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LifeworldsAuthor: Alexa Firmenich
A podcast series that explores how to orient your life around nature. We discover the mindsets, skills and actions that are required to partner wisely with other forms of life and engage in acts of brilliant restoration. Join me on this intimate journey into the eyes and minds of other species; learn how our guests are living in deep relationship with ecologies; be electrified by expanding your field of reality, and let these stories spark your reconnection to natures multiverse.By restoring our relationship with nature, and learning what it is to be nature, we begin to restore ourselves.www.lifeworld.earth Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Language: en Genres: Life Sciences, Nature, Science Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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21. The Science of Plant Intelligence & Neurobiology - with Paco Calvo
Episode 21
Tuesday, 2 April, 2024
Are plants conscious? Do they experience forms of cognition and intelligence that go beyond patterned and hard-wired evolutionary behaviors? Do intelligence and consciousness really require a brain and central nervous system? Or should we consider intelligence on Earth to be less brain-bound, perhaps not even residing in the individual self, but rather in an enmeshment within an ecosystem? A swarm intelligence, a networked mind, distributed, adaptive, like a murmuration of starlings in the setting sun. And how would we even begin to start answering these questions empirically?Today it is my explicit intention to change the way that you think about the kingdom of plants and the intelligence that resides within it. This is a controversial topic with scientists on all sides of the spectrum vehemently advocating for or against concepts.It was Darwin who first introduced to the Western world the concept of the "root brain" hypothesis, where the tips of plant roots act in some ways like a brain, a distributed intelligence network. They challenge our very notions of an individual. Plants exhibit qualities that are adaptive, flexible, and goal directed – all hallmarks of an intelligence that goes beyond hard wired impulsive responses. They make decisions, perform predictive modeling, share nutrients and recognize kin. Electrical and chemical signalling systems have been identified in plants very similar to those found in the nervous systems of animals, including neurotransmitters like dopamine and melatonin.Our guest today is Paco Calvo, a professor at the University of Murcia in Spain, where he leads the Minimal Intelligence Lab focusing on the study of minimal cognition in plants. He combines insights from biology, philosophy, and cognitive science to explore plant behavior, decision-making, and problem-solving, challenging conventional perspectives of his field. Paco has said that ‘to ‘know thyself’, one has to think well beyond oneself, or even one’s species. We are only one small part of a kaleidoscopic variety of ways of being alive.Episode Website LinkShow Links:MINT labPlanta Sapiens bookTime Lapse Video of vines and plantsMichael Pollan NYTInternational Laboratory of Plant NeurobiologyENG - intelligent-trees - The DocumentaryMonica Gagliano**TED talk** Stefano Mancuso The roots of plant intelligenceScientific American - "Do Plants Think?Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes.Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
