Planta Sapiens: Unmasking Plant Intelligence

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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. Decades of research document plants’ impressive abilities: they communicate with each other, manipulate other species, and move in sophisticated ways. Lesser known, however, is that although plants may not have brains, their internal workings reveal a system not unlike the neuronal networks running through our own bodies. They can learn and remember, possessing an intelligence that allows them to behave in flexible, forward-looking, and goal-directed ways. In PLANTA SAPIENS, Professor Paco Calvo offers a bold new perspective on plant biology and cognitive science. Using the latest scientific findings, Calvo challenges us to make an imaginative leap into a world that is so close and yet so alien - one that will expand our understanding of our own minds. 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.

Planta Sapiens: Unmasking plant intelligence”, por Reseña de “Planta Sapiens: Unmasking plant intelligence”, por

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. 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. 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. Planta Sapiens presents 'fertile possibilities' to the public and in doing so it has put science on notice [...] We should be delighted with Professor Calvo's seeding of scientific curiosity for the hope that it offers" Planta Sapiens è una folgorante esplorazione della vita vegetale e un invito a pensare al mondo naturale in modo nuovo e anticonformista. Stiamo smantellando le tradizionali gerarchie della natura, diventando sempre più consapevoli della vita interiore delle altre specie e di quante similitudini esistono tra noi e loro. Non possiamo più considerarci l’unica specie intelligente privilegiata sulla Terra. E se vogliamo salvare il bioma globale, non dobbiamo farlo. Se impariamo a osservare e studiare le piante in maniera diversa, rimarremo davvero stupiti da ciò che potremo scoprire.In 2030 biotech researcher Tereza embarks on an expedition across the Czech Republic and the authoritarian U.S. to recover the remains of her long-estranged mother, Adéla, after their reunion is cut short by Adéla's sudden death. Told from the mother's perspective from beyond the grave, the novel traces the way nativism spreads and how morally dubious technologies such as surveillance and immortality science thrive under a fascist, one-party-rule government. Author Jaroslav Kalfařturns an ambitious premise (a person whose body has expired but whose consciousness lives on) into a moving, frightening story about the strength of family bonds. — Michael Welch

Planta Sapiens by Paco Calvo review - The Guardian

Planta Sapiens presents ‘fertile possibilities’ to the public and in doing so it has put science on notice. All plants are juggling to respond to climatic change. They are encoded to anticipate this, with their attentive neurobiochemistry driven by a helix that is so similar to that of the human family. Should we be surprised? No! We should be delighted with Professor Calvo’s seeding of scientific curiosity for the hope that it offers." - Diana Beresford-Kroeger, author of To Speak for the TreesAre plants sentient? ... Along with fascinating examples, Calvo devotes equal space to arguments with philosophers and fellow scientists over the meaning of intelligence. Readers will find it difficult to resist his claim that plants tailor their forms and experiences to their environments in a way that animals simply cannot.... Persuasive evidence for plant intelligence. A fascinating description of how plants interact with the environment in myriad ways [...] This book will make people think and help them to become more aware that plants have abilities that they may not know about. And, perhaps most significant, that it is important to truly see everything around us" 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. Planta Sapiens offers an exciting and detailed look into research on plant intelligence and sets the standard for future studies in this important and forward-looking area"

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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). Heisinger, P.R. (2021). The Self-Assembling Brain: How Neural Networks Grow Smarter. Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press. An astonishing window into the inner world of plants, and the cutting-edge science in plant intelligence. 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. 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.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.

Planta Sapiens: Unmasking plant intelligence”, por Reseña de “Planta Sapiens: Unmasking plant intelligence”, por

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. 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. Scientists have known for a long time that plants can communicate with one another using chemical compounds and it’s also been long understood that they use electrical signals (much like animals) to coordinate their internal response to the world around them. To summarise my thoughts, the book was too short of solid evidence to give it a high rating. While the author admitted to the shortfalls in his work, it might have been better if he had titled the book differently. Perhaps it could be “Planta Sapiens – Do plants have hidden intelligence that we haven’t uncovered?Planta Sapiens presents ‘fertile possibilities’ to the public and in doing so it has put science on notice. All plants are juggling to respond to climatic change. They are encoded to anticipate this, with their attentive neurobiochemistry driven by a helix that is so similar to that of the human family. Should we be surprised? No! We should be delighted with Professor Calvo’s seeding of scientific curiosity for the hope that it offers. Such astonishing findings have led the book's author, among others, to controversially refer to the study of these processes as “plant neurobiology.” Calvo goes even further, suggesting that plants are cognitive beings and may have “diffused consciousness.” When a vine sends out tendrils, it does so with intent, he writes, using light and chemicals to explore and then home in on a target. The author claims the plant is not “simply reacting,” but it is “making meaning” through inner awareness, perhaps similarly to an octopus whose consciousness seems spread among its arms. Although electrical and chemical signaling inside plants are well established, assertions about plant cognition and possible consciousness are highly contentious. A rebuttal by some animal and plant scientists of Calvo and his colleagues' earlier work states that not only are such ideas wrong, but they harm scientific progress by misleading students and redirecting funding. 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? About the Author: Paco Calvo is a professor of the philosophy of science and principal investigator at the Universidad de Murcia's Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINTLab) in Spain.