BOOKS // The Roots and Branches of our Family Tree
For our Kith & Kin issue, we recommend a host of books that push the boundaries of our understanding and open our minds and hearts to our beautiful, interconnected world: its past, present, and future. // HSB
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
by Zoë Schlanger
EXCERPT //
If you have any inclination toward biology, plants likely fascinate you: how they grow, bloom, root, and reproduce is an endless wonder—and so many of them are so delicious. But science writer Zoë Schlanger is more interested in the bleeding edge of the questions that scientists ask about plants—including whether they possess some kind of consciousness. The book is a riotous garden of conversations with singular blooms, and one of the most interesting dynamics is just how many of her conversations are sotto voce—just using the word “consciousness” versus “intelligence” closes the mouths of some interview subjects quicker than a Venus flytrap snapping down on an unwitting Musca domestica. She describes science is a conservative profession where careers can be at stake when researchers overpromise on claims. But equally pressing is gaining a more finely branched understanding of the world we live in, and Schlanger’s book does a service by amplifying some of the voices that are whispering about what we’re learning, no matter how revelatory or strange. Her questions about intelligence and consciousness give us insight into how biased we are toward our own human experiences of the world, and perhaps how much we’re missing when it comes to how plants, fungi, and animals exhibit memory, learning, communication, and preferences. What it really comes down to is that we still don’t know what consciousness is. So, how, she asks, can we say that plants or fungi are exempt from it? //
For full text and images, consider reading RQ in print, on a Sunday afternoon, sun streaming through your window, coffee in hand, and nary a phone alert within sight or in earshot… just fine words, fine design, and the opportunity to make a stitch in time. // Subscribe or buy a single issue today. // Print is dead. Long live print. //