Thoughts like Ivy
Your brain,
the seat of your consciousness,
is as natural as a leaf.
It arose in the world in the same way as a finch’s wing,
a cricket’s song.
Wherever you are right now,
the part of you that’s awake and reading this
is in nature.
There’s a temptation to think of ourselves as separate
here in the warm quarters of civilization.
But our thoughts?
Our thoughts echo from an ancient wilderness.
Jarod K. Anderson. Field Guide to the Haunted Forest.[1]
Animate Intelligence is the original AI according to Jeremy Lent in his wonderful book ‘The Web of Meaning’ and he suggests that if “we truly honour the animate intelligence within us, it’s natural… to similarly honour the animate intelligence emanating from all living beings Embracing our shared domain of intelligence can lead to a potent sense of being intimately connected to the animate world.”[2] If we can think of intelligence expressed by Nature as a form of love, and love as a form of intelligence it offers us a way to connect with all life within the Cosmos. Love is life expressed at every level within both the human and ‘other-than-human’ world. When we recalibrate our perspective of autonomy and surrender to this Divine Intelligence, life’s mysteries become accessible to us.
We are learning to re-define the term intelligence – the dictionary describes it as ‘the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills’, but until recently our mechanistic Westernised perspective has applied this term solely and hubristically only to human forms of intelligence. (Anthropocentrism) Only now are we beginning to realise that our own intelligence is but an iteration of a much larger unified field of cosmic intelligence, which expresses itself in non-centralised ways, it is pervasive and weblike as Taoists will attest, more akin to our nervous systems and mycelial networks which brings us to another key aspect of understanding Nature’s Intelligence and how systems and patterns repeat at scale – fractals.
Fractals and spirals show up at every level of existence from micro (DNA helix) to macro (spiral galaxies, hurricanes) and point towards infinity and never-ending complexity. (See the wonderful documentary about Benoit Mandelbrot and fractal iterations on Amazon.)
We can learn so much about ourselves by contemplating Nature’s vast intelligence, and asking: how can it simultaneously express both chaos and order, simplicity, and complexity within the same self-regulating and balancing system?
Learning how to comprehend this complexity and our place within it can lead towards our salvation as a species. Contemplating the mirroring of the complex vastness of the Universe at micro and macro scales both within us, and other life forms, can point the way to re-unity. Darwin remarked that “the marvelous complexity” of organic beings is, that “each living creature must be looked at as a microcosm — a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars in heaven.”[3]
Our own unique consciousness/minds are fractal representations of the evolving mind or consciousness of this Divine Intelligence. Life is suffused with a mathematical precision of simplicity, complexity, and beauty. Mandelbrot’s Fractal Geometry maps out this fascinating mathematical pattern-making in Nature from snowflakes to river deltas, clouds and galaxies.
Animal Intelligence and sentience.
If we can return to that definition of intelligence which can also mean ‘to collect, to gather, to come to know or understand,’ and see now that plants and animals have been doing this since the first single-cell organism and that ability to “acquire and apply knowledge and skills” is definitely applicable to plants and animals of every order and type including single cell bacteria and slime moulds.
Recently a group of prominent biologists and philosophers announced a new consensus: There’s “a realistic possibility” that insects, octopuses, crustaceans, fish and other overlooked animals experience consciousness. Bees have elaborate ways of communicating new sources of nectar through their ‘waggle dances’ which show the position of food sources relative to the Sun. Bumblebees have been shown to enjoy play.[4] Sperm Whales have clan specific dialects and share a language as old and complex as Sanskrit.[5] Anyone who watched the incredible ‘My Octopus Teacher’ could not fail to be moved by the intelligence, curiosity and dare I say it ‘warmth’ expressed by the octopus. We rarely pause to consider the breadth and depth of inteligence and consciousness that surrounds us from the animal and plant world.
Plant Intelligence – The Forest Mind.
In last month’s newsletter we looked very briefly at the evolutionary hierarchy of the human brain and cascade of responses that take place in response to both stressful and (Kaplan’s) restorative environments.
We now know a lot about the brain and its evolution, but we don’t know everything yet, like where exactly is the seat of consciousness, or even an agreed definition of consciousness, and how are brain and mind separate? Jarrod sweetly reminds us that our brains are in Nature.
But how have human/animal brains and consciousnes evolved in comparison to ‘plant consciousness’? Are there parallel processes of emergence?
Plant neurobiologist Stefan Mancuso studies what was once considered laughable – the intelligence and behaviour of plants. His work is contentious, he says, because it calls into question the superiority of humans. Mancuso looks at “how plants are able to solve problems, how they memorise, how they communicate, how they have their social life and things like that”.[6]
In a plant, a single brain would be a fatal flaw because they have evolved to be lunch. “Plants use a very different strategy,” says Mancuso. “They are very good at diffusing the same function all over the body.” You can remove 90% of a plant without killing it. “You need to imagine a plant as a huge brain. Maybe not as efficient as in the case of animals, but diffused everywhere.” This is how we need to think of forests, not just as connected eco-systems but as a giant dynamic intelligence with multiple communication channels, and layers and levels of consciousness collaborating and contributing to a functioning sentient whole. (A forest aware of itself as Forest, as expression of life and intelligence).
One of the most controversial aspects of Mancuso’s work is the idea of plant consciousness. As we learn more about animal and plant intelligence, not to mention human intelligence, the contentious term consciousness has become tricky. “Let’s use another term,” Mancuso suggests. “Consciousness is a little bit tricky in both our languages. Let’s talk about awareness. Plants are perfectly aware of themselves.
“My personal opinion is that there is no life that is not aware of itself. For me, it’s impossible to imagine any form of life that is not able to be intelligent, to solve problems.”
The notion that humans are the apex of life on Earth is one of the most dangerous ideas around, says Mancuso: “When you feel yourself better than all the other humans or other living organisms, you start to use them. This is exactly what we’ve been doing. We felt ourselves as outside nature.” The average lifespan of a species on Earth is between 2m and 5m years. “Homo sapiens have lived just 300,000 years,” he says – and already “we have been able to almost destroy our environment. From this point of view, how can we say that we are better organisms?”
“And this is not an opinion. This is based on thousands of pieces of evidence. We know that a single root apex is able to detect at least 20 different chemical and physical parameters, many of which we are blind to.” There could be a tonne of cobalt or nickel under our feet, and we would have no idea, whereas “plants can sense a few milligrams in a huge amount of soil”, he says.
Far from being silent and passive, plants are social and communicative, above ground and beneath, through their roots and fungal networks. They are adept at detecting subtle electromagnetic fields generated by other life forms. They use chemicals and scents to warn each other of danger, deter predators and attract pollinating insects. When corn is nibbled by caterpillars, for example, the plant emits a chemical distress signal that lures parasitic wasps to exterminate the caterpillars.
According to Mancuso human societies and organisations are structured like our bodies – with a brain, or a top-level control centre, and various different organs governing specific functions. “We use this in our universities, our companies, even our class divisions,” says Mancuso. This structure enables us to move fast, physically and organisationally, but it also leaves us vulnerable. If a major organ fails, it could scupper everything, and top-down leadership rarely serves the whole.
Plants, by contrast, “are kind of horizontal, diffusive, decentralised organisations that are much more in line with modernity”. Take the internet, the ultimate decentralised root system. “I’m claiming that, by studying plant networks, we can find wonderful solutions for us,” Or take the ethos of cooperation. “Plants are masters of starting symbiotic relationships with other organisms: bacteria, mushrooms, insects, even us.”[7]
Plants constitute 80% of the biomass of the planet, have been around on land for around 500 million years, and in the Ocean before that for much longer. They have evolved complex mechanisms of communication, they have the equivalent of our 5 senses and they are masters at exploiting their environments. They are also our ancestors, without plants no humans. We are the biproducts of plant expression, we owe our lives to flowers, as Zoë Schlanger puts it in her book The Light-eaters “Our bodies are fabricated with the threads of material plants first spun. Likewise, every thought that has ever passed through your brain was made possible by plants.”[8]
[1] Anderson. J.K. Field guide to the Haunted Forest Crooked Wall Press 2020.
[2] Lent. J. The Web of Meaning 2021 Profile Books p.54-5
[3] As quoted by M. Popova in Marginalian
[4] https://www.quantamagazine.org/insects-and-other-animals-have-consciousness-experts-declare-20240419/
[5] Schlanger Z. The light eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth 2024 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0063073854/braipick-20
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/05/smarty-plants-are-our-vegetable-cousins-more-intelligent-than-we-realise?CMP=share_btn_link
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/05/smarty-plants-are-our-vegetable-cousins-more-intelligent-than-we-realise?CMP=share_btn_link
[8] Zoë Schlanger – X https://x.com/zoeschlanger/status/1762142281954423258 https://x.com/zoeschlanger/status/1762142281954423258