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| groworld_vegetal_culture [2013-01-25 08:17] – [Borrowed scenery] maja | groworld_vegetal_culture [2013-01-25 08:18] – [Viriditas and Thalience] maja |
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| While viriditas can be an experiential and spiritual muse of a vegetal human culture, for the analytically inclined a more empirical approach to the idea of vegetal sentience is needed (aside from the well-known psychedelic and shamanistic perspectives). Justifiably, before encouraging development of a vegetal mind in humans, we’d like to understand the plant’s point of view first, rather than modelling our human existence on an incomplete interpretation. We might want to engage with the botanical kingdom directly, and grasp how plants perceive and communicate. There are several examples from both mainstream and fringe science looking at plant perception, signalling and sentience. Daniel Chamovitz recently wrote about how plants experience and respond to the world (Chamovitz 2012). Plant neurobiology developed in the last decade as a scientific discipline researching plants' signalling and adaptive behaviour (Barlow 2008). On the edges of scientific replicability, we find Clive Backster's biocommunication experiments with a specimen of Dracena Massengeana connected to a polygraph (Backster 2003), or the imaginative crescographs by Jagdish Chandra Bose and Randall Fontes (Theroux 1997). These experiments look at plant growth and movement in response to external stimuli, and attempt to understand plant perception and communication. | While viriditas can be an experiential and spiritual muse of a vegetal human culture, for the analytically inclined a more empirical approach to the idea of vegetal sentience is needed (aside from the well-known psychedelic and shamanistic perspectives). Justifiably, before encouraging development of a vegetal mind in humans, we’d like to understand the plant’s point of view first, rather than modelling our human existence on an incomplete interpretation. We might want to engage with the botanical kingdom directly, and grasp how plants perceive and communicate. There are several examples from both mainstream and fringe science looking at plant perception, signalling and sentience. Daniel Chamovitz recently wrote about how plants experience and respond to the world (Chamovitz 2012). Plant neurobiology developed in the last decade as a scientific discipline researching plants' signalling and adaptive behaviour (Barlow 2008). On the edges of scientific replicability, we find Clive Backster's biocommunication experiments with a specimen of Dracena Massengeana connected to a polygraph (Backster 2003), or the imaginative crescographs by Jagdish Chandra Bose and Randall Fontes (Theroux 1997). These experiments look at plant growth and movement in response to external stimuli, and attempt to understand plant perception and communication. |
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| Venturing to communicate with plants would require humans to grasp the logic of the “vegetal mind.” Plant consciousness would no doubt be considered alien and impossible to perceive without assistance. This is where knowledge of human-computer interaction might be informative. The field of computer science has developed a variety of methods to determine the nature of machine mind by comparing it to the human mind (the Turing test being the best known example). However, it is quite anthropocentrically arrogant to think that human sentience, perception and behaviour is the only possible expression of consciousness. Why measure sentience by how well it mirrors that of humans? Nature may contain a myriad of disparate sentiences, operating according to their own internally consistent, externally incomprehensible logic. We might be "hearing their voices" daily, but having no sensory and mental capacity to translate and interpret their meaning. Perhaps we should focus our energies on “an attempt to give the physical world itself a voice so that rather than us asking what reality is, reality itself can tell you” (Schroeder, retrieved 2008). Writer Karl Schroeder called this "post-scientific" communication with non-human sentient beings "thalience." A plant-inspired culture could benefit from getting to know its verdant neighbours from a range of perspectives, including direct and unmediated experience, moving away from teleological, utilitarian and reductionist analyses of human relationships with plants. Schroeder talks about “non-human intelligences who come to different conclusions about what the universe [is] like” (Schroeder, retrieved 2008). Plants are such “non-human intelligences” with whom we share the same universe, yet the way in which they experience the world remains beyond our grasp. | Venturing to communicate with plants would require humans to grasp the logic of the “vegetal mind.” Plant consciousness would no doubt be considered alien and impossible to perceive without assistance. This is where knowledge of human-computer interaction might be informative. The field of computer science has developed a variety of methods to determine the nature of machine mind by comparing it to the human mind (the Turing test being the best known example). However, it is quite anthropocentrically arrogant to think that human sentience, perception and behaviour is the only possible expression of consciousness. Why measure sentience by how well it mirrors that of humans? Nature may contain a myriad of disparate sentiences, operating according to their own internally consistent, externally incomprehensible logic. We might be "hearing their voices" daily, but having no sensory and mental capacity to translate and interpret their meaning. Perhaps we should focus our energies on “an attempt to give the physical world itself a voice so that rather than us asking what reality is, reality itself can tell you” (Schroeder, retrieved 2008). Writer Karl Schroeder called this "post-scientific" communication with non-human sentient beings "thalience." A plant-inspired culture could benefit from getting to know its verdant neighbours from a range of perspectives, including direct and unmediated experience, moving away from teleological, utilitarian and reductionist analyses of human relationships with plants. Schroeder talks about “non-human intelligences who come to different conclusions about what the universe [is] like” (Schroeder, retrieved 2008). Plants are such “non-human intelligences” with whom we share the same universe, yet the way in which they experience the world remains beyond our grasp. |
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