Theos-Talk Archives (March 2005 Message tt00188)

Mar 10 2005

 

Dear Mic:

 

To me intelligence is not a restricted field.

 

Basic:  

 

1 Is it not some kind of basic affinity (or intelligence) that
presides over all atomic entity – what makes for an “element “ Properties?
And where do they derive from? Electro-magnetic fields? How were they
established? There is adequate evidence that they are not uniform or free
of individual differences. One n keep driving the how and the why further
and further back until pure materialism fails – remains, as a surmise:
“Energy ?”  

 

2 What about selectivity and reversibility in chemical interaction?

 

3 What about approximates, individualism and indefiniteness at the
end of both the extremely small and the extremely large? Analogies?

 

I live and wonder daily,

 

Best wishes,

 

 

 

Dallas

 

=====================

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mick Forster 
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2005 11:06 PM
To: 
Subject: Re: FW: Plants do this?

 

Thanks for this Dallas. 

]

This is something I have an interest in and I must stress caution with
Trewavas' approach. In spite of the fact he has had published articles on
this subject in "Nature" and reputable botanical journals, as someone
trained in this area I must say he is really clutching at straws. 

 

Intelligence is probably the wrong word for what he is trying to describe.
For instance, a rat running through a maze and finding food then doing it
again quicker is said to have some intelligence. 

 

Trewavas states that a plant grown in a dark box (the maze) with a single
source of light will grow towards that source of light and this is
intelligent behaviour. I would say dogs are more intelligent than either a
plant or a rodent yet we have experiments like Pavlov's to show that
responses can be automatic. 

 

Salivating to a bell is hardly intelligent at all. There may indeed be
something going on but to equate that something with intelligence that we
humans have is a giant leap of faith. Here's an alternative point of view:

 

Title: Plant intelligence: an alternative point of view 

 

Author(s): Firn R 

Source: ANNALS OF BOTANY 93 (4): 345-351 APR 2004 

 

Abstract:

 

The concept of plant intelligence has been advanced by Trewavas as a
potentially useful framework to guide those seeking to understand plant
growth and development. In this short critique, the validity of this concept
is critically assessed. Central to this critique is the proposition that the
concept of the individual, to which intelligence and behaviour are
intimately linked, cannot usefully be applied to plants. It is argued that
the adaptive responses of plants are best appreciated if the importance of
the autonomy of the individual organs is acknowledged. Although Trewavas
does acknowledge the autonomy of organs by describing an individual plant as
being 'a democratic confederation', that terminology implies a complexity to
the interaction between organs which would demand a cogitative ability
beyond that actually demonstrated in plants. It may be more appropriate to
consider a plant as operating normally as a simple economic federation of
many specialized economies (organs and cells). Occasionally, there can be a
dramatic, and sometimes complex, reshaping of the economic balances, with
the result that the fate of some or many of the individual cells will
change. However, such major changes in growth and development are driven by
a few simple events in an individual organ and cells. These driving events
are more akin to small local revolutions in individual states than they are
to democratic decisions in a sophisticated confederation. (C) 2004 Annals of
Botany Company. 


============================


-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Fulton 
Sent: Saturday, March 05, 2005 6:09 PM
To: 
Subject: Plants do this?

This was extracted from the March 3rd Ed. of the Christian Science
Monitor, and reposted in at Ray Kurzweil's w.kurzweilai.net (a great
site for anyone interested in the "spiritual" aspects of technology). 
While Kurzweil isn't a theosophist in the sense of being a follower of
HPB, his insights and interests are the type of thing that Blavatsky would
have probably paid very close attention to as editor of the Theosophist.

Joe Fulton


New research opens a window on the minds of plants
By Patrik Jonsson | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

RALEIGH, N.C. - Hardly articulate, the tiny strangleweed, a pale parasitic
plant, can sense the presence of friends, foes, and food, and make adroit
decisions on how to approach them.

Mustard weed, a common plant with a six-week life cycle, can't find its
way in the world if its root-tip statolith - a starchy "brain" that
communicates with the rest of the plant - is cut off.

The ground-hugging mayapple plans its growth two years into the future,
based on computations of weather patterns. And many who visit the redwoods
of the Northwest come away awed by the trees' survival for millenniums - a
journey that, for some trees, precedes the Parthenon.

As trowel-wielding scientists dig up a trove of new findings, even those
skeptical of the evolving paradigm of "plant intelligence" acknowledge
that, down to the simplest magnolia or fern, flora have the smarts of the
forest. Some scientists say they carefully consider their environment,
speculate on the future, conquer territory and enemies, and are often
capable of forethought - revelations that could affect everyone from
gardeners to philosophers.

Indeed, extraordinary new findings on how plants investigate and respond
to their environments are part of a sprouting debate over the nature of
intelligence itself.

"The attitude of people is changing quite substantially," says Anthony
Trewavas, a plant

biochemist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and a prominent
scholar of plant intelligence. "The idea of intelligence is going from the
very narrow view that it's just human to something that's much more
generally found in life."

To be sure, there are no signs of Socratic logic or Shakespearean thought,
and the subject of plant "brains" has sparked heated exchanges at botany
conferences. Plants, skeptics scoff, surely don't fall in love, bake
soufflés, or ponder poetry. And can a simple reaction to one's environment
truly qualify as active, intentional reasoning?

But the late Nobel Prize-winning plant geneticist Barbara McClintock
called plant cells "thoughtful." Darwin wrote about root-tip "brains." Not
only can plants communicate with each other and with insects by coded gas
exhalations, scientists say now, they can perform Euclidean geometry
calculations through cellular computations and, like a peeved boss,
remember the tiniest transgression for months.

To a growing number of biologists, the fact that plants are now known to
challenge and exert power over other species is proof of a basic
intellect.

"If intelligence is the capacity to acquire and apply knowledge, then,
absolutely, plants are intelligent," agrees Leslie Sieburth, a biologist
at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

For philosophers, one of the key findings is that two cuttings, or clones,
taken from the same "mother plant" behave differently even when planted in
identical conditions.

"We now know there's an ability of self-recognition in plants, which is
highly unusual and quite extraordinary that it's actually there," says Dr.
Trewavas. "But why has no one come to grips with it? Because the
prevailing view of a plant, even among plant biologists, is that it's a
simple organism that grows reproducibly in a flower pot."

But here at the labs on the North Carolina State campus, where fluorescent
grow-rooms hold genetic secrets and laser microscopes parse the inner
workings of live plants, there is still skepticism about the ability of
ordinary houseplants to intellectualize their environment.

Most plant biologists are still looking at the mysteries of "signal
transduction," or how genetic, chemical, and hormonal orders are dispersed
for complex plant behavior. But skeptics say it's less a product of
intelligence than mechanical directives, more genetic than genius. Some
see the attribution of intelligence to plants as relative - an
oversimplification of a complex human trait.

And despite intensifying research, exactly how a plant's complex orders
are formulated and carried out remains draped in leafy mystery.

"There is still much that we do not know about how plants work, but a big
part of intelligence is self-consciousness, and plants do not have that,"
says Heike Winter Sederoff, a plant biologist at N.C. State.

Still, a new NASA grant awarded to the university to study gravitational
effects on crop plants came in part due to new findings that plants have
neurotransmitters very similar to humans' - capable, perhaps, of offering
clues on how gravity affects more sentient beings. The National Science
Foundation has awarded a $5 million research grant to pinpoint the
molecular clockwork by which plants know when to grow and when to flower.

The new field of plant neurobiology holds its first conference - The First
Symposium on Plant Neurobiology - in May in Florence, Italy.

The debate is rapidly moving past the theoretical. In space, "smart
plants" can provide not only food, oxygen, and clean air, but also
valuable companionship for lonely space travelers, say some - a boon for
astronauts if America is to go to Mars. Research on the workings of the
mustard weed's statolith, for example, may one day yield a corn crop with
1-3/8 the gravitational force of Earth.

Some Earth-bound farmers, meanwhile, see the possibility of communicating
with plants to time waterings for ultimate growth. A new gene, Bypass-1,
found by University of Utah researchers, may make that possible.

Still, it can be hard for the common houseplant to command respect - even
among those who study it most closely.

"When I was a postdoc, I had a neighbor who watched me buy plants, forget
to water them, and throw them out, buy them and throw them out," says Dr.
Sieburth. "When she found out I had a PhD in botany, I thought she was
going to die."

---
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