CAN TREES TEACH US
impulses. With research on the topic increasing, scientists certainly seem to think there is something we can learn from forestry.
ANYTHING?
A 2006 paper published in Trends in Plant Science proposed a new field of inquiry into plant signaling and behavior. The six authors argue that the sophisticated behaviors observed in plants cannot be completely explained by present genetic and biochemical mechanisms. They noted many ways plants did not fit with the present science on the matter, including that neurotransmitters such as serotonin, glutamate, and dopamine have been found in plants, although their role remains unclear. Here is a question unanswered, but the scientific community itself is divided. “‘Plant intelligence’ is a foolish distraction, not a new paradigm” writes Professor Slayman, but a distraction from what? Learning, whether a distraction from other learning or not, is still learning. Professor Mancuso would reply, saying it is our “fetishization” of neurons that limit us from appreciating what flora can do. Socrates learnt from “the men in the city”, from dialogue, from asking questions -- perhaps we view “learning” in the far too narrow field of “sentience”. We can learn in a manner more subtle than dialogue.
Georgia Jackson Jessel (OHS) Socrates, quoted in Plato’s Phaedrus, says “the trees in the countryside can teach me nothing”. We don’t know if this is Plato’s, or Socrates’ voice, still less do we know if the opinion was sincere; Socrates, through Plato, likes to explore ideas by challenging their validity, as well as holding that “some lies can be useful”. On the other hand, Socrates’ world was entirely urban; he had no experience or feeling for the countryside. Was he wrong? The sentiment certainly doesn’t chime with today’s fashionable enthusiasm to feel a part of the entire living world. But, while we can study trees, does that study actually tell us anything more than the physics of phloem – and does that expand the human horizon? We can certainly give trees a walk-on part in the drama of knowledge; trees provide forests of useful symbolism. This symbolism is even deep-rooted in our phraseology; we turn over new leaves, we branch out, our momentum is sapped. But, this is mere linguistics – a metaphor is not, by definition, an original thought.
At worst, this 500 million year old woodland mystery (and all knowledge, at one time, was a mystery, from magnetism to the nature of fire) at least teaches the arrogant human that there is something else he cannot yet explain, new dimensions of the unknown. That may seem a small contribution to learning - although the answers may have revolutionary repercussions.
What, then, of the cultural and religious significance of trees, when the Poles see the linden as protection against evil, and where for centuries in Europe it was a capital offence to cut one down? But all this teaches us is that people can be superstitious; teaching has no value if all we learn is the irrational.
After all, knowing how much we do not know is the beginning of wisdom. And Socrates, surely, was all for wisdom.
We can, however, challenge Socrates on the basis that he couldn’t have known what he was talking about, because he lacked omniscience. In fact he lacked most of science. And if the science in a tree can inform the science of the wider world, then even Socrates has to chalk it up as an advancement in learning. So perhaps the question is whether we can construct a sentence which says “scientists claim to have learnt xyz from their study of trees” where “xyz” represents an advancement in learning independent of the knowledge of trees themselves.
Bibliography Plato, Phaedrus. Translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff. From Plato: Complete Works, ed. by John M. Cooper. ISBN 0-87220-349-2 Lonergan.org. (2016). Greek Discovery Of Mind, Socrates, Notes. Lonergan Institute. http://lonergan. org/2016/06/05/greek-discovery-of-mind-socratesnotes/
Trees and plants have never garnered the same attention and respect as the study of animals, and there are vast areas of plant biology we do not understand - perhaps here we will find the “xyz” that we are looking for. As we research more, we can certainly learn something from the symbiotic nature of mycorrhizal fungi and tree roots, coined the “wood wide web” (as researched by professors such as Thomas Crowther and Suzzane Simard). This network somehow enables the mutually beneficial exchange of information about the availability of nutrients, warning about the existence of danger, and evolving compromises to avoid overcrowding through the interchange of electrical
Newman, C. (2017). What We Can Learn From Trees. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic. com/magazine/2017/03/wisdom-of-trees/ Popkin, G. (2019). ‘Wood Wide Web’—The Underground Network Of Microbes That Connects Trees—Mapped For First Time. Science Mag | The American Association for the Advancement in Science. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/woodwide-web-underground-network-microbes-connectstrees-mapped-first-time
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