Aug 28, 2019 11:53 PM
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2...ty-plants/
EXCERPT: When The Secret Life of Plants came out in 1973, Lincoln Taiz was a graduate student, just embarking on what would become a many-decades long career in plant biology. Plants, the book revealed, can make their own trace elements through fusion, just like the sun. More, they can recognize people. If someone committed a crime in front of them — plants’ fear could be measured with a simple lie detector test. And the book took it one step further, claiming that plants are conscious.
Taiz didn’t buy it. “I could see the senior people in my field getting very exercised about this,” he recalls. “It’s embarrassing to plant biologists to have people believing stuff like that.” The plant science community, he says, “teamed up with animal biologists and they did experiments to try and repeat some of these things, and of course it was all completely false.”
Yet the idea that plants may be sentient has not gone away; in fact, it has continued to gain interest — even in the scientific community. Monica Gagliano at the University of Sydney is now one of the most outspoken [proponent] researchers on the subject. ... Decades after The Secret Life of Plants, in 2006, a subset of plant biologists reignited a second renaissance in thinking about whether plants can think. They christened a new field that they called “plant neurobiology,” a term that makes some plant experts cringe. But one of proponents’ main arguments for using the neuro language was that plant cells communicate with each other in a way similar to animal cells — using action potentials, a form of bio-electricity.
“[They were] really claiming that plants have neuron-like cells, and that they behave just like neurons in animals,” explains Taiz, now a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “And then they were extrapolating from that to say that plants, like animals, have feelings, emotions and all kinds of anthropomorphic [human-like] qualities. And all of this was wrong.”
In the years since, the study of plant neurobiology has continued to grow. [...] a chief point of criticism from other plant scientists is that Gagliano hasn’t followed up on either of her major findings — and neither has anyone else. ... “It’s being kept afloat by public interest,” says Taiz. “Everybody gets interested in sort of the science fiction-y stuff.”
[...] Mannie Liscum thinks some amount of conscious, sentient, feeling, seeing language can be a helpful teaching tool when it comes to plants. But there’s a difference between taking a metaphor seriously versus taking it literally. “Are [plants] able to respond to their environment appropriately and actively, like animals can? Yes. Do they do it by the same mechanisms? No,” he says. “If we’re going to be very literal about it, plants do not have consciousness in a metazoan [animal] sense. That is absolutely clear.”
“The difference [is], are plants actively thinking? … There’s no evidence that they are,” Liscum says. “They’re there, and their environment’s there, and they just respond to it. That’s not sentience.” Plants are responsive to their environments. They grow toward light. They emit chemicals when they’re damaged (think: the smell of fresh cut grass.) Researchers have even watched, in real time, how a plant getting munched on one leaf sends a signal to the rest of its extremities.
But do plants’ actions demonstrate that they are conscious? There’s not currently scientific evidence to support that. “Plants are important,” Liscum says. “Without them, you won’t have anything to eat and you can’t breathe. And that’s enough. That’s good enough. You don’t need to give them neurons. You don’t need to give them consciousness.” (MORE - details)
EXCERPT: When The Secret Life of Plants came out in 1973, Lincoln Taiz was a graduate student, just embarking on what would become a many-decades long career in plant biology. Plants, the book revealed, can make their own trace elements through fusion, just like the sun. More, they can recognize people. If someone committed a crime in front of them — plants’ fear could be measured with a simple lie detector test. And the book took it one step further, claiming that plants are conscious.
Taiz didn’t buy it. “I could see the senior people in my field getting very exercised about this,” he recalls. “It’s embarrassing to plant biologists to have people believing stuff like that.” The plant science community, he says, “teamed up with animal biologists and they did experiments to try and repeat some of these things, and of course it was all completely false.”
Yet the idea that plants may be sentient has not gone away; in fact, it has continued to gain interest — even in the scientific community. Monica Gagliano at the University of Sydney is now one of the most outspoken [proponent] researchers on the subject. ... Decades after The Secret Life of Plants, in 2006, a subset of plant biologists reignited a second renaissance in thinking about whether plants can think. They christened a new field that they called “plant neurobiology,” a term that makes some plant experts cringe. But one of proponents’ main arguments for using the neuro language was that plant cells communicate with each other in a way similar to animal cells — using action potentials, a form of bio-electricity.
“[They were] really claiming that plants have neuron-like cells, and that they behave just like neurons in animals,” explains Taiz, now a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “And then they were extrapolating from that to say that plants, like animals, have feelings, emotions and all kinds of anthropomorphic [human-like] qualities. And all of this was wrong.”
In the years since, the study of plant neurobiology has continued to grow. [...] a chief point of criticism from other plant scientists is that Gagliano hasn’t followed up on either of her major findings — and neither has anyone else. ... “It’s being kept afloat by public interest,” says Taiz. “Everybody gets interested in sort of the science fiction-y stuff.”
[...] Mannie Liscum thinks some amount of conscious, sentient, feeling, seeing language can be a helpful teaching tool when it comes to plants. But there’s a difference between taking a metaphor seriously versus taking it literally. “Are [plants] able to respond to their environment appropriately and actively, like animals can? Yes. Do they do it by the same mechanisms? No,” he says. “If we’re going to be very literal about it, plants do not have consciousness in a metazoan [animal] sense. That is absolutely clear.”
“The difference [is], are plants actively thinking? … There’s no evidence that they are,” Liscum says. “They’re there, and their environment’s there, and they just respond to it. That’s not sentience.” Plants are responsive to their environments. They grow toward light. They emit chemicals when they’re damaged (think: the smell of fresh cut grass.) Researchers have even watched, in real time, how a plant getting munched on one leaf sends a signal to the rest of its extremities.
But do plants’ actions demonstrate that they are conscious? There’s not currently scientific evidence to support that. “Plants are important,” Liscum says. “Without them, you won’t have anything to eat and you can’t breathe. And that’s enough. That’s good enough. You don’t need to give them neurons. You don’t need to give them consciousness.” (MORE - details)
