How strange it is, at least from a human perspective, that a single plant can evince such radically disparate time parameters, from the generally slow growth of its roots, trunk, branches and stems to the rapid cycling of an individual blossom. I am trying to think of an analogous dynamic in human beings or other animals, but I cannot think of anything that comes close, except perhaps for the growth of hair and nails, at least as it exists externally.
The combination of duration and ephemerality in plants is no doubt an adaptive feature that is strongly related to their sessile ontology. If a being cannot fight or flee, being able to establish oneself in a strong and durable way, such as by growing a thick trunk covered with tough bark, and by being able to quickly reproduce when conditions are optimal, such as by producing a blossom, seem to be ideal strategies for survival.
It is this this quality of plants, rooted most fundamentally in their radical exteriority, that is, in their thorough and intimate immersion in what we call the 'environment', a point made nicely by Michael Marder, that makes them so different from us. Given their immense power as mediators between the largest forces of the universe and the most fleeting of material forms, most notably as synthesizers of light, it is difficult to conceive of plants, the most abundant form of life on the planet, using the same paradigm of individual and environment that one uses to consider the ontology of human beings and other animals. Plants are their environment and their environment is the plants themselves, not entirely or in an absolute sense, a rock is still a rock and a plant a plant, but much more so than is the case for animals.
Of course, the convention of thinking of animals as being separate from their environment is under constant revision, as scientists discover more and more how what were once thought to be individual organisms are actually much more accurately described as ecologies, individual bodies included. Where would an individual person be, for example, without the legions of bacteria that make functional his or her digestive system? This notion becomes even more complex the more scientists discover and the more philosophers consider it. It will surely be the topic of future posts.
The combination of duration and ephemerality in plants is no doubt an adaptive feature that is strongly related to their sessile ontology. If a being cannot fight or flee, being able to establish oneself in a strong and durable way, such as by growing a thick trunk covered with tough bark, and by being able to quickly reproduce when conditions are optimal, such as by producing a blossom, seem to be ideal strategies for survival.
It is this this quality of plants, rooted most fundamentally in their radical exteriority, that is, in their thorough and intimate immersion in what we call the 'environment', a point made nicely by Michael Marder, that makes them so different from us. Given their immense power as mediators between the largest forces of the universe and the most fleeting of material forms, most notably as synthesizers of light, it is difficult to conceive of plants, the most abundant form of life on the planet, using the same paradigm of individual and environment that one uses to consider the ontology of human beings and other animals. Plants are their environment and their environment is the plants themselves, not entirely or in an absolute sense, a rock is still a rock and a plant a plant, but much more so than is the case for animals.
Of course, the convention of thinking of animals as being separate from their environment is under constant revision, as scientists discover more and more how what were once thought to be individual organisms are actually much more accurately described as ecologies, individual bodies included. Where would an individual person be, for example, without the legions of bacteria that make functional his or her digestive system? This notion becomes even more complex the more scientists discover and the more philosophers consider it. It will surely be the topic of future posts.
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