Por supuesto, cualquier tratamiento así de amplio se expone a ser recibido con un saludable escepticismo. Conceptos como inteligencia, cognición y consciencia están cargados de ambigüedad, y trazar las relaciones que establecen entre sí es incluso más turbio. Uno podría, por ejemplo, aceptar que las plantas almacenan, recuperan y procesan información en modos parecidos a los que usan los animales, facilitando la interacción flexible con el ambiente, sin que le convenza en absoluto de la posibilidad de que las plantas tengan consciencia. Mucho depende aquí de lo que consideremos consciencia. Por ejemplo, Calvo introduce la (bastante técnica) “teoría de la información integrada” (IIT por sus siglas en inglés) para apoyar su argumento a favor de la sensibilidad vegetal. IIT mantiene que la consciencia se corresponde con la interdependencia de las partes de un sistema y la irreducibilidad del sistema a esas partes. A mayor interdependencia e irreducibilidad, mayor grado de consciencia alcanza el sistema. IIT predice que el cerebro tiene altos niveles de consciencia, pero también predice que los fotodiodos y los átomos son también un poco conscientes. Planta Sapiens presents ‘fertile possibilities’ to the public and in doing so it has put science on notice. All plants are juggling to respond to climatic change. They are encoded to anticipate this, with their attentive neurobiochemistry driven by a helix that is so similar to that of the human family. Should we be surprised? No! We should be delighted with Professor Calvo’s seeding of scientific curiosity for the hope that it offers." - Diana Beresford-Kroeger, author of To Speak for the Trees 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 While plants may not have brains or move around as we do, cutting-edge science is revealing that they have astonishing inner worlds of an alternate kind to ours. They can plan ahead, learn, recognise their relatives, assess risks and make decisions. They can even be put to sleep. Innovative new tools might allow us to actually see them do these things – from electrophysiological recordings to MRI and PET scans. If you can look in the right way, a world full of drama unfurls. Calvo has a wonderfully infectious enthusiasm for his subject that makes this book, for all its complex science, a joy to read. He challenges us to set aside our 'zoocentric' perspective and to change our view of plants radically: from mechanisms akin to robots to complex organisms with a range of behaviours, responding to and anticipating their environments. In doing so, he has written a genuinely mind-expanding book"

Planta Sapiens by Paco Calvo review – extraterrestrials in

I am sad to say that this book just wasn't for me. I am a huge nature lover of both animals and plants and so love to read nature books but unfortunately I found this book to be too dense and without enough interesting facts to keep me really involved. But as fascinating as these titbits are, you have to cut through reams of deadwood about the author’s career to reach them. It’s a shame. This subject deserves writing that fills the reader with a sense of wonder, encouraging us to think of ourselves as part of an intricate, intelligent biosphere that encompasses flora and fauna alike.Scientist or not, I think it’s important for everyone to consider all possibilities, and this book is an excellent place to start if you want to challenge your own long-held beliefs. But merely posing the question makes this book part of a wider movement, beginning with Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (1975) and including Frans de Waal’s pioneering Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (2016) and Peter Godfrey-Smith’s masterly Other Minds (2016), which challenges anthropocentric ideas about intelligence, suggesting it’s not a uniquely human trait. It’s difficult to imagine a world in which plants are considered with anything like the empathy this book suggests they deserve, and not only because this would mean confronting a truly alien system of perceiving the world; it would also raise the question of what even painstakingly ethical vegans are supposed to eat all day long – after all, man cannot live on jelly beans alone. Paco Calvo is a professor of the philosophy of science and principal investigator at the Universidad de Murcia’s Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINT Lab) in Spain.

Planta Sapiens Unmasking Plant Intelligence - NHBS

Our human abilities are thus challenged by the rest of the living world: Look at what your cognition has wrought. Will you sapient apes change your ways? Instead of being misleading, as critics have claimed, Planta Sapiens helps us do so by expanding our imaginations and provoking more creative science. We may not learn whether lettuce has feelings, but we do come away with deeper empathy and admiration for plants.— David George Haskell The second issue is that there is just very little evidence. There is little study directed towards these topics, so small as to feel like a drop in the ocean. This means grand theories are being spun from a small and fragile base. 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? Planta sapiens ofrece una perspectiva creativa y audaz sobre la biología vegetal y la ciencia cognitiva. Partiendo de experimentos realizados con las tecnologías más avanzadas, este ensayo apasionante nos invita a pensar el mundo natural de una manera radicalmente distinta. Esto es especialmente evidente en la discusión de la ética vegetal. Como indica Calvo, el estatus moral de las plantas puede resultarnos extraordinariamente inconveniente. Ya nos esforzamos bastante para reconocer el sufrimiento animal cuando tomamos decisiones dietéticas, ¡imaginemos tener que considerar también el bienestar vegetal! Pero que algo sea cierto es independiente de si uno puede aceptarlo o no; en filosofía permanecemos vigilantes de la falacia llamada “el argumento de la incredulidad”. Y al contrario, que haya malos argumentos a favor de una idea no significa que no los haya también buenos. Uno puede no resultar convencido del estatus moral de las plantas, quizá porque se mantiene justificadamente escéptico sobre la consciencia vegetal, pero sin duda, que “Planta Sapiens” y la investigación que revisa genere debate (quizá enconado) sobre tales temas es prueba de su valor intelectual.Koch, C. (2015). The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness is Widespread but Can’t be Computed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Planta Sapiens by Paco Calvo | Hachette UK

Paco Calvo is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINTLab) in the University of Murcia, Spain, where his research is primarily in exploring and experimenting with the possibility of plant intelligence. In his research at?MINTLab, he studies the ecological basis of plant intelligence by conducting experimental studies at the intersection of plant neurobiology and ecological psychology. He has given many talks on the topic of plant intelligence to academic and non-academic audiences around the world during the last decade. We are unimaginable without plants, yet surprisingly blind to their powers and behaviours. Planta Sapiens weaves science and history into an absorbing exploration of the many ways that plants rise to the challenge of living"Planta Sapiens è una folgorante esplorazione della vita vegetale e un invito a pensare al mondo naturale in modo nuovo e anticonformista. Stiamo smantellando le tradizionali gerarchie della natura, diventando sempre più consapevoli della vita interiore delle altre specie e di quante similitudini esistono tra noi e loro. Non possiamo più considerarci l’unica specie intelligente privilegiata sulla Terra. E se vogliamo salvare il bioma globale, non dobbiamo farlo. Se impariamo a osservare e studiare le piante in maniera diversa, rimarremo davvero stupiti da ciò che potremo scoprire. 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. The authors talk to researchers working on all the dimensions of plant intelligence, all the ways their physiologies have developed alternatives to animal neurology. And the upshot of all that research is stated plainly throughout the whole book: that plants have the ability to both learn and remember. “Individual plants can acquire new information about the environment,” our authors write, “retain this information, and use it to guide their future behavior.” They can exhibit compassion for other plants, display individual preferences, and show grogginess after being anesthetized (this last item seems oddly important to our authors; they bring it up insistently). Standing before the ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Paco Calvo was reminded of its legendary inscription – the Oracle’s request to Know Thyself – and in that moment had an epiphany; “I realised clearly that to ‘know thyself’, one had to think well beyond oneself, or even one’s species.” Having dedicated these past few years to researching the many ways in which animal senses and sentience shed light on what it means to be human, I agree. However, whereas my zoological training directs me towards the animal kingdom to better understand myself and others, Calvo – a professor of philosophy – looks to far more distant relations, a kingdom apart. Decades of research document plants’ impressive abilities: they communicate with each other, manipulate other species, and move in sophisticated ways. Lesser known, however, is that although plants may not have brains, their internal workings reveal a system not unlike the neuronal networks running through our own bodies. They can learn and remember, possessing an intelligence that allows them to behave in flexible, forward-looking, and goal-directed ways.