting theories and info! A little disorganized though and not as backed by proof as I would want. I wish the author waited a little longer to have more evidence under his belt, a lot of the ideology comes off very hypothetical at times- making it a good thought piece.

[Tilly · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 Stars

I am sad to say that this book just wasn't for me. I am a huge nature lover of both animals and plants and so love to read nature books but unfortunately I found this book to be too dense and without enough interesting facts to keep me really involved.

There is no doubt that the author knows a lot about plants and even split the book up well into different interesting sections. For me though, I found the actual content to be very dry and more like a scientific journal that a nature book that will appeal to the masses. I have read many books about trees and funghi that have really captured my imagination to the point where I struggled to put them down but sadly this was quite the opposite as I sometimes had to force myself to continue.
It is a shame because there were some interesting stories and facts in here but I had to really search for them. The writing also really lacks any personality. I find the best nature books have interesting, fun anecdotes that break up the denser material but this was missing here.

Unfortunately this wasn't for me and I wouldn't recommend it as I feel there are much better plant/tree books to be read.

Please note that I was gifted this book in exchange for an honest review.

[J. Muro · Rating 5 out of 5]

“So we will end PLANTA SAPIENS with what is probably the most difficult question to tackle. Were plants to be given the status of “sentient,” would this give them rights that might encumber our exploitation of them? If we allowed them the status of sentient, ethical entities, might we not be able to improve plant’ welfare with a little consideration? And shouldn’t we?”

*SOURCE: PLANTA SAPIENS, Paco Calvo & Natalie Lawrence

(Looking deeply into possibilities of entering Jain-hood faiths as well as being a water-arian and/or Breatharian? How easy/difficult can this lifestyle be? Realistic? Don’t know, really?)

Entertaining and highly informative read in many chapters as well as moments of very dry science-speak that was heavy on the ways we humans view plants, or don’t at all. Now am curious of Sir J.C. Bose, saint to plants.

[Kinga · Rating 2 out of 5]

You’ll judge me but I have to say it: the reason I picked up this book is because of its gorgeous cover. I love everything about it.

What’s inside though, is a different story.

Since COVID I became obsessed with houseplants just like a couple million others who picked this up as a new hobby and found surprising joy in it. I never thought how expensive this hobby could be, with some plants I see selling for a few months of my salary. My favourite ones are still the vining plants that just cannot stop growing, it feels so rewarding caring for them.

And this is the mindset I started reading this book with: I wanted to learn more about the plants around my apartment (because I live in the middle of the capital city with barely any plants outside my place). What I found instead was something different, and even after finishing the epilogue I still don’t know what to think of the ideas that were presented.

The topic of plants connected the chapters together, but there were so many rumblings on different scientific projects that I found myself thinking quite a few times “what is the point of this part?”.

To be fair this might be an issue with me, I read science books extremely rarely, maybe I’m just not used to them.

[Pavlogreen]

Sin duda uno de los libros más inspiradores, ricos en matices y contenidos y bonitos que he leído este año. No solo es un excelente compendio de las investigaciones recientes en torno a la cognición y la neurobiología vegetal, sino una historia de amor muy personal entre su autor y el reino Plantae. Además, Paco Calvo no solo se queda en la dimensión teórica del asunto, sino que esboza lo que podría ser una ética vegetal y reflexiona sobre el papel que las plantas pueden y deben tener en la actual crisis ecosocial. Está escrito en un lenguaje claro y poco técnico, lo que lo hace comprensible, pero al mismo tiempo aporta una gran cantidad de bibliografía más específica para quien tenga interés en la cuestión. Todo esto hace de Planta sapiens una obra necesaria y muy bella.

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Both scientific and poetic, this really just ignited my imagination. I didn’t expect it to draw so heavily on philosophical structures, but was delighted, since the earliest science was considered philosophy. I think that’s part of his point. Sometimes we need to reach a bit beyond to understand fundamentals with fresh eyes. My favorite thing I learned was that maybe fruit trees cultivated us as much as we cultivated them.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

This was such an incredibly interesting book about the intelligence of plants. Not only does it talk about the science currently being employed to study plants and understand them better, but it discusses the implications of what it could mean for humanity and its future should we determine that in fact, plants are intelligent.

For those even remotely interested, I highly recommend this book. Also the audio was great.

[Alexa Duchesneau · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a philosophy book, not an ecology book. I went to a talk by Calvo last week, in which he argued that philosophy departments are essentially the only departments that would allow such lines of research (re plant intelligence), as his research would be rejected by the larger scientific community. This is his argument for why he’s in a philosophy department, not an ecology or biology department. But I think that the reality is simply that Calvo is a philosopher, not a scientist!

The entire premise of his book is to make an argument about sentience in other living beings, and he uses plants as a model for his argument. This is incredibly ironic, because he thinks his central argument is centered on plants, themselves. He goes on long tangents to make points about “plant intelligence”, but they read as him showing off his niche knowledge and critical thinking abilities (which he clearly values above all else). I think he wrote this book to show what a deep thinker he is, and he would scoff at this comment and try to form an argument against it, because he actually does not accept alternative opinions, though he claims this to be a central tenant that he holds. Another dog book for 2025.

To leave off on some positives: one idea that resonated is his proposal to define structures by function, rather than by structure. Though, this would not be useful to address taxonomic and evolutionary history questions.

I also enjoyed learning about circumnutation, especially as related to bean growth. And, there were some interesting factoids, though generally unrelated to plants (like about missions on Mars and Darwin’s preferences.)

[Klau · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ya decía Parménides que el hombre es la medida de todas las cosas, bien, este ensayo busca poner esto mismo de relieve. Tendemos a evaluar a los demás seres vivos y a nuestro entorno en función de nuestras propias habilidades y características sin pararnos a pensar que, quizá, y solo quizá, cada ser vivo posee una experiencia subjetiva del mundo. Es injusto evaluar a un pez por su capacidad de subir a un árbol, dice la frase, pues también es absurdo evaluar la inteligencia de una planta atendiendo a la inteligencia neuronal.
Hay muchos aspectos de la vida de las plantas, tales como su conducta, que siempre hemos visto desde nuestro propio prisma, considerando que estos seres vivos ni sienten, ni padecen. Pero a estas alturas deberíamos darle una vuelta. Si podemos dormir a una planta con anestesia, y observamos cómo su conducta cambia, si podemos medir que la conducta de estas prevee a futuro y toma decisiones siguiendo riesgo/beneficio ¿cómo podríamos decir que no son inteligentes? ¿cómo podríamos decir que no sienten si generan sustancias químicas para paliar el dolor cuando las arrancamos o les cortamos partes del cuerpo?
Pensar en la inteligencia de las plantas parece una locura desde nuestro punto de vista, pero tanto si te sientes inclinado a creerlo como si no, Planta sapiens tiene muchas cosas nuevas que aportar a tu visión del mundo y las decisiones que tomas en tu día a día al relacionarte con el entorno.

[Socrate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Planta Sapiens: noua știință a inteligenței plantelor prezintă o introducere în lumea complexă și fascinantă a plantelor și a modului în care acestea interactionează cu mediul înconjurător. Paco Calvo și Natalie Lawrence ne arată cum plantele au dezvoltat strategii ingenioase pentru a supraviețui și pentru a se reproduce, inclusiv prin comunicarea cu alte plante, animale și chiar prin influențarea comportamentului uman. De asemenea, autorii abordează chestiuni controversate, cum ar fi posibila conștiință a plantelor și modul în care acestea au influențat evoluția omenirii. Capitoul oferă o privire de ansamblu asupra cercetărilor recente care au dus la o înțelegere mai profundă a lumii plantelor și a rolului lor în lumea noastră.
Plantele sunt mai inteligente decât se crede de obicei. Autorii explică că, deși plantele nu au sisteme nervoase sau creier, ele sunt capabile să comunice, să învețe, să memoreze și să ia decizii. Ei prezintă cercetări care arată că plantele pot simți durere, au o preferință pentru anumite muzici și chiar pot avea emoții. De asemenea, se discută despre modul în care plantele interacționează cu alte organisme, cum ar fi insectele sau alte plante, și cum acestea pot influența mediul înconjurător. Autorii subliniază importanța de a recunoaște inteligența plantelor și de a include aceasta în modul în care ne raportăm la ele.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

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.

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).

I would recommend this only to people who feel strongly about the environment. With that said, I think most people will find this on the more boring side and will find it hard to keep their attention.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

I remember learning one day in a science class that the normal way we think about science is wrong. Basically, you don't start with a hypothesis and then seek evidence to confirm your hypothesis. This is not only a cliched approach to scientific inquiry, but it reeks of the political partisanship that has rotted our critical thinking skills. Rather, you need to start by exploring in as open-minded a fashion as possible, then deduce your conclusions from what you find. Paco Calvo is solidly in the first camp, defending a yet-unproven dogma of plant intelligence just as vociferously as his detractors attack it. Though he admits his dogmatism throughout, he does have a limited point: we shouldn't let language limit our inquiry too much. It often does in helpful ways, but it is worth considering how radically different life forms like plants may store knowledge and communicate. Okay, fair enough. But don't call it intelligence when it lacks all prerequisites for what we would call intelligence, and don't get mad when people point out that definitions still matter. They do. Just make up a new word like the rest of us.

Over the course of this audiobook, I was staring out the window of a car on a road trip. I watched the plants and saw them transform before me. Though often mired in platitudes, bad humor, and generally speaking down to his audience, Calvo's cumulative effort can be felt: plants exist in the world in a radically different way to us "fast moving" animals. For example, if we start going the wrong direction, we can just backtrack and go the right way. With plants, however, growth is their version of movement. I often think about how we as humans are able to move in three dimensions but are caught in the stream of the fourth, unwillingly moving along to the march of time. Plants go even further, being largely caught in the three dimensions we're used to traversing, in addition to the fourth. Thus their physical movement is one from generation to generation, rather than minute to minute. They seem to be playing a much longer game than us, hence our need to take timelapse videos of them over the course of days and speed it up so we can see what they're doing. There is something meditative and wise about the rootedness of plants, so it's no surprise that they feature widely in biblical stories and parables. Interestingly, plants may end up being just the life forms we need to investigate in this exponentially fast-paced world.

Calvo's other major insight is the theory that plants are actually ass-upward: in other words, their "head" is in the ground (i.e. their roots, which act like arms in how they reach and mouths in how they communicate), while their "butt" sticks up into the air (their genitals especially, what with flowers and all that dubachery). When picturing this, One must almost flip the way you look, so that the dirt becomes their sky (the three dimensions they can travel in), while the sky becomes their limit (quite literally; they can keep growing up, but they must move down below before they can move up above). Imagining this results in some more empathy for plants but also a healthy dose of the uncanny, as these things seem much stranger to me now.

As for Calvo's central thesis which I touched on above, it's not only unproven but unfalsifiable. He makes a cop-out statement at one point that "if biology can do without a definition of 'life,' we can do without a definition of intelligence." The problem with this false equivalency is that biologists aren't arguing about whether pumas or corn or moss are alive; they all agree. They disagree on other sub-questions. By contrast, most scientists would disagree right off the bat that plants can have intelligence. Though it may seem tautological, it's inevitable: in order for it to be called intelligence, it must be recognizable as intelligence. Otherwise you need another word. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, since this is how language works. However, Calvo is so hell-bent on proving his hypothesis that he won't allow anyone to get in his way. He believes he's a maverick of Darwin's magnitude (!), and yes, he used the word "maverick," going out of his way to explain the meaning of the word to us readers like we're children. Speaking of Darwin, this guy has a serious hero worship problem, and needs to give it a rest.

The book ended in the stupidest place imaginable, arguing for ignorance (!), which is quite amusing coming from a scientist. Calvo made another botched false-equivalency at this point, claiming that beginners mind is always better than having a bunch of useless categories rattling around your brain. So, in other words, don't learn stuff, just believe what he says! Sounds like he has a calling as a cult leader. Unfortunately, he's not nearly charismatic enough, nor do his syllogisms hold any water. What we need are not people who don't have categories already in their head (thus fetishizing the blank slate hypothesis), but rather people who are bold enough to cross boundaries (cross-pollinate, even!) and explore ideas in a rhizomatic fashion. This is already the direction that the discourse is moving, at least in the humanities, so I don't find Calvo's call to ignorance especially attractive. However, I might call you to ignorance of this book if you haven't already read it, because it's not worth reading.

[Eli · Rating 1 out of 5]

Knihou jsem neuvěřitelně zklamaná. Rozhodně se jedná o zajímavé a přehlížené téma, ale zpracování bylo za mě natolik špatně zvolené, že téma zcela poškodilo. Spíše je to slepenec osobních mini příběhů, obviňování ostatních ze zoocentrismu a blouznění o Darwinovi. Nemluvě o konstantním opakováním těch stejných myšlenek. Obviňování ze zoocentrismu, když sám autor ve většině knihy mluvil o zvířatech a svůj výzkum dokládal na pár opakujících se rostlinách, rozhodně netvoří prvek, který by čtenáře u knihy udržel. A jeho posedlost Darwinem, i když se samozřejmě jedná o přední osobnost vědy, a tedy pochopitelný idol, jeho zmínky a chvála mi začala lézt krkem již při třetí zmínce. Nakonec odcházím s tím, že jsem u knihy usínala častěji, než u kterékoli školní učebnice.

[Maria MacCormack · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot of interesting information in this book, I just felt it was too all over the place and it was kind if distracting. The author makes points that I found fascinating but also it felt as if he trailed off in thought a lot, which didn't capture me the way that some of other science books have while also maintaining a strong voice. I'm glad that I read it, but it did not blow me away.

[Adam Stegman · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really hoping for more information about what’s been found, but I think the point of this book is that there hasn’t been enough study in this field. So what I got instead was a defense of the idea of plant intelligence, an exhortation to study it. I bought the book, so no need to defend the idea at such length. What studies were cited were interesting though! Just sparsely populated.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

“We are only one small part of a kaleidoscopic variety of ways of being alive.”

“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.”

The book opens with a demonstration that could be perceived as magic, and interweaves personal stories with science with philosophy, and challenges all we think we know about plants. I talk to my houseplants and sometimes I say hi telepathically in the forest, but I don’t really know and don’t have to know if it really is perceived. I remember the experiments on snowflakes, when a scientist exposed ice crystals to harsh and soft music and photographed the results, kind of a pseudo science, but I can live in mystery and think it would be nice to think so; and maybe things will be proven later either way. I can live in contradiction. This book is a great introduction to the idea that plants are way more sentient, thinking, emotive than we ever believed. I love books and ideas where we question things we know, and while it may not change everyone’s mind, it is an interesting read.

[In an experiment using anesthesia on plants,] there is similarity with animals and it is surprising, seeing as the lineages that produced animals and plants diverged over one and a half billion years ago. We are in entirely different kingdoms, and yet can be “knocked out” by the same drugs. To put this into context, even bacteria can be anaesthetised. These organisms are not even in the same domain as us, the highest level of division in the tree of life. Yet these single-celled organisms, like the cells of our bodies and those of plants, are sensitive in just the same way to being temporarily shut down. Even the structures inside our own cells that release energy—mitochondria—and the photosynthesising chloroplasts inside plant cells are sensitive to anaesthetics. To be alive is to be susceptible to anaesthesia.

The exciting—and controversial—implication is: if a plant can be temporarily put to sleep, as an animal can, does that mean it also has some kind of “waking” state normally? Perhaps we might consider the possibility that plants are not simple automatons or inert, photosynthetic machines. We might begin to imagine that plants have some kind of individual experience of the world. They might be aware.

Animals and plants have evolved intelligence separately, helping them to function in very different ecological situations. On the one hand, we have an animal intelligence that helps us operate as mobile, quick-moving creatures with bodies that always grow roughly the same way. Plants, on the other, have to make it in life as rooted, slow-moving organisms that have to grow creatively instead of just walking off.

Are corals smart? Possibly smarter than you might expect for minute, static creatures. They can switch between their diets of sunlight and hunting for prey with tiny tentacles, and they go to war with one another over territory. But their swimming larval stage is their least self-possessed phase.18 In corals, then, motility does not seem to denote intelligence. It is when corals are sedentary that they engage in those activities, which would seem to contradrict Patricia Churchland’s argument that [i]f you root yourself in the ground, you can afford to be stupid. But if you move, you must have mechanisms for moving, and mechanisms to ensure that the movement is not utterly arbitrary and independent of what is going on outside.

I let my mind go through a strange transformation. It was as if I clambered through the limbs of the tree of life, passing each of our animal forebears—the primates, early mammals, bony fish, all of the invertebrates that Ella sang about—as I went, back in evolutionary time to the ancient single-celled common ancestor of animals and plants nearly 1.5 billion years ago. I then began a mysterious ascent through an alien photosynthetic dynasty, all the way to the family of the plant I was watching.‡ My image of myself changed as I took this journey. My animal frame of muscles and skeleton, controlled by a cranium-bound brain, dissolved into a slow, flexible, elongated being with an entirely different kind of awareness of the world. In my imagination, I became plant-like, but I know that this was only a game of make-believe. It was a mental experiment that might give me clues to understanding what I was seeing as I watched the plant in front of me: the achingly slow, circling dance of bending stems and tilting leaves in their balletic efforts to catch each drop of sunlight.

This “Magic,” as Hodgson Burnett would put it, is something common to all living things. It is the very stuff that animates all life. Leaves, trees; flowers, birds; badgers and foxes and squirrels and people all exist along the same continuum, animated by the same essential things, expressed in the particular ways that their evolutionary journeys have elicited. They exist less on a hierarchical “tree” of life, more in an “adaptive landscape” in which each species is incrementally climbing its own evolutionary slope.

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.

Catasetum orchids, for example, catapult a sticky pollen organ called a “pollinium” onto unwitting insects visiting the flowers. This happens so quickly that the insect has no time to get away before it is saddled with the flower’s cargo and has to fly off heavily laden, ideally to another flower where the pollen will find fertile reception. This catapulting happens at an astounding 3 metres per second (10.8 kilometres per hour). For an organism without nerves or muscles, this is incredibly fast. Blink and you’ll miss it. Even if you don’t blink, you will not be able to actually see the pollinium’s brief arc of flight. The top speed ever recorded for a pollinium was 303 centimetres per second, making it one of the fastest movements in the entire plant world. It is no wonder that Darwin called them “the most remarkable of all Orchids.”

Phytopersonalities: The experiences of each plant are shaped by the closely woven interaction between its particular physicality and the opportunities in its surroundings. Each individual creates its own personal Umwelt. The experience of one plant is not the same as that of another. And this goes both ways: one plant will not behave in the same way as another might in the same circumstances. We have only just begun to detect these differences. And if we draw all of these ideas together, it looks like plants might have something that we could call personalities.

[Camryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be very interesting! It was a unique perspective and provided a deeper appreciation for all of my houseplants. As someone who was a vegetarian for years for ethical reasons, this unlocked a bunch other ethical debates for me to ruminate on - definitely going to have me rethink my relationship with my plants too. 🫣😅

[Andrea McDowell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am fully willing to be convinced of the intelligence and (yes) sentience of plants. Look, every major human rights or ecological abuse of the past several hundred years has been underwritten by assuming that other people and other species aren't intelligent or sentient and don't have feelings. It may be time to work off the opposite assumption -- that if it's alive, it would prefer to keep living, and expresses those preferences in its own way -- and then look to prove otherwise before we embark on new massive exploitation schemes.

And I'd even say that I do, largely, feel that there is something that it is like to be a plant. This is perhaps just my own biased observation, but when I look at green things, I see them hungrily reaching for the sun.

So if a book can't convince me, it's probably just not very convincing.

Calvo brings a background in both philosophy and biology to the subject, and I found the philosophical explorations of the ethics of the way we treat plants (and other living things) and the processes that might underlie plant intelligence and sentience very interesting. Where it fell apart for me is the science. For example, in one section, he writes for several pages about experiments showing pavlovian conditioning for plants -- plants learning to associate certain colours of light or wind directions with nutrients -- and then mentions offhandedly afterwards that they haven't yet been able to replicate those experiments. (So why are they there?) Later, he writes about a zap-and-zip hypothesis that measures consciousness in other living things and how experiments on plants could be structured -- and then says that he's excited about sharing the results when they conduct the experiments. (Why not wait to write the book when the experiments are done?)

I feel like his enthusiasm and commitment to the subject matter may have overwritten the need to wait until the experimental basis of the conclusions is firmer one way or the other, which is frustrating, because the material and results he does share are fascinating and compelling. Putting plants to sleep (confirmed), plants habituating to stimuli (confirmed), plants responding to predation and planning how to reach the light (confirmed), are freaking amazing and it's a shame it was undermined by other materials that, IMO, just shouldn't have been there. (Yet.)

Anyway, I recommend it, but I also hope he and/or others more fully explore this subject when the data are better. I'm looking forward to The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth in a couple of months, and we'll see how that one holds up.

[Vanessa Gikas · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up. I wrote a lot here because I read this for a book club and want to just get all my thoughts out. First off, I love the author's passion and he is def a huge fanboy for Darwin which I find endearing. But I didn't rate this very high mostly due to the disorganization of his thoughts/writing and the way the author seemed to layer on some dense, dull science at times that it didn't feel necessary or helpful to the conversation, and conversely, he didn't offer enough science for the really interesting questions he offered up in the end.

It was written a bit haphazardly, with chapters and paragraphs that go off track or will dwell on ideas that were out of place. He tries to add some anecdotes here and there (and I love a good anecdote in a natural science book) but his anecdotes were sometimes pointless, almost like they were longform jokes missing a punchline. Like, he'd remark about what he and his science buddies were studying once upon a time, like he was reminiscing about the good times, but it was really a "you had to be there" kinda moment.

He spends a lot of time in the beginning making remarks like "it must be uncomfortable for you to imagine plants having intelligence," or "this book might make you uneasy at times" but I feel like this book, the title, the summary all attract the opposite audience. I'm very open to the idea and you don't need to say much to sell me on the idea that plants have intelligence. I feel like I already knew this and just wanted more exploration of HOW we know this and what plants do with that intelligence. So maybe that's just me or maybe the author didn't realize his audience would already be a bunch of plant-intelligence believers. There's a part in the middle where he talks about being shunned by the science community for doing this work, and while that was interesting, I figured that was why he comes on so strong about trying to convince his readers to view plants as intelligent, since he has been challenged so much by his peers.

Another reviewer pointed out two ironies: the author keeps warning against anthropomorphism and zoocentric focuses when discussing plants but he brings up animals SO MUCH. I get it - we're animals and we can really struggle to imagine life in a non-animal way. But it just felt so odd when he would say in one paragraph "be cautious about anthropomorphizing plants" and then in the next paragraph say "vines are like octopus." (That's an exaggeration on my part, but most of the book read like this with repeated warnings about zoocentrism followed by lengthy spiels about animal intelligence and how it informs plant intelligence. Those were some of the most interesting parts of the book, but it kinda felt like a contradiction to then wrap-up the book with more heavy-handed warnings against anthropomorphism again.) The other irony is that, even though he acknowledged that the roots are the most like a "brain" in terms of being the control center of the plant, he focuses mainly on the vines and branches of the plant and doesn't bring many studies about the roots into conversation.

The last few chapters were the most engaging to me, as they discussed a lot of philosophical implications of what it would mean if plants could think or even feel and also explores how plants can inform AI and robotics in a more profound way than animals can. But these chapters suffered from the same disorganized writing where he'd sometimes propose a thought and then the next paragraph would shoot off in another direction, leaving lots of curiosities unfulfilled. I recognize a lot of these philosophical questions don't have an "answer" but it became clear that he didn't have too much of a direction to point his readers so left it all very loose. The AI chapter was a bit odd because he talks about how plants can revolutionize AI and then focuses on how the mechanical functions of vines and tendrils has been implemented in robotics (which IS cool) but no real mention of how exactly plant intelligence could inform AI in terms of decision making and communication. What plants can DO with their "bodies" is incredible and should be talked about, but it feels like it's fallen away from the focus point when he doesn't underpin that conversation with a focus on what the "thinking" part of the plant is actually doing. A lot of focus on mechanics of plants makes them seem like machines, which was ironically the same issue animal scientists struggled with historically as they assumed animals were just machines and therefore lacked intelligence. We need to not put plants in that same box, and I know the author knows this (he says it a lot) but he just needed to show it a bit more.

[Aurélien Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

'...we need to connect to the concrete and specific nature of particular plants and their worlds. We must acknowledge that plants are animate without slipping into animism; relinquish the anthropocentric hegemony on intelligence by not being anthropomorphic.'

This book starts by a startling yet fascinating experience: that of anaesthetizing plants. As it turns out, when under anaesthetics plants stops photosynthesising; they stop folding their leaves; they stop bending their stems; and their seeds even stop germinating! In other words: they 'go to sleep'. This is fascinating for one thing -if plants can 'go to sleep', then doesn't it mean that they also have a 'waking state' in the first place? And what is a 'waking state', but a sense of awareness, even, perhaps, a state of consciousness, thought, and intelligence?

Now, of course, it's not the first time that some speculative thinker pushes the boundaries in trying to explain what it means to be 'alive'. The philosopher Thomas Nigel, for instance, had already famously asked 'what is it like to be a bat?' back in 1974; and Darwin himself had not been shy in ascribing 'emotions', even to insects, back in the 19th century. The idea has been pushed so far, in fact, that our otherwise deeply entrenched anthropocentrism has taken yet a serious blow in the past few decades, with our understanding of how other animals than us can feel, and 'be', having had quite a shattering impact; for example, when it comes to animals' rights. The thing, though, is that such radical understanding of 'being' when it comes to other species has rarely, if ever, been applied to plants. We may be less and less anthropocentric, yet we still remain stubbornly 'zoocentric'. Does it matter?

The author addresses some of the reasons behind such 'plant blindness'. More to the point, he demonstrates that under such blindness lies a serious ignorance of how plants actually behave; an ignorance that has a serious impact not only upon our dealing with environmental issues, but, also, and above all, ethics. For this is the core of the debate, a debate which has been raging on among experts for decades now: are plants 'intelligent' and 'conscious'? And, if so, what does it mean for us morally?

The interest of this book is not in the arguments advanced by the author to claim that plants are, indeed, fully capable of 'cognition'. We know that plants are very complex beings, actively engaged in very complex behaviours with their environments; complex behaviours that requires not only a subjective and sensitive awareness to interact, but, also, flexibility, anticipation, having goals, and having the ability to retain information and learn. He argues, then, against those claiming that such behaviours are merely 'adaptive'; and the arguments pro and con can be found elsewhere -nothing much new here from a botanical perspective. The interest of this book lies, in fact, in the background and so angle of the author.

Paco Calvo is not only a plant biologist. He is, also, an expert both in psychology and in philosophy. This, then, provides him with an intellectual baggage that others, whose views are far too limited by their own one-and-only field, don't have; and so it provides him with an ability to think outside the box when it comes to such debate. In other words, unlike others, still entrapped by their own unique specialism to tackle the question (whatever their side of the argument), he taps into other discipline to re-question our understanding of what it means to be 'intelligent', and what it means to be 'conscious'. Mostly, he relies indeed on biosemiotics to defend the view that plants have their own Umwelt too. And it's this approach that makes 'Planta Sapiens' such an engrossing, fascinating read, challenging all of our preconceptions about other states of 'being'.

Channelling views ranging from botany to philosophy, psychology, and neurosciences, it could have been a daunting book, far too absorbed in its multiple expertise to be accessible. Thanks to the very engaging and powerful writing of the author, though, it's everything but. Paco Calvo's radical views are in fact exposed very clearly, powerfully and straightforwardly argued, which make them even more persuasive. What about morale, though? If plants indeed have an Umwelt of their own, then here's a serious shift in our perspective that (as was the case following our understanding of other animals ability to feel) ought to lead to very important debates regarding how we treat them. As such, I cannot but highly, highly recommend it. I rarely give 5 stars to a book, unless they drastically shift my thinking and/ or offer me a deeply challenging view of the world around me. This one is right up there among the few! In fact, I believe that it deserves the success and impact that, said, Animal Liberation by Peter Singer had when it comes to animals. A must read.

[Cheryl Gatling]

I belong to an invasive plant online discussion group, and the people frequently talk about the battle against the plant as if it is a conscious enemy. The plant entwines its roots around the roots of garden perennials on purpose. The plant hides underneath paving stones where you can’t dig it up on purpose. But does the plant do things on purpose? While pondering this, I saw this book, which maybe promised to answer that question. It really doesn’t.

The author’s background is in philosophy, before becoming a plant scientist, and founding the MINT Lab (or Minimal Intelligence Lab) in Spain. Overall, I thought this book contained more philosophy than science, and should more correctly be subtitled The Philosophy of Plant Intelligence, rather than The New Science of Plant Intelligence.

There are long passages about how humans have a mental bias in favor of things that move around (like animals), and against things that stay in one place (like plants), which we consider just so much background greenery, and that we need to think outside the box and broaden our concept of what intelligence is. These passages can be quite gushy. The author makes some occasional minimal attempts to maintain a scientific detachment, but he is clearly 100% on team plant intelligence, and is just waiting for the science to catch up to what he already knows.

The jury really is out on whether or not we can call plants conscious or intelligent. But there is evidence that plants respond to their environment in a more sophisticated way than we once thought. They grow their roots in the direction where they detect more nutrients. They produce protective chemicals when insects are munching on them, and only when the insects are munching on them. Plants that turn to follow the path of the sun begin the day by facing the direction where they expect the sun to rise, even while it is still dark out. So they appear to plan ahead. They appear to make decisions.

How can they, when they don’t have brains or nervous systems? Plants do send electrical signals from one part of themselves to another, not along nerves, but along their vascular systems. But does this mean they are aware? And if aware, are they capable of suffering?

That is a loaded question, because if we decide that plants are sentient beings, then we would be obligated to treat them ethically. And what would that mean? No more mowing the grass? We must kill plants, because we need to eat them. That is a question that we as a society are nowhere near ready to tackle.

But we can admire the wonders of nature, which are more complex and mysterious than we ever thought.