The Light Eaters
How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
Ratings6
Average rating4.7
15
How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth
Ratings6
Average rating4.7
Award-winning environment and science reporter Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom and reveals the astonishing capabilities of the green life all around us. It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit, to name just a few remarkable talents. The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In looking closely, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close. What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how they influence our understanding of what a plant is. We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for--if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants--and our own place--in the natural world.
Reviews with the most likes.
An absolutely beautiful layout of the way plant science is coalescing into something completely new and unexplored. The way we look at the world around us is starting to change - perhaps to change back to a way it already had been in the past - but to change nonetheless. This feels like a spiritual exploration of the fact that plants are people too. Not humans, but people.
Rare Blend Of Science And Mysticism Marred By Racism And Misandry. Quite honestly, I read the Audible version of this book, where Schlanger's wonder of her topic comes through in her breathy, reverent reading of her text - and kudos to her, as not many authors can pull off reading their own text for the Audible version. (Though yes, this *is* far more common in nonfiction.) But *because* I read the Audible, I actually had to borrow this book from the Jacksonville Public Library, where I live, to check the length of its bibliography - which does in fact clock in at a relatively healthy 25%. So despite the extraordinary claims made throughout this text, at least it is reasonably well documented.
All of the above noted, however... Schlanger makes some *remarkable* claims throughout this text, and while I don't agree with at least one 1* review on Goodreads that she was nearly dogmatic - my summary of that review's arguments - about her insistence on her so-broad-as-to-be-nearly-useless definitions of concepts such as "intelligence" and "communication" and "consciousness", I *do* agree that Schlanger stretches these words so as to be nearly incomprehensible to anyone.
While Schlanger does a remarkable job as a journalist covering all aspects of her chosen topic, she also crosses the boundary lines of science and mysticism so early, often, and frequently that to read this book is very nearly to watch a Dr. Strange MCU movie and accept that the conceits of its mystic "sciences" are real in the reality in which you are reading this review. Her skills as a writer make the text flow beautifully and, again, reverently... but the grasp on objective reality one would normally expect in a popular science book... isn't always as "there" as it should be in such a book. Instead, Schlanger's embrace of the (at least near) mystic is more readily apparent, particularly through certain sections of the text.
And while this is bad enough, and let's call it a half star deduction, these are almost style issues - few would bat an eye if this were labeled more a philosophy or ethics book than a science book.
No, the real problem with the text, at least for me, was the frequent excusing of mystics claiming to be scientists by claiming that their mysticism is no worse than far more accomplished actual scientists such as Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, pointing to their own mystic beliefs (common in their era over 100 yrs ago) and proclaiming "but those were white men" (an exact quote) and so their mystic beliefs were excused. No ma'am. Their mystic beliefs were excused because they achieved great scientific accomplishments. The people you excuse have not reinvented the way humans live or communicate many times over, and if they ever manage to achieve a similar accomplishment, you won't be the only one excusing their mysticisms. It is the blatant and pervasive racist misandry of these types of comments throughout the text that results in the other half star deduction, as they are not *so* pervasive as to necessitate a full star deduction of their own.
Overall this is absolutely an interesting read on many fronts, one that one can learn a great deal from and on that is documented enough that its claims should be taken seriously - but as we all know, sources *can* be cherry picked, so a great deal of discernment and further reading is also very much in order after reading this text.
Recommended.
Originally posted at bookanon.com.
