I’ve been reading a book called The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger. It’s about our increasing appreciation of the sophistication of plant intelligence and behavior. Right away you might be wondering if those words, intelligence and behavior, belong in a sentence about plants. Well, exactly.
One of the stories in the book is about another book that rose to prominence in the 1970s, the Secret Life of Plants. That book was also about plant intelligence. Two things were true about this book: it made many unsubstantiated claims about clever plants, and it was a huge hit with the public. Non-academics loved hearing stories about intelligent plants. Plant biologists cringed and condemned the book. The professional backlash was so strong that it set back serious discussion of plant intelligence by decades.
Now, many years later, more data is rolling in that makes many scientists ready to take up the question once again. But there is still a burned and wary group of plant scientists protesting the use of these words. “Intelligent behavior” is anthropomorphic. Plants aren’t people. But as the author Schlanger points out, this is a scientific discussion that quickly becomes philosophical. What’s not up for debate is that these plants are doing some impressive things. They can alter their chemistry to repel and poison insect pests. They can broadcast signals to nearby plants to warn them about the danger. They can recognize if neighboring plants are cousins and tailor their messages accordingly, giving preferential treatment to relatives. They can trade for valuable minerals with fungal networks. And through mechanisms not yet understood, some plants can mimic the appearance and even the chemistry of nearby plants. We now have indisputable data, reputable replicable scientific tests in which plants sense their surroundings, communicate with their peers, and solve problems.
So we have this problem: what language should we use to describe it?
Can we talk about what a plant wants, what it hates, how it can be seduced, how it can mislead and betray? Or is that language off limits as anthropomorphic? Efforts to use language carefully scrubbed of anthropomorphism quickly become convoluted. It also begins to feel like a failure of imagination. What we need to acknowledge is that these skills we are loathe to assign to anything not human are not, in fact, uniquely ours. Our refusal starts to look like a petty turf battle. Hey you plants, get off of my lawn! I’m the only one who gets to be intelligent in this neighborhood! The solution is simple enough – we just admit that the intelligent behavior franchise is open for business. It would be churlish to say welcome to the club, since they’ve been here all along.
It is perhaps no coincidence that at this same time we are also building machines that make us question the nature of intelligence and consciousness. As a culture we are breaking into new territory. Up until now, we’ve said, effectively, I’m human and I’m subjectively conscious, and if I see you’re human too, I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. I’m intelligent. You’re intelligent. I’m conscious. You’re conscious. But we then assert nobody else gets to claim this capability. And since nobody (sorry) nothing else speaks our language, they’re in no position to dispute it.
But in fact we have weak tools for assessing what we sometimes call “true intelligence,” whether mechanical or organic. And when it comes to subjective consciousness, we have no tools at all. Since we can’t define what it is, we can’t test whether or not it exists even in our family and friends, let alone in chimpanzees and begonias.
Maybe humans have been swimming in the same pool with all living things, but we just lacked the eyes and the inclination to admit it. Maybe we have to admit, once again, we’re not the center of the universe. Maybe the word “anthropomorphic” is itself inappropriate and anthropocentric. If we can admit at last that plants are canny and chatty and crafty, maybe they’ll be the ones to say, at the risk of being phytocentric, “Welcome to the club.”
Rambles Blog at Star Chamber 