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. All of which raises loud questions that Calvo and Lawrence see and echo but spend comparatively little time trying to answer. “We don’t seem quite ready to confront the welfare and rights of plants,” they write. “In fact, if we cared even a little for the unnecessary stress we inflict on plants, we would have set up ethical committees in research institutions by now, of the very same sort we customarily rely on for the purposes of animal experimentation.” Berry's path of inquiry is a deeply personal one. Struggling with anxiety, she tries to pinpoint its origins in her life and finds in the wolf a new way to explore her relationship with her own fears. Humans have long imbued wolves with coded meaning, and although the specifics of the archetype shift with culture and context, wolves function as “a pressure point in our psyches.” Berry explores this role through wide-ranging research, juxtaposing the “wolves” in her life—her fears around personal safety, solo travel and loss of family—with biological wolves and the cultural touchstones they represent. 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." - Anil Seth, author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness

Planta Sapiens | Paco Calvo, Natalie Lawrence - NetGalley Planta Sapiens | Paco Calvo, Natalie Lawrence - NetGalley

We are unimaginable without plants, yet surprisingly blind to their powers and behaviors. Planta Sapiens weaves science and history into an absorbing exploration of the many ways that plants rise to the challenge of living. Mind-blowing.... This impressive addition to the growing literature on how plants experience the world will change how readers see the flora around them.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? Neuroscience reveals that we humans miss much of what unfolds about us, but we neither see nor observe the plant kingdom; we are blinded by our own animal senses. For a start, most of each plant is hidden underground. The “ wood wide web”, the magical subterranean symbiosis between trees and fungi, was a radical but only relatively recent discovery. Some scientists think (as Darwin once did) of a plant’s expansive root system as its head, meaning all we only ever see is its posterior. However, mostly what blinds us is our inability to apprehend the world on plant time; their pace of life redefines slow. 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. An astonishing window into the inner world of plants, and the cutting-edge science in plant intelligence. Have you ever sat and watched a plant? The very idea itself might seem strange. We like to watch things that move, that do something. But in fact, plants are doing a great deal too - plants behave, as animals do - they are just doing it on a very different timescale. They cannot move about freely like animals do, so they grow into space instead and make new chemicals to interact with the species around them. Not only that, but what causes them to do these things, what drives this behaviour, is far more similar than we humans, with our speedy, animal-centric perceptions, have always assumed. If we learn to look differently, we might be amazed at what we find.

Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence Planta Sapiens: The New Science of 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.

Advance Praise

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"

Planta Sapiens: The New Science of Plant Intelligence - Goodreads

Koch, C. (2015). The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness is Widespread but Can’t be Computed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.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. We are unimaginable without plants, yet surprisingly blind to their powers and behaviors. Planta Sapiens weaves science and history into an absorbing exploration of the many ways that plants rise to the challenge of living." - Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life That said, I liked how the author tried to present his case, without having a large body of evidence of support. Paco Calvo believes in plant intelligence and is convinced that science will reveal it – in time. I love this conviction, as the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence!

Scientific American What Is It Like to Be a Plant? - Scientific American

In Planta Sapiens, Paco Calvo, a leading figure in the philosophy of plant signaling and behavior, offers an entirely new perspective on plants’ worlds, showing for the first time how we can use tools developed to study animal cognition in a quest to understand plant intelligence. Plants learn from experience: wild strawberries can be taught to link light intensity with nutrient levels in the soil, and flowers can time pollen production to pollinator visits. Plants have social intelligence, releasing chemicals from their roots and leaves to speak to and identify one another. They make decisions about where to invest their growth, judging risk based on the resources available. Their individual preferences vary, too—plants have personalities. 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 someOf course, these are revolutionary ideas and, as Calvo admits, contested by many scientists who study the physiology of plants. But he guides us patiently through the latest research and builds a compelling case that, unlikely as it may seem, deserves to be taken seriously. 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.