‘Thus spoke the Plant’
Excerpt-(prelude) from the remarkable book written by scientist Monica Gagliano PhD and her plant-human stories:
book review by Dr. Suzanne Simard Professor Forest ecology University British Columbia 2018.
“Walk in nature anywhere in the world and open your senses not just one or two of the five but all of them the sound of the lofty tree crown swaying in the breeze the sight of deep green that sits your soul the smell of soil and bark and the breath of oxygen that rushes into your lungs the field of soft lace as a brush your hands the taste of sweet fruit on your lips Monica Gagliano in the book Thus spoke the Plant asks you to open up the possibility that plants have some of the same senses the ability to hear, see, smell, feel and taste. Along with distinct modalities new dimensions to make the sense of their world such as detecting electromagnetic fields sounds and low-voltage vibrations. Then check in with your own circle of awareness -your mind, heart soul and body. Not just your five senses but also your spirit. You have multiple modalities too like the plants and chances are they are more aligned than before you stepped outside. Your mind calms your heart feels your soul is soothed and your body feels vibrantly alive. You feel more connected inside, and more attuned to the world.
You feel the power to act in your own life and help craft a more evolved society, one that is connected and attuned to itself and to nature. Most of us recognise the essential role of plants in our well-being, in the very breathe we take. Plants help create an oxygenated atmosphere enabling the eventual evolution of humans. The evolution of plants has been so successful that they count for over 99% of the living biomass on earth the presence of humans and other animals is in comparison. Still we humans walk through nature not seen plants as highly evolved creatures but rather as inanimate passive and inferior species. We have constructed a simple vision of plants as lacking in intelligence agency or sentence. We have relegated them to the lowest of a hierarchy that is by humans.
The human construct ignores evolutionary history and has shaped our scientific questions and limited us to finding only certain answers about the meaning of our lives. And from the superiority complex we have justified the global abuse of plants. And not just plants but of any creature we can consider inferior to humans, which means all species of course not all cultures have this anthropocentric superior complex but the most dominant and most powerful one on earth today does and this has credited multiple crisis on a global scale.Averting socio ecological disaster now will take a scientific revolution. It will take a deconstruction of our reductionist and parochial approach to understanding life and the invention of a whole new way of understanding the world.
In Thus spoke the Plant Monica Gagliano will provide you with a completely different way of understanding and knowing the world not just a plant well but your whole well view she asked that you tear off your lifetime of cultural blinders and open up all your senses to letting the world of plants to help you do this she takes you on her personal journey of confronting her own biases which started with the changing careers listening to her dreams and then acting on her intuition to speak with the plant people that visit her and the guardians of indigenous seers. The plant people call her to the voice and guided to understand her cognitive powers. This personal and professional journey leads her to ask brilliant questions and design simple, elegant experiments that uncover new modalities in plant intelligence. We learn that plants can communicate, are capable of learning, have memory, make decisions, and cognizant of a greater purpose, in addition to their own Darwinian success to the communities in which they live.
In Monica Gagliano’s book plants have chosen the most inquisitive, brilliant mind as their spokesperson with her feet family planned in both scientific method and the wisdom of plants, Monica has tapped into the multidimensional of nature that will break down forever our suffocating parochialism about the environment. In the face of repeated rejection of a papers by the scientific establishment, she has persisted and published her experiments in the top plant ecology journals we owe her a debt gratitude for swimming against the tide and opening up our awareness, even as a rip currents tried to pull under us and embrace.
Monica through her personal stories and scientific discoveries has opened through the woods for us to follow the book Thus spoke the Plant is more than just scientific discovery. It is about a revolution that will compel us to see the world through a comparatively new lens and will motivate us to change our attitudes, behaviours and actions so that we can alter our course of the socio environmental crisis we have created. So open your mind set aside your biases and be prepared to change your view of the world and your place in it forever.
Dr. Suzanne Simard Professor Forest ecology University British Columbia 2018.
North Atlantic Books Berkeley, California. wwwnorthatlanticbooks.com
