ramsey affifi - Ramsey Affifi

Between scientific explanations and life: Exploring the chasm

The difference between how the world appears in direct experience and how it appears through investigation generates philosophical problems. This is one reason why it is impossible to separate science education from philosophy: even if a scientific theory is not itself ‘philosophical’ (which I question, but for another time), the chasm that theory opens up when juxtaposed against taken-for-granted experience is filled with question marks. Consider, for example, the difference between the mechanical cause-and-effect explanations commonplace in molecular biology and the feeling of what it is like to be alive at ‘our’ level of the world.

One quality that obviously characterises living organisms, be it trees or birds or people, is that they are organic. This means that while there may be regularities in their structure or behaviour, they are not predictable. In animal just as in plant, life feels wild and free, each according to its kind. With the rise of mechanistic explanations, we are posed with a problem. Between wildness and mechanism, what is appearance and what is reality? This is a philosophical question, and it gives rise to philosophical hypotheses: Animals are ‘really’ just giant, complex molecules, and their wildness is just an illusion. Or, the world is everywhere wild and the causal necessity we see in biochemistry tells us more about how we look at the world when we investigate it than how it ‘really’ is. Or perhaps some hypothesis about how order evolves freedom, and so on. A similar chain of questions arise when we consider how these biochemicals are assumed to be lacking sentience whereas our experience of life is that it is filled with feeling. How did molecules become feeling? How could we know? How do we know molecules are insensate?

If we do not confront the chasm, there are pedagogical dangers. If we do, there are exciting rewards. If students are continuously taught that varied aspects of life are all explained by underlying mechanism, they may begin importing such schemes into how they template encounters with life in their daily world. I often see people explain the activity of an animal they see as ‘just instinct’, which is an effective way of shutting out any further interest into the creature. There are implications for Learning for Sustainability here, because constrained ways of seeing creatures lead to constrained ways of interacting with them, further a dislocation of humans and the rest of the living world. Alternatively, many students may simply not see the significance of these countless mechanical details, which feel disconnected from their real worlds. The may get bored and tune out, concluding that even though they thought they were passionate about the living world, biology is not for them. I worry often a combination occurs, where students abandon the subject feeling that life is a complex, tedious machine without vitality, a repetitive reorganising of particles without freshness, an intimidating scribble of acronyms and arrows without inspiration.

We might avoid turning students off by confronting the chasm head on. The contradictions between our models and the world we so clearly see and breathe gives rise to questions, and it is in these questions that students can connect the meaning of what they study to their lives. Is life just a complex molecule? If so, then why do living things seem so free? How can molecules become free and still obey their laws? If molecules have wildness in them too, then why do they succumb to our chemical theories? Is it possible to come up with an explanation that does not reduce phenomena to cause and effect mechanism? What does the answer to this question mean about human knowing and/or the world?

Exploring the chasm is the flip side of cultivating knowledge. An enriching experience more deeply encountering the world arises through engaging with the interplay between answers and questions. Science curricula will not effectively engage the imagination of many students when subject teaching is conceived primarily as the developing and deepening of knowledge alone. It will exclude those who vaguely feel the contradictions I’ve been discussing, feelings unacknowledged as the contradictions go unarticulated and the course units march on. For those teaching in countries where assessment is still geared towards establishing how many facts have been filled into the head, working the chasm will likely be a few minutes here and there, every so often. But we must judge our educational impact based on the amount of time we spend on a subject. A careful and well-timed question may take 20 seconds to pose, a further 10 seconds to linger on in silence, but have far more reaching consequences for a young person that a dozen hours spent on mandatory course specifications.

Education’s Copernican Revolutions

Do you remember when you learned the Earth revolved around the Sun? I certainly don’t. But why not? It is such a surprising fact, one astonishing enough to deserve inducing its own ‘flashbulb memory.’ Its surprise cuts in several ways. First, there is the obviously strange idea that we live on a sphere with no direction up and yet we do not fall off. Second, is the idea that we are constantly in movement, and moving very quickly too, around a giant ball of fire over a 100 times bigger than our own planet. This movement, this speed, and the spherical shape of the Earth are not felt in direct experience. Learning that the Earth revolves around the Sun is therefore a moment where we see that the way the world ‘appears’ is significantly different from what it ‘actually’ is. It is like Plato’s cave, but without the need for a convoluted metaphor. The duality between appearance and reality has reappeared in countless ways in human thought, but the Copernican revolution remains one of the most visceral possible encounters with this split.

That I do not remember learning it implies to me I learned it too early. There is a point when we can be told something without ‘getting’ why it is significant, and so when we do come to understand what the ideas means we do not feel its significance. It is almost like how children come to understand the meaning of words. Using them first, and gradually getting a more nuanced sense of the contexts they can be used, and only much later thinking about what the words actually mean. We seem to have a similar pragmatic engagement with ideas about the world, where ideas often regulate activity first and are only sometimes later popped out of this field of immersive, unreflected upon usage, to be engaged explicitly.

If not the Copernican revolution then perhaps there is some other idea that came to you at just the right time. The significance of its truth hit you like a thunderbolt, clutching your imagination, seizing your heart. What if there was only 100 such amazing ideas in our world, and say 15 more yet to be discovered? We do not know how many mind-bending ideas await discovery, and many of us hope there are an infinite in store. But it could be that all have been discovered, or that there are only finite left, or that it simply becomes too expensive (economically, ecologically, etc.) to keep discovering them. If we do not know, do we assume amazing ideas are a renewable resource, to be mined ad infinitum? Or do we treat such ideas with the same care and attention we ought to treat any potentially limited resource? What is the ‘sustainable’ approach to engaging with amazement or wonder?

One approach would be to dismiss the problem altogether. Even if there are just a few such ideas, it does not matter. The primary purpose of such knowledge is for it to be ‘used’, not for whatever effect ‘realising’ it may or may not have. The quicker people know how genes, atoms, solar systems, electricity, ecologies, etc ‘work’, the more able they will be in engaging responsively or productively in the world. From this counterargument, one might even suppose that the basic structure of the world ought to be learned quite early, so it is ‘first nature’ just like one’s mother tongue, rather than counterintuitive facts to be wrestled clumsily and spoken of with a lisp.

I do not know if that is true for some ideas. For example, perhaps there are ways of understanding the animals, plants and weather in one’s local ecology that seem to depend on early immersion to achieve fluency. But many of the big ideas I have in mind are not the kind with daily practical implications. Most of us continue to say ‘sunrise’ and ‘sunset’ and navigate our homes or towns as though the earth was flat. So, let’s assume I am specifying the kind of scientific (but also philosophical, spiritual, etc.) ideas that have significant possible impact on humans conceptualise themselves and their place in the world, but not the kind likely needed for any obvious use in our quotidian lives.

If we can agree that there at least some ideas that are powerful but without immediate application in such daily contexts, and that such ideas can be taught at the wrong time, or the wrong pace, then some educational questions follow:

If there is a finite number of such powerful ideas, when and how should they be taught? My pedagogical intuition is that we should be slow and careful, inviting and provoking particular students in response to interests, thoughts and feelings we see developing in them. But until there is a broader understanding of the role of slowing such knowledge down, parents, the media, and others will surely ‘let the cat of the bag’ too early despite our discretion. I view this as short-circuiting students’ capacity for enchantment and nothing short of a normalised infringement on the rights of a child. It leads to people educated with a head full of facts but undernourished and underskilled in exploring emotions associated with such facts. It is also likely a violation of nature.
Is it possible to recover some sense of the power of such ideas even after we have habituated to them? If so, how? What kind of meditation, discussion, prompts, activities, language or art, or thought experiments might re-sensitise? Note that the answer to this would address a bigger education problem: our tendency to take many things for granted in our lives, and the benefits of reawakening feeling towards them.
If there are only a finite number of such ideas still undiscovered, then what pedagogical implications does this have for how we ought to pursue further inquiry into nature? Where do we slow down? Are there some questions which we simply let be unanswered? And how do we communicate such societal questions to students? Is it important to protect the eros of our encounter with the world in a pornographic age? And does the mystery we protect tell us something important about the world in turn, like how the fog on a mountain accentuates its contours while hiding its face?

https://youtu.be/0jHsq36_NTU

ChatGPT and dogs

I am watching a dog chasing a ball. I see so clearly that matter is not insensate. It is able to yearn, to pursue with frenzy what it craves. Perhaps all matter yearns to become what it can next become, and the evolution of the world is brought about by its ongoing desire. When we say particles are attracted to or repelled by one another, perhaps we should take these terms seriously. Perhaps matter channels itself into different capacities and intensities to desire. How else to make sense of the clear fact that once there was a zygote, before that carbon and hydrogen, and now a frantic chase?

People are eagerly discussing whether ChatGPT is intelligent, and if not, they are making predictions on when it might be. ChatGPT’s performance is not arising out of the attractions and repulsions of its matter, but by a structure imposed on it. By contrast, whatever problem solving abilities dogs have, they are in service of what dogs desire. In life, intelligence is how organisms find ways of satisfying what they yearn. It is completely interconnected with and dependent upon an emotive tug. Without this tug, there is no incentive. The animal sits listless, –almost like a computer. Granted, if all matter yearns, then the electrons and silicone and what not inside a computer will be compelled towards certain ends. But these ends are being funnelled by the organisation of the hardware and the constraints of the software. Perhaps the electrons desire to move down the wires. But the disconnect between the apparent function of the computer at the level we interface with it, and its material process is most evident when the computer breaks down owing to a ‘malfunction’ of some inner component. It no longer does the apparently intelligent things we want it to, but it may in fact be an instance where matter is achieving change through its own quietly persisting willing and achieving. One might suggest that it is no different from a cell ‘breaking down’ and becoming cancerous, but the analogy is flawed. The activity of cells produces the multicellular organisms that they in turn depend upon. A cell malfunctions when it no longer reliably brings forth what it has co-created. The material in a computer is not disrupting its own creation when it burns out a circuit.

In the tradition of enactivism, biologists sometimes suggest that cognition and living are the same process (ex Maturana and Varela). Cognition makes the self, and self-making is cognitive. The intuition when seeing the powerful impulsive obsession of a dog and contrasting it with the passivity of ChatGPT opens for me thoughts that such self-making (or ‘autopoiesis’) is driven by desire. Schopenhauer spoke of a ‘will’ in nature, and Bergson of a desire or volition that creatively compels evolutionary process. And yet, the idea seems odd to modern ears (even New Materialists feel a need to de-phenomenologise desire), as science has decided (without evidence one way or another — what evidence could settle the question?), that matter cannot yearn unless it happens to be a human, or perhaps a mammal. But how molecules, operating according to physicochemical ‘laws’ evolve the ability to thirst for anything, is quite impenetrable. Wherever we look in physiology, we see mechanisms of causal interaction between parts. We even see the mechanisms underlying such thirst. But this does not explain its urgency, intensity, feeling and power.

I should also say we don’t even know where to begin in thinking about how to create a computer programme that desire. In science fiction depictions, it often just kind of happens. The problem may be that unles matter itself is organising into hardware and software, we will be stuck simulating desire through imposing constraints and rules. And so, the desire in ChatGPT remains extrinsic, in the minds of the people creating it.

One might suppose all matter is affective. While we say that particles yearn or have desire, this is not meant to suggest it is at all like the spatiotemporally complex and textured kinds of affects that multicellular organisms can have. The difference between the kind of desire a particle has compared to a human may be as wide as the structural and organisational difference between them. It is simply to suggest that, just as a human and a particle are both material, albeit vastly contrasting in scale and complexity, so too are they both feeling, and with just as much difference.

It is not scientific to assume that matter is feeling or unfeeling because we have no empirical evidence either way. And yet, this is nevertheless a topic that matters for science education. Why? Because we do have theories and hypotheses about the evolution and development of feeling (since Darwin many biologists have written about it), and also because it is striking that all our scientific progress remains inconclusive on this point. It tells us something about science, and about nature, when empirical investigation cannot make concrete progress in certain realms of inquiry. The question unfathomable marks science opens up are just as important ‘products’ as the predictive theories it generates. Particles may well be completely insensate, but then it is a powerful mystery how it is possible that they organised themselves into feeling.

But the most important reason it matters, I think, is twofold. On the one hand, the misidentification of AI with intelligence is rooted in a sharp dualism between cognition and a feeling body, and each time we succumb to this separation in thinking about entities in the world, we further detach our thinking minds from our own feeling bodies. We risk becoming more like a computer at a time when we need to pay attention to what our own hearts yearn for, and reorienting thinking in such service. On the other hand, such misidentification also continues to drive a wedge between humans (and computers) and the rest of the biological world. The latter may not have the computation complexity of a computer or a person, but calling AI intelligent and not a tree or bird does much damage to our relationship with other species.

A Spinozan take on the academic’s desire for “impact”

Sometimes academics want ‘impact.” We want to ‘make a difference’ in the world, now and after we die. According to Terror Management Theory scholars, desire to make lasting change may be rooted in a fear of death. A kind of surrogate immortality. But the aim to see one’s impact externalised for posthumous significance stems from a thwarted understanding of nature. Everything we do is both the product of infinite events in space and extending back infinitely in time, while also having infinite and eternal ramifications. The entire history of the universe in its every detail was necessary to bring forth the uniqueness of each particular thing existing now, and each thing contributes essentially to its endless extended ripples and permutations. Perceiving the scope of one’s power in changing the world gets corrupted when detached from awareness that this very power is itself nature’s power, present and effective regardless and independently of whatever evaluations humans place on who or what has ‘impact’. One’s existence necessarily is equally infinitely significant and insignificant. Rather than feeding into the seeking of personal immortality, this realisation destroys the foundation of the ego, and offers in its place a deeper matrix within which to conceive oneself and others. In other words, every one of us cannot help but have an eternal impact.

All things are immortal, forever a part of what the world is, has been, and will become, and the thread-lines between these. And yet, all things in existence change, echoing, reflecting, refracting, varying… And so, “she lives on in our hearts” is her soul fractalising out in a hundred different forms, that themselves change even as our memories of her recur. By great great grandchildren, her effects are now in rhythm and melody instead of voice and image, and gone is a conscious association with her being. She has also merged with the rhythm and melody of countless others. Merged not in the sense of dissolution, but as contributing through interplay, dialogically, in ways now implicit. She lives on not only in the mind or behaviour of other humans, but in all things. The reason why no two things in the universe are identical, and the reason why there is necessarily ‘experimental error’ in scientific experiments (however precise), is because each thing is stitched into space and time in its own particular place. The conditions are different, which means the weight of the entire universe –past and present– offers to each being something absolutely unique, while in turn each gives back its uniqueness, reshaping nature through its arising. She has forever influenced ever forest she’s walked through or stream she’s waded in. We forever change everything we interact with, and to varying extents, we interact with everything. This sounds like a ‘spiritual’ pronouncement, and perhaps it is. But it is implied but the insights humans have gleaned from centuries of empirical investigation into how things hang together, from evolutionary process to ecological relation, and beyond.

Spinoza tells us an increase in our power to act is experienced as joy. But he also says everything is interconnected and he denies free will. This seems like a contradiction, but only from the point of view that conceives ‘power to act’ egoistically. This is the same partial lens that seeks personal immortality. The power to act individually is ultimately increased by recognising that one’s individuality is the process and product of nature. It frees us from judgment of self and other entrapments that limit exploration of what we are as existences arising uniquely in the world.

One acts– as a unique but interconnected activity of nature itself. The more one is able to act -be an activist (as Naess calls it in “Spinoza and the Deep Ecology Movement” (3250)), the more one experiences joy. It is joyful to act according to our own interests and abilities. It enlivens and energises to act in the way nature has uniquely gathered in us, and which it has given for us to contribute back into it. This means acting towards those things which attract us to action, because what we can care about or have compassion for is also unique to us. Active care is a form of what Spinoza calls amor intellectualis (loving understanding); it is love towards another particular being that is itself a unique expression of infinite nature, and the love is developed through more deeply caring for this being and in so doing, understanding it ever more deeply.

Because our actions have infinite consequences, we cannot predict them. This does not mean that strategising for ‘impact’ is altogether pointless. But it comes with big warnings. First, we may be misled about what we think is worth prioritising. Second, strategising can lead us to close off to the impact we actually have. When discussing means and ends, Gandhi says ‘the means are everything.” What happens when we focus on ends in academic impact? Chasing publication citations can lead to fear of getting scooped, a hermit-like avoidance of exploring ideas with colleagues, an advertising attitude towards our work, or a jealousy of the fecundity of others. Even if these approaches make sense for maximising citation impact (and they may well not), it is not necessarily the case that an academic has their influence measured well through such metrics. The means aren’t only everything, they are also everywhere — scattering effects outward with our every gesture, pause, or movement. We do not know how we influence the world, but the clues and feedback needed to responsively attend are often in concrete encounter. If we choose some arbitrary and abstract spatiotemporal level as the domain for intended impact, we background what we currently interact with. Our students, family, colleagues, as well as our own values or nascent vulnerable ideas ignored by impatient ends-based thinking. Why do we hold onto certain stories of how we causally affect the world, and what are the effects of those stories? What keeps us caring about such things even if we know they are illusions? We should be vigilant about such questions if we choose to orient our power around particular aims we think worth achieving.

If the individual is expressing, and an expression of, the whole of nature, we can develop understanding love / loving understanding towards nature through focusing on individuals, and our quality of relationship with them. The actual things we meet in our moment to moment lives are the primary points of contact of our infinite power. We meet the world and respond best to its rich and dynamic textures just where we are. It is a mistake to instrumentalise or bypass those we encounter for imagined effects “down the road,” because how we affect the world now now affects the quality of subsequent reverberations. We only treat “down the road” as generalities, calculations, or statistical games which silence the infinity within us and others, which only appears in our commitment to the particulars.

How can I be an activist in loving attention to this person, this idea, this work? How can I help understand and support the infinite uniqueness coming forth in those I encounter, nascent with power and vulnerability, recognising also that my own uniqueness is also dependent on their flourishing? How and when do I teach in this way? I propose several interconnect approaches. The first is developing a metacognitive practice of realising when one has shifted into treating present particulars as means to an end, and remembering how flows of actual effects are backgrounded by such thinking. This might involve forming a community with others who can remind us, with the practice becoming a cultural norm. The second involves practices of attending to the uniqueness and becoming of the particulars we encounter. This does not mean ignoring how they are similar to others, because seeing similarity also foregrounds difference (affifi 2019). This may range from relatively passive appreciation of another, to actively engaging it. Third, we need to critically uncover how the perceived topology of our impact in the world has been contorted by systemic values and beliefs that do not serve humans or the earth. Because these values and beliefs have found their way into the 21st Century’s academic’s identity, we need to consciously create alternative spaces where we normalise pluralistic and process-focused approaches to conceiving our role and effect in the world.

Spinoza teaches that we share kinship with all. Even those we merely tolerate and even hate are all born of the same nature that births us too, and the same billions of years of interactions are working themselves out to produce all of us. We share this moment of space and time together, astonishingly so, in the midst of the countless dark miles in every direction. We sit around a campfire together, so to speak, and are each the kinds of beings that can appreciate its warmth and comfort. Our shared kinship softens rivalry. And yet, we each also manifest our shared heritage differently, because we are both manifesting nature’s process from slightly different positions in its manifold.

Ecological and existential barriers to interdisciplinary

This blog post takes an ecological approach towards understanding interdisciplinarity, opening questions about the purpose and consequences of different ways of keeping disciplines separated, intermingling, or fused. By extension, I explore how an ecological approach might inform the kind of interdisciplinary thinking we might need to conceive, evaluate and respond to the inter/disciplinary challenges currently faced. Here, I am particularly concerned with the existential sides of engaging in interdisciplinarity and how these ‘ecologise’ with different facets of human and biotic worlds.

Interdisciplinarity is often promoted for the benefits new knowledges play in addressing social, economic or ecological problems. One concern is that siloed knowledge leads to actions and attitudes based on partial premises, and dialogue between silos can achieve a more holistic picture of phenomena. Undoubtedly the interdisciplinary conversation between, say, coral reef biologists and atmospheric scientists helps understand the causes of, and steps forward in addressing, mass bleaching of these wondrous systems. But does it follow that interdisciplinarity is always good ‘ecologically’?

Through dynamic interactions between relata, ecologies maintain certain variables while changing others. They develop ‘dynamic equilibria’ (Kauffman 1993), patterns of stability across space and time, which become enabling conditions for the organisation and emergence of complexity. For example, while a species of bee and flower may in principle evolve in diverse ways, in practice they mutually specify the range and rates of change of the other (Maturana and Varela 1992) -at least until dependence relationships break down.

Disciplines and interdisciplines are also involved in a range of ecological dynamics. They are not only patterns of knowing, they are also patterns interacting with the world. These interactions can become very complex, affecting, among many other things, the ‘psychology’ of the knower. Our epistemological and existential needs also regulate rates of being and becoming in the relationships they constitute. These may be dangerous (dysecological), healthful, or either or both, at different temporal and spatial scales.

An ecological approach to knowing suggests sometimes even false premises will be ‘used’ for the stabilities they produce. Plastic in the ocean becomes a niche for new ecosystems, a faulty theory may still be the basis for a prosperous academic career. In the ecological and existential dimensions of interdisciplinarity, errors can become true through the relations they come to sustain. But such scaling out eventually leads to laissez-faire relativism. We need to make a cut. Ought we see how different ecologies emerge on different scales, within and without, before we do so? How do we learn to give up some cherished ecologies when we come to see others as more important? How can education approach these problems?

Some scholars have suggested there is a magical moment two disciplines cross boundaries and meet one another (Angerer). ‘Magic’ suggests positive qualities seen characteristic of an interdisciplinary experience: a sense of suspense, of surprise, of enchantment, perhaps a feeling the synthesis appearing before consciousness is the result of some subterranean sleight-of-hand work in our personal or social physiologies. I have felt something ‘magical’ in the arising of new ideas and insights when seemingly separated rivers come to ramble together. But I also sometimes feel resistance, and I remember that magic has long been associated with the dark arts, a space where people fear to tread.

A discipline is a habitual way of attending the world, where people, boundaries, concepts, logics, practices, and materials, ecologise into a self-reinforcing groove. Much has settled into the unconscious, because we stop thinking about what we know well or do often. But a vibrant edge of novelty remains, like a magic froth on the invisible wave that carries us. As researchers, we may relish this edge; it gives opportunity to experience freshness, but within the safe contexts of a sensible matrix. We get our little adventures but we still get our home.

Interdisciplinarity demands a different psychology. What does it feel like to have the foundations of one’s home pulled away? Even the silent work sustaining our magic froth seems now at risk. Along with it, the decades of work invested into that way of worldmaking, the professional identities constellated around it, even the way it has simply given to the world a structure, a logos, a nest: there may even be inklings of a spiritual abyss gloaming in the distance. (Moreover, other people and perhaps species too have come to rely on the regularities arising from my habit, however ill conceived it may be). Add the pragmatic fact we have trained to see and act towards phenomena in a certain way, magnified our focus of a sliver of the world while backgrounding the unknown unknowns needed to sustain that gaze. Is it any wonder attempts at interdisciplinarity often have lackluster outcomes?

Some educational questions arise from thinking about this existential ecology:

Maybe all new thought is magical. It involves the birth of the new from the old, and with it our participation in the creation of the world. The more difficult and unexpected the birth, the more astonishing it may be, -and so how do we respond to the dynamics of stability and change in interdisciplinary education? Perhaps the psychology guarding the well-disciplined mind against radical novelty produces and protects something sacred in its arising, and it would be somehow desecrating or improprietous to force such confluences.

Nevertheless, it would be absurd to try to protect the ‘magic’ of an unexpectedly rare offspring when the cost of keeping disciplines separated is a thousand clumsy cuts into the also magical world outside of us. The ecologies of the mind retained at the expense of the ecologies around it. Cancer too is an ecology. Sustainability cannot concern solely with inner ecologies or outer ones, but with the interconnected dynamics between them. After all, hidden connections between things in the world are occluded by the disciplines, and the magic we experience in the novelty of knowing mirrors the magic felt at the revelation of the world. What kind of discipline or interdiscipline can perceive these dynamics and respond to them?

If current disciplinary structures need to be taken down urgently, what kind of disciplinarity follows, given ecologies necessarily sustain patterns and enabling conditions? What is an ecological approach to ecology? If there is no solution we must agree on, how to educate for pluralism in light of our existential needs?

The Hogweed and the Tilia tree

“I love Hogweed,” I said to a friend a few days ago. But can people love whole species? A species is a category and, according to some, a humanly constructed one. Such a term creates a boundary of inclusion and exclusion, pulling us away from the particularity of this flower in this moment. What could it possibly mean to love a cold and divisive lattice of generality? On the face of it, it seems like a misdirected emotion— possibly a reflection of my own human-centeredness, my own failure to see the individuality of the plants themselves. Could this be this superficial speciesm masquerading as love?

That I am endeared to Tilia trees on the basis of having one in the back garden of my childhood home is a betrayal of the depth of experience I actually had with that being. Doesn’t it seem unlikely that people would love all other humans through having had a deep connection with a specific one? And if that did happen, it would seem somehow wrong— dehumanising. You can only love a category to the extent to which you fail to see the differences of its members. And yet, my feeling of attraction to, and desire to care for certain plant species is greater than it is for others.

And yet, and yet. A species also feels to me like something more than ‘just’ a category. It is also a recurrence. The growth and development of Hogweed is bound with the passing seasons. The pattern is real and very visceral: it is a yearly return of bright green hands splayed across the bare spring soil, frizzy white wrinkled leaflets skyward bound, a rapid acceleration towards the sun, the flower’s rupture from its papery sheath, the explosion of symmetry in pink or white, the spicy grapefruit and cardamom scented seeds left behind to dangle from dying stalks as the light and warmth recede. It is a return of associations with other plants, animals and with my memories too. Perhaps long-lived trees— those veterans seeped with centuries of idiosyncrasy— do not need to reproduce their pattern to keep these realities alive. We can simply wander back to the same tree again and again. But the return to annuals, and the way they stitch themselves into the memory of people and places, requires, it seems, the transcendence of the individual organism. After all, the bumblebee yearns for the Bramble blossom every July.

Each spring, my backyard Tilia spreads out new shoots and the tree’s form shifts, from the canopy all the way down to its epigenetics. Some view a deciduous tree as a decentralised fury of annuals tied to a woody structure for ease of water and nutrient. So, perhaps we never return to the ‘same’ tree either. The idea of loving an individual and distrusting the love of a recurring pattern is perhaps not anthropocentric speciesism at all, then, but rather the conceit of those with central nervous systems! Perhaps. But I am not sure even this is quite right. Plants teach us about the reality of types, a kind of platonism that wraps its lessons back even into the human: is it not true that when we love another person, in some sense we love the recurrence of their pattern, too? Is this pattern not itself the collaborative recreation of countless beings and processes? Every cell is recycled, every memory and habit restored. Differences and repetitions, themes, and variations, through and through.

It would be absurd to say that I only love my wife in a series present moments. I also love her overall person, even though this ‘her’ is not instantiated in any specific moment. I only experience her in individual moments, but those moments are part of an overall pattern which includes all the moments I have and will experience with her. I have never met that overall person, because I cannot experience all these moments simultaneously. But I love that person anyway. Loving a species is extended across instances in space, loving an individual person is extended across instances in time. All individuals are types, all categories are unique patterns of becoming.

And love happens in the interplay between all these contradictions.

The circle and the square

Pure science is an erotic pursuit. Unlike applied research, which merely aims to create and control, the pure scientist’s quest is a reaching towards mystery. It is an attraction to what is glimpsed but hidden, felt but veiled, possibly elusive, and possibly untouchable. It is filled with risk and uncertainty and yearning. And like any erotic dynamic, its success is often deflationary. When first uncovered, scientific insights are earth-quaking— but quickly become quotidian. Who marvels much anymore that the earth revolves around the sun, or that humans are the product of evolution? Can you imagine how stunning these discoveries must have been when they first arose? The great insights science sometimes achieves are revolutionary moments of human communion with nature, moments of synchronicity— when our way of understanding meets the world. They ought to be lingered upon and revered, not shuffled into the minds of children as mere fact. What happens when schools or societies merely present the world without its startling or hidden aspects, without its fathomless depth? What ought we do to retain and enrich the erotic potential of existence?

I ask these questions as I consider the work of plant scientists investigating the secret lives of the vegetal world. On the one hand, I am enthralled by such research and excited by where it may take us. I see it as a key of hope that might unlock the modern, anaesthetised mind to the wonder of the plant world. The plethora of books on plant intelligence, communication and behaviour certainly suggests a contemporary appetite for such insight. But I am also concerned this might be a deal with the devil. At what point have we gathered enough suggestions that the plant world is more than it appears to be? Does science need to rush in and bring every dark underside into the glare of its explicit light? Of course, plant explorations may be endless, in which case we need never worry about all these sacred question marks getting flipped on their heads. Each answer would always reveal new questions, and the erotic would be forever intact. Yes, perhaps everything in the universe has infinite sides to it— an insurance against the sloppy greed of reaching hands. It would be a gift we hardly deserve.

But perhaps not.

There was only one Copernican revolution. From that point on, progress has been about filling in details. Consider the discovery that Jupiter has moons. Fascinating to be sure, but not earth-shattering. That the sun itself spirals around the Milky Way, while still cool, does not have the same mind-bending significance as earth’s original displacement. It is a variation on a theme, as is the finding that the Milky Way is itself spinning around some even greater celestial centre. So, too, there was only one Einsteinian revolution, and one Darwinian revolution— even though people continue to discuss how spacetime works and evolution occurs. So, perhaps one day there will be no more revolutions left to be had. Perhaps after discovering plant learning and plant communication, we will continue to debate all the bits and pieces of how it happens, but in a sense, it will all be the equivalent of finding more moons orbiting Jupiter.

I suppose I am beginning to wonder heretical things. Has the time come to ask if slowing down, or even stopping scientific research into plants might be needed? We have enough empirical data to meditate upon for decades to come. Perhaps we need to work out what kind of relationships are being asked of us given the insights gained, given the silences we can still feel, and to do more listening than quarrying. But we seem hellbent on pushing past what we have tasted rather than dwelling on it and allowing it into our minds and hearts. I have often argued that pure science is important, and been critical of what seems instrumentalising and corrupt about applied science. But would it really be all that bad if capitalism continued to claw away at pure science and succeeded in reducing all inquiry to technological research and development? If, in desecrating our capacity to uncover the glory, the churning economy accidentally protects it? I suppose the eros that drives me to pure science is the same eros that hesitates before it.

One might counter: what you say about scientific progress might be generally true, but scientific facts that point towards and make more plausible the possibility of sentience in another creature are an exception. For hundreds of years, Western science has fixated on explaining the world through identifying underlying mechanisms and regularities. As a consequence of this way of thinking filtering down into society, many people see plants as no more than very complex molecules. Beautiful perhaps, but certainly not as having any inner life. One could see the explosion of interest in plant intelligence as an attempt to culturally recover from the grip of this worldview. The surprising complexity and responsiveness that science reveals makes it again conceivable to ask questions such as: ‘What is it like to be a plant?’ In this way, science may be saving plants from the effects of former science, of lifting itself out of its own limitations. By opening up the possibility of sentience in another, science is thereby birthing an unknowability into the universe it presumes to know. Further scientific insight into plants would become more beguiling the more we catch glimpses of the previously unknown because the sentience of another

can only be inferred but not experienced directly. So, at least in this instance, science might be bringing the mist back to the mountaintops.

But is this the antidote we need? I tend to think this gain is temporary and full of risk. It seems to me that intelligence, decision-making, communication, or behaviour revealed in plants by science invariably appears under the vice of mechanical explanations. Science cannot do otherwise. Its entire strategy is to create explanations that are reliably and physically observable. Even our brains, conscious if anything is, appear as but a dizzying network of chemistry and physics when looked at closely enough by science. Even if the organisation of the material world causes consciousness to emerge, no model of the brain leads intuitively from stuff to subjectivity. It is not clear whether neuroscience, let alone plant science, would be able to free anyone from the totalising clutch of scientific mechanism. The only reason we are able to defer this perspective in plant science or in neuroscience is because we have not yet discovered all the mechanisms. Here, remaining question marks provide a promissory note, a space where the objective and the subjective might paradoxically co-exist. But as long as science is the principle means of discovery, only objects will be pulled from that ever-diminishing pool of space.

In any case, knowledge is too cheap in our era. We google it for a quick fix. The erotic is fragile, the mist on the mountain burned away by the sun. We run to the light in the glee of revelation, and the erotic becomes an ever more endangered experience. We must do what we can to nurture it. I suppose what I am suggesting is that human knowing should slow down and re-join the rest of the human spirit, get back into intercourse with the ecology in which it exists— which includes the heart, the body, and the world. I suppose I am suggesting we sit back and spend some time quietly with the plant world, rather than reading about it on the backs of their fallen ancestors. The meaning of recent insights needs to circle back into direct experience, so new intimacies and new questions can arise in encounter with the plant world around us.

Impatience with Impatiens

I was born and raised in a settler city sprawling through the middle of traditional Anishnaabe territory. Despite living and breathing land kept by Anishnaabe people, my education occurred within, and indeed maintained, a bubble separating me from this broader cultural world. I grew up with a love, admiration and care for the living world around me, and yet even here, my stock of concepts was influenced by people born to those across the Atlantic, not by the children and tenders of my own watershed.

Despite this all too familiar scenario, a number of concerns with the environmental narratives circling about crept into my consciousness. One concern was with the term ‘invasive species’, a label cast so casually by those within my bubble. Even if these creatures were shaking up existing ecological balances, it bothered me that adults taught children to vilify them under the guise of ‘education’. I wondered if the phrase victimised not only Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata), Purple Loofestrife (Lythrum salicaria) and countless other animals and plants, but also the young recipients of these words, replacing the possibility of enchantment in their story of the world with experiences of judgment and division. When the xenophobic language of the populist right in Britain and North America regularly hit my social media feed, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the stock of metaphors used in politics was being imported into ecology. I was struck by an apparent contradiction: many of my environmentalist friends were appalled at the use of such language in the human realm but adhered to it unflinchingly in the field of the green, the feathered, and the furry.

How could the impulse to ‘other’ others be condemned in one context but taken up in another? I pondered whether something Jungian was at work. Even if invasive species were sometimes causing disturbance to local ecosystems, is calling them ‘invasive’, creating ‘eradication programs’ and all the rest of the militarism, really the best way to approach them? Are many of us settlers and globally mobile citizens unsettled in our depths about where we ‘should’ be living? Are environmentalists projecting onto other species a darkness within? What inner work do we need to do before treading into questions of how we might treat these prolific newcomers?

Now living in the land where my grandfather was born, and still not feeling quite at home, I stand at the edge of the Water of Leith, watching its inexorable flow under the crisp, winter sun. I imagine clusters of Himalayan Balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) clambering along its edges sometime after the summer crests and the days start shortening again. The government has occasionally called the Royal Marines in to destroy this showy, pink flower, and researchers are investigating biological diseases to wipe them out. But bees have accepted this plant into their web of relations, delighting in what seems a joyous frenzy from its copious nectar. When does a plant— or a person —become native to a place?

Newspapers regularly remind us of ‘pollinator collapse’ set in motion by a collision of threats; from pesticide use to habitat destruction. Might Himalayan Balsam’s flourishing be part of ecological rebalancing rather than disruption? Few questions so quickly furrow my ecologist friends’ brows. Perhaps their irritation is warranted. Alongside other local species, bees seem to favour Himalayan Balsam (Horsely, 2016). The presence of Himalayan Balsam may thereby reduce the pollination of other species, some already curbed by its fecundity. But like many ecological studies, how we bracket our vision turns out to be crucial. A study must have a beginning and an end, and conclusions are drawn from within these boundaries. While the results are in a certain sense objective, the decision of when to start and stop the study is not. In this case, as long as the Himalayan Balsam’s nectar exceeds the needs of the bee population, bees may well favour it to the detriment of other plants. But such a scenario is obviously temporary. At some point Himalayan Balsam’s plentiful supply will increase pollinator populations but can no longer supply the demand. Other less alluring food sources are then sought out. Davis (2011) calls this ‘the car dealership effect’. In recent years, some popular science books have argued that invasive species seem to cause fewer extinctions than previously assumed (Pearce, 2015; Thomas, 2018). Perhaps they jump in to fill opening niches and catalyse evolutionary change?

Others point out many invasive species run rampant because they have no natural predators. Maybe so, but the best way to ensure a predator develops is to let a would-be prey expand its range. If there is any ecological rule, it is that an unexploited niche is an evolutionary opportunity. It is not clear how long we’d wait for animal grazers to step in, but we can be confident opportunistic microbes will quickly emerge. Again, the question is timescale. People are currently testing fungi that might infect Himalayan Balsam (Tanner et al., 2015)— but we know that if we didn’t, something would evolve anyway. What is the rush? What kind of hero story do we need to maintain? Why do we need to insist that the intervention restoring balance come from us rather than nature? And how does this hero story link up with the villain story? Is there a tragic feedback loop between guilt and hubris? Instead of revelling in a nature increasingly manipulated to fulfil an image we’ve concocted from the arbitrary past, might we not become careful students and attentive lovers of the process by which ecosystems adjust and accommodate change? Is nature an active intelligent process or a static process to be preserved? Might ecosystems’ self-regulation exceed our comprehension? The biosphere, after all, evolved myriad creatures in complex co-existence with all their countless fascinating features. Surely the arrival of new species— be it through hitching on the backs of birds, on logs projected into the seas by violent monsoon rivers, or through continental merging —is nothing new in the story of the Earth. What role does patience, indeed humility, play in conservation?

With these thoughts in mind, I google how Anishnaabe people view invasive species. As many Anishnaabe people still live in intercourse with the land, I imagine invasive species might impact them more directly than urbanites who malign new species’ encroachments on their places of leisure. Reo and Ogden’s (2018) ethnography of indigenous Anishnaabe communities reveals some common features lacing through a wide variety of views and practices towards invasive species. Anishnaabe people are likely to view invasive species as migrating communities or, as they call them, nations. Many consider every nation to have gifts to share, and accepting their gifts fosters reciprocal responsibilities of care and respect. Human and more-than-human nations may not yet know or understand the gifts a new nation might bring to a place, but all have an active role in co-determining the new relationship that will emerge. So, whilst important food and medicines are often significantly affected by the arrival of a new species, for the most part the attitude is ‘let’s wait and see’. In other words, the process begins with listening.

Perhaps we need not wait for fungi or bacteria to make food of Himalayan Balsam. It has been around the British Isles long enough for many of us to know how delicious its yellow seeds can be. To me, they taste a bit like watermelon. If more of us consumed this offering with gratitude, their numbers might be controlled but not eliminated, and our community made the better for it. That might be a better lesson for our children.

References

Davis, M. (2011) ‘Do Native Birds Care Whether Their Berries Are Native or Exotic? No.’ in BioScience, 61(7): 501–502

Horsely, C. (2016) ‘Alien invasions! Himalayan Balsam, friend or foe?’ in Buzzword 32, November 2016

Pearce, F. (2015) The new wild: Why invasive species will be nature’s salvation. Icon Books: London, UK

Reo, N.J. & Ogden, L.A. (2018). ‘Anishnaabe Aki: an indigenous perspective on the global threat of invasive species,’ in Sustainability Science 13: 1443-1452

Tanner, R.A.; Pollard, K.M.; Varia, S.; Evans, H.C. & Ellison, C.A. (2015) ‘First release of a fungal classical biocontrol agent against an invasive alien weed in Europe: biology of the rust, Puccinia komarovii var. glanduliferae,’ in Plant Pathology, 64(5):1130-1139.

Thomas, C.D. (2018) Inheritors of the earth. Penguin: New York

Caffeine, consciousness and curriculum

This morning, I’m perusing articles on the origin of humanity’s favourite stimulant, sitting— obviously —with a coffee in hand.

Dozens of plant species, across unrelated families, produce caffeine. This indicates it has evolved separately, many times. That seems surprising, but according to Huang et al. (2016), it really isn’t. Plants synthesize caffeine in different ways, but each start with a 100-million-year lineage of enzymes conserved for crucial but unrelated biochemical purposes. Co-opting these enzymes to synthesize caffeine is, therefore, always an ongoing possibility. If all caffeine-producing species went extinct, we can imagine caffeine would likely again evolve.

I find that strangely consoling, perhaps due in equal measure to my joint addictions to both caffeine and to evolution. But what makes caffeine so valuable that it has repeatedly emerged? After all, producing it, like any metabolite, has costs. What kind of selection pressures would pull its synthesis, again and again, from mere possibility into actuality? Independent evolution suggests caffeine synthesis may have different roles in different contexts. There are two favoured theories associating caffeine with a plant’s defense system. One is that caffeine’s antifeeding and pesticidal properties protects it against herbivory. The other is that the release of caffeine into the soil inhibits germination of nearby seeds, reducing competition from neighbours. From my own experience with caffeine, I know its pleasant lift can quickly go awry, so it’s no shock that it would be detrimental to other creatures. I also know the slide from elation to irritation is dose dependent. Could a small hit have positive effects for any other animals? Perhaps even for those very insects— and competing plants —it seeks to debilitate?

Some ingenious experiments on bees shed light on this question. In a story all too convenient for punsters across the world, it turns out caffeine gives bees ‘a buzz.’ Bees on caffeine become more energetic and are more likely to remember the location of caffeinated nectar in complex environments (Wright et al. 2013). This is totally remarkable. According to Evogeneao’s Tree of Life Explorer, humans and bees’ closest ancestors are simple blob-like entities that lived about 630 million years ago. Could it be that virtually all of the species between us and bees, and even that blob, can get high on this stuff? Or is the response to caffeine similar to caffeine itself— evolvable should a species be lucky enough to land in situations where its own endogenous possibility for botanical exhilaration strums into existence?

As I look further, it seems a whole range of insects and molluscs fall for effects Homo sapiens know only too well: they get hyperactive on caffeine, but succumb to tremors and lose their appetite and their focus on larger doses (ex. Nathanson 1984). Mustard’s (2013) review of studies administering caffeine to insects, molluscs and mammals concluded its effect on behaviour is conserved across animal species. Meanwhile, at least one study sees this pattern repeat in another kingdom entirely. A small dose of caffeine stimulates the growth of sunflower plants, but inhibits it at larger concentrations (Kursheed et al. 2009). Indeed, cases of immunity to caffeine seem the rare consequence of deft symbiotic mergings— such as those of the Coffee Borer (Hypothenemus hampei), who conspire with gut microbes like Pseudomonas fulva (Ceja-Navarro et al. 2015). In this case, the bacteria consume the caffeine and allow the Coffee Borer to live its life burrowing into a bean containing, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2015), a lethal dose equivalent to 500 shots of espresso. The Coffee Borer seems to be missing out. But do these other organisms really get high?

Biologist Jakob von Uexküll is well-known for launching a research programme aimed at gleaning insights into other species’ lived experiences (ex. Uexküll 2010). According to him, by carefully observing an organism’s behaviour, we can see what ‘shows up’ in its environment as relevant and what is ignored, and use these to make inferences into how the world appears to that being. His intention was to create a science interrogating the subjective experience of the biotic world. He was well aware humans would never really know what it is like to be a bee. After all, we cannot really know what it is like even to be our own spouse or child. But we can get ever closer, especially if we try. For example, many people are familiar with studies revealing that bees see a different spectrum of light, and hence floral patterns invisible to our eyes. This is an example of an insight falling within an Uexküllian focus.

Does caffeine tell us anything about the lived experience of other creatures? As far as I know, Uexküll never asked this question. Some would deny it, arguing that another species gets hyperactive and jittery when on caffeine does not indicate they consciously experience it. It merely shows that caffeine produces stereotypical physiological reactions. If a conscious organism ingests caffeine, then it obviously would experience those physiological reactions. However, the majority of the biotic world is not conscious. The reactions just happen with their consequent ecological effects. Such a perspective forms the basis of a dominant assumption in biology research and it suffuses biology education too: if a biological system can be understood mechanistically, there is no need to appeal to consciousness. It is at best pointless; at worst, it is dangerous and anthropomorphic.

But, of course, those very same chemical changes occur in human physiology too, and the behaviour of a human on caffeine can also be understood mechanistically without appealing to human consciousness. And yet, human consciousness clearly exists. A double standard seems baked into biology. I am keen to find a way out of this. Perhaps if we figure out what role consciousness plays for humans, we can infer whether it is also active in other species. This turns out to be a difficult job, and one I am hoping another cup from my French press will help facilitate.

I’ll continue on my loosely Uexküllian trajectory. As humans go about their lives, they are generally trying to do things. To accomplish those things, some things matter and others do not. Our bodies filter out what does not likely matter, presenting only what is deemed relevant. These relevant features can then be seen in relation to one another. For instance, I am aware of a small subset of things right now: that the coffee is starting to scatter my focus, and that this conflicts with my writing deadline. Because I am conscious of these two things, I am able to realize that I should slow down my drinking. Consciousness is like a map of important features in ongoing play, a global representation of relevant internal states vis a vis relevant external features. Given the complexity and contingency of dynamic environments, it is likely all organisms would be faced with a similar situation: a lot more things are going on than a creature can attend to, and there is a need to respond only to what is relevant, instead of getting buried in details. Consciousness is that porous map.

I do not see other species waffling about, as we might expect if a global map did not exist to simplify the relationship between the organism and its world. Instead, I see other species’ focus directed by what is relevant to them. If caffeine interrupts or enhances that focus, it makes sense that this would show up too, as it would be relevant for the creature that its capacities had changed. Different decisions might be needed.

The consciousness of other animals is increasingly acknowledged by scientists (see for example the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness [Low et al. 2012]), and is even posited by plant scientists (ex. Trewavas 2015), but Uexküll’s vision remains totally eclipsed in biology education. The assumption that life is nothing but mechanism pervades even apparently ‘progressive’ school provision, such as Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence’s steadfastly mechanistic biology learning outcomes. What is the reason for this, and what effect does it have on the way children see the world? Who benefits and who loses when education is the buzzkill at the party? Some historians claim caffeine accelerated the Enlightenment (Pollan 2020). Could investigating its role in the biosphere enlighten schools too?

References

Ceja-Navarro, J.; Vega, F.; Karaoz, U. et al. (2015) ‘Gut microbiota mediate caffeine detoxification in the primary insect pest of coffee,’ in Nature Communications 6, 7618 Evogeneao https://www.evogeneao.com/en/explore/tree-of-life-explorer#bees-and-humans

Huang, R. ; O’Donnell, A. ; Barboline, J. & Barkman, T. (2016) ‘Convergent evolution of caffeine in plants by co-option of exapted ancestral enzymes,’ in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(38), pp. 10613-10618

Khursheed, T.; Ansari,M. & Shahab, D. (2009) ‘Studies on the effect of caffeine on growth and yield parameters in Helianthus annuus L. variety Modern T,’ in Biology and Medicine 1 (2), pp. 56-60

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (2015) ‘Gut microbes enable coffee pest to withstand extremely toxic concentrations of caffeine,’ July 14, 2015. Retrieved on November 21, 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2015-07-gut-microbes-enable-coffee-pest.html

Low, P. et al. (2012) ‘The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness’. Publicly proclaimed in Cambridge, UK, on July 7, 2012, at the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on Consciousness in Human and non-Human Animals.

Mustard, J. (2014) ‘The buzz on caffeine in invertebrates: effects on behavior and molecular mechanisms,’ in Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 71(8), pp. 1375-82.

Nathanson, J. A. (1984) ‘Caffeine and related methylxanthines: possible naturally occurring pesticides’, in Science. 226(4671), 184–7

Pollan, M. (2020) Caffeine: How coffee and tea created the modern world. Audible Original.

Trewavas, A. (2015) Plant behaviour and intelligence. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

von Uexküll, J. (2010) A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With A Theory of Meaning. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Exploring time with Nya Falang

My first encounter with this startling plant was during my years in rural Laos. Wong’s youngest, Kongngeun, was halfway up a ladder poised against a mango tree. With machete in hand, her tiny bare feet toddled on its rickety bamboo rungs. I lifted her down and put away the ladder. Scarcely understanding the consequences of what was to transpire, she bumbled towards me, her bright eyes sparkling and her great blade swinging. To this day I wonder what she was feeling. Her two-year old face seemed full of innocence, without a speck of anger. And yet, the machete arced fatefully towards my protesting hand.

Moments stretched out—in vain —as its metal edge approached and then lodged itself into the top of my thumb. Her face melted into fear. Wasting no time to scold, Wong sprinted to a nearby pineapple field and emerged seconds later with a clump of bright green leaves. I recognised the plant immediately as Nya Falang; that sticky, pungent plant I had spent months weeding in a nearby Mulberry orchard. He chewed it into paste and slathered it onto my gushing wound. The bleeding stopped immediately. Thumb bandaged, I later reflected on what had happened.

Speeding up platelet aggregation (the mechanism I supposed in play), slows down bleeding. Two opposing rates of change held together a single process. In scientific articles, I later learned Chromolaena odorata accomplished this hemostatic feat by changing the rate of activity of some genes in my thumb’s fibroblasts (Pandith et al, 2013). Different temporal shifts coordinated across different biological scales. The protagonists in this timeshifting wizardry are stigmasterol, scutellarein tetramethyl ether, flavonoids, and chromomoric acid, which seem to serve antiherbivory and antibacterial roles in the plant’s defense (Vijayaraghavan et al, 2017). Incidentally, these chemicals are likely toxic to the plant itself, and so are normally stowed away in the plant cells’ vacuoles. Wong’s teeth had to cut the cells open so the plant could heal my own cut open cells.

C. odorata’s regional names hint at its sharp and then hemorrhagic arrival into various people’s natural history. Known as ‘French Weed’ (ຫຍ້າຝະຣັ່ງ, Nya Falang) in Laos, but as ‘Herbe de Laos’ in France, C. odorata is actually native to Central America, the Caribbean, and the Northern part of South America. Since the mid 20th century, it has spread rapidly, with now pan-continental distribution in tropical and subtropical climates (though apparently with minimal presence in Australia). When I google ‘world’s worst tropical weeds,’ C. odorata comes up ahead of other notorious troublemakers of the global South, including Imperata cylindrica, Cyperus rotundus, Commelina benghalensis, and Eichhornia crassipes. Its prolific habits damage cropland, lay waste to pasture, and ruin plantation productivity. The same chemicals that saved me a long and bumpy journey to a local health centre and perhaps a serious infection, undoubtedly contribute to its ecological success and its reputation as a scourge.

Emerson’s (1880) notion that ‘a weed is a plant whose virtues have never been discovered’ will seem naive and dangerous to most farmers. I have seen enough family crops cramped and cluttered into oblivion to sympathise with those who despise C. odorata. Nevertheless, I have benefited from the virtues of this pungent coagulator. Not only did it heal my hand, it thrust into consciousness the surprise of discovering hidden powers in commonplace things. The humdrum prevalence and perhaps even the menace of highly successful plants sets them up to shatter our preconceptions all the more forcefully. We should be grateful for these ruptures and, indeed, seek them out.

I do not mean to suggest there is no place for controlling this or any other weed. Agriculture, in any foreseeable future, depends on it. But I wonder if it is possible to appreciate even the vigorous plants we commit to weaken or kill, that their life be taken through acts that pierce hatred with gratitude, to speckle their tedious annihilation with flecks of wonder.

References

Emerson, R.W. (1880) Fortune of the Republic, in Prose Works. Boston, MA: Houghton, Osgood & Co.

Pandith, H.; Zhang, X.; Liggett, J.; Min, K-W, Gritsanapan, W. & Baek, S.J. (2013) ‘Hemostatic and Wound Healing Properties of Chromolaena odorata Leaf Extract’, ISRN Dermatology Article ID168269, pp. 1-8.

Vijayaraghavan, K.; Rajkumar, J.; Bukhari, S.N.D.; Al-Sayed, B. & Seyed, M.A. (2017). ‘Chromolaena odorata: A neglected weed with a wide spectrum of pharmacological activities’, in Molecular Medicine Reports, vol.15:3, pp. 1007-1016.