The Language of Plants

Author: Monica Gagliano
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452954127
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Book Description
The eighteenth-century naturalist Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) argued that plants are animate, living beings and attributed them sensation, movement, and a certain degree of mental activity, emphasizing the continuity between humankind and plant existence. Two centuries later, the understanding of plants as active and communicative organisms has reemerged in such diverse fields as plant neurobiology, philosophical posthumanism, and ecocriticism. The Language of Plants brings together groundbreaking essays from across the disciplines to foster a dialogue between the biological sciences and the humanities and to reconsider our relation to the vegetal world in new ethical and political terms. Viewing plants as sophisticated information-processing organisms with complex communication strategies (they can sense and respond to environmental cues and play an active role in their own survival and reproduction through chemical languages) radically transforms our notion of plants as unresponsive beings, ready to be instrumentally appropriated. By providing multifaceted understandings of plants, informed by the latest developments in evolutionary ecology, the philosophy of biology, and ecocritical theory, The Language of Plants promotes the freedom of imagination necessary for a new ecological awareness and more sustainable interactions with diverse life forms. Contributors: Joni Adamson, Arizona State U; Nancy E. Baker, Sarah Lawrence College; Karen L. F. Houle, U of Guelph; Luce Irigaray, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris; Erin James, U of Idaho; Richard Karban, U of California at Davis; André Kessler, Cornell U; Isabel Kranz, U of Vienna; Michael Marder, U of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU); Timothy Morton, Rice U; Christian Nansen, U of California at Davis; Robert A. Raguso, Cornell U; Catriona Sandilands, York U.

The Language of Plants

Author: Julia Graves
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 1584201037
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 470

Book Description
9 lectures, Oxford, England, August 16-29, 1922 (CW 305) These lectures follow from those presented in Soul Economy. Given during a conference on spiritual values in education and life and attended by many prominent people of the time, Steiner's Oxford lectures present the principles of Waldorf education at the highest cultural level. The Manchester Guardian reported: "Dr. Steiner's lectures...brought to us in a very vivid way an ideal of humanity in education. He spoke to us about teachers who, freely and unitedly, unrestricted by external prescription, develop their educational methods exclusively out of a thorough knowledge of human nature. He spoke to us about a kind of knowledge needed by the teacher, a knowledge of the being of man and the world, which is at the same time scientific and also penetrates into the most intimate inner life, which is intuitive and artistic." These lectures form one of the best introductions to Waldorf education. German source: Die geistig-seelischen Grundkräfte der Erziehungskunst. Spirituelle Werte in Erziehung und sozialem Leben (GA 305).

The Lost Language of Plants

Author: Stephen Harrod Buhner
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1890132888
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 338

Book Description
This could be the most important book you will read this year. Around the office at Chelsea Green it is referred to as the "pharmaceutical Silent Spring." Well-known author, teacher, lecturer, and herbalist Stephen Harrod Buhner has produced a book that is certain to generate controversy. It consists of three parts: A critique of technological medicine, and especially the dangers to the environment posed by pharmaceuticals and other synthetic substances that people use in connection with health care and personal body care. A new look at Gaia Theory, including an explanation that plants are the original chemistries of Gaia and those phytochemistries are the fundamental communications network for the Earth's ecosystems. Extensive documentation of how plants communicate their healing qualities to humans and other animals. Western culture has obliterated most people's capacity to perceive these messages, but this book also contains valuable information on how we can restore our faculties of perception. The book will affect readers on rational and emotional planes. It is grounded in both a New Age spiritual sensibility and hard science. While some of the author's claims may strike traditional thinkers as outlandish, Buhner presents his arguments with such authority and documentation that the scientific underpinnings, however unconventional, are completely credible. The overall impact is a powerful, eye-opening expos' of the threat that our allopathic Western medical system, in combination with our unquestioning faith in science and technology, poses to the primary life-support systems of the planet. At a time when we are preoccupied with the terrorist attacks and the possibility of biological warfare, perhaps it is time to listen to the planet. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned about the state of the environment, the state of health care, and our cultural sanity.

Get to Know the Language of Plants

Author: Majid Jahanbin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781949885057
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
Everything you need to know about plants

What a Plant Knows

Author: Daniel Chamovitz
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374288739
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Book Description
Explores the secret lives of various plants, from the colors they see to whether or not they really like classical music to their ability to sense nearby danger.

Thus Spoke the Plant

Author: Monica Gagliano
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1623172438
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
A research scientist’s fascinating study of plant communication reveals how we “have been misunderstanding plants, and ourselves, for all of history” (The Paris Review). “A compelling story of discovery . . . [that] will change the way you see the world”—for fans of The Hidden Life of Trees (Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass) In this “phytobiography”—a collection of stories written in partnership with a plant—research scientist Monica Gagliano shares genuine first-hand accounts from her research into plant communication and cognition. By transcending the view of plants as the objects of scientific materialism, Gagliano encourages us to rethink plants as people—beings with subjectivity, consciousness, and volition, and hence having the capacity for their own perspectives and voices. The book draws on up-close-and-personal encounters with the plants themselves, as well as plant shamans, indigenous elders, and mystics from around the world and integrates these experiences with an incredible research journey and the groundbreaking scientific discoveries that emerged from it. Gagliano has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers on how plants have a Pavlov-like response to stimuli and can learn, remember, and communicate to neighboring plants. She has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, for the first time experimentally demonstrating that plants emit their own 'voices' and, moreover, detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. By demonstrating experimentally that learning is not the exclusive province of animals, Gagliano has re-ignited the discourse on plant subjectivity and ethical and legal standing. This is the story of how she made those discoveries and how the plants helped her along the way.

The Life of Plants

Author: Emanuele Coccia
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509531548
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 176

Book Description
We barely talk about them and seldom know their names. Philosophy has always overlooked them; even biology considers them as mere decoration on the tree of life. And yet plants give life to the Earth: they produce the atmosphere that surrounds us, they are the origin of the oxygen that animates us. Plants embody the most direct, elementary connection that life can establish with the world. In this highly original book, Emanuele Coccia argues that, as the very creator of atmosphere, plants occupy the fundamental position from which we should analyze all elements of life. From this standpoint, we can no longer perceive the world as a simple collection of objects or as a universal space containing all things, but as the site of a veritable metaphysical mixture. Since our atmosphere is rendered possible through plants alone, life only perpetuates itself through the very circle of consumption undertaken by plants. In other words, life exists only insofar as it consumes other life, removing any moral or ethical considerations from the equation. In contrast to trends of thought that discuss nature and the cosmos in general terms, Coccia’s account brings the infinitely small together with the infinitely big, offering a radical redefinition of the place of humanity within the realm of life.

Of Plants and People

Author: Charles Bixler Heiser
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806124100
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
What are the origins of agriculture? How did people learn to domesticate plants? How did they come to improve some? How did they learn special techniques for processing certain plants for food? In these highly personal and informal essays-old-fashioned botany, the author calls them-noted botanist Charles Heiser investigates those and other questions raised by the interactions of plants and people. His purpose is to try to find the origins of some of our domesticated plants and to consider other plants that might someday contribute to our food resources. In Of Plants and People, Heiser examines the origins of pumpkins, squashes, and other cucurbits. In The Totora and Thor, he digresses from food plants to trace the spread of the totora reed from South America to Pacific islands. Little Oranges of Quito is about the domestication of a wild plant, the naranjilla, that is going on today. Chenopods: From Weeds to the Halls of Montezuma concerns the uses of the Andean quinua and its relatives, and Sangorache and the Day of the Dead, A Trip to Tulcán, and Chochos and Other Lupines all examine Latin-American domestic plants that could contribute to our own foods. Green ‘Tomatoes’ and Purple 'Cucumbers, the tomate and the pepino, respectively, describes two other crops that have received scant notice in the United States. The subject of "How Many Kinds of Peppers Are There?" is the genus Capsicum, with its sweet green and hot red peppers and all their related species and varieties. Heiser again writes about nonfood plants in the essay "Peperomias," but in the next chapter, "Sumpweed," he discusses a plant that was once used for food but that has been neglected in favor of others. And in "A Plague of Locusts" the author compares the honey locust tree with a close relative to try to determine what gives particular plants advantages in certain environments. In his final essay, Seeds, Sex, and Sacrifice, Heiser relates myth, anthropological evidence, and botanical findings to review the connection between religion and the origin of agriculture. The audience for this book will include botanists, horticulturists, anthropologists, and any reader interested in the interrelationships between plants and people.

The Language of Houseplants

Author: Cheralyn Darcey
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1925924874
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
Find the perfect indoor plant to share your life with.Every plant has a meaning, energy and qualities that will enhance your life and the spaces you live and work in. This stunning guidebook features 44 of the most popular houseplants, each beautifully depicted with a vintage artwork and additional indoor gardening care guide and some helpful tips to keep your plants happy and healthy. Resource lists of plants for each month, and their meanings, a gift guide, as well as information on ways for you to discover the language of any plant, will assist you as you grow a thriving bond with your new botanical friends.- A unique reference guide to understanding the power and language of houseplants.- Individualized instruction on each plant to keep them thriving.- How to garden indoors? - Learn to select plants to enhance the energy of indoor spaces. - Fully illustrated with vintage botanical images.

The Nation of Plants

Author: Stefano Mancuso
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1635421004
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 177

Book Description
In this playful yet informative manifesto, a leading plant neurobiologist presents the eight fundamental pillars on which the life of plants—and by extension, humans—rests. Even if they behave as though they were, humans are not the masters of the Earth, but only one of its most irksome residents. From the moment of their arrival, about three hundred thousand years ago—nothing when compared to the history of life on our planet—humans have succeeded in changing the conditions of the planet so drastically as to make it a dangerous place for their own survival. The causes of this reckless behavior are in part inherent in their predatory nature, but they also depend on our total incomprehension of the rules that govern a community of living beings. We behave like children who wreak havoc, unaware of the significance of the things they are playing with. In The Nation of Plants, the most important, widespread, and powerful nation on Earth finally gets to speak. Like attentive parents, plants, after making it possible for us to live, have come to our aid once again, giving us their rules: the first Universal Declaration of Rights of Living Beings written by the plants. A short charter based on the general principles that regulate the common life of plants, it establishes norms applicable to all living beings. Compared to our constitutions, which place humans at the center of the entire juridical reality, in conformity with an anthropocentricism that reduces to things all that is not human, plants offer us a revolution.