"That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the
testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous
than the fact which in endeavors to establish."
David Hume. 1758. 'An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.'

First, let me confess to only skimming the article as yet. But in a
quick read I have two major issues with the ideas therein;

1. That there is some sort of communal or cultural 'conscious' at work.
Alternately this could be stated that for some reason all individual
consciousness arrived at the same 'conclusion' or thought process.

2. Plants have some sort of sentience; given the broadest possible
definition of 'sentience.'

"All generalizations, including this one, are false." Pogo Possum.

"This is an imaginal blindness in our modern life. The belief that there
is a clear separation and difference between humans and plants was not
always so great." (toward the end of the article)

(BTW, I don't think 'imaginal' is really a word)

Poor construction aside, I have a feeling that the 'belief' that there
is a clear separation between humans and plants is, and has been, more
or less constant. I see no evidence that there was wide spread human
belief that ever considered plants as other than food, shelter,
medicine. What is presented as 'proof' are references to early
scientific explanations which were incorrect, however well founded at
the time. To cite conclusions that were formed out of a lack of
information or knowledge as 'proof' that 'culture' held such beliefs is
true I suppose. What is suspect is the idea that those ideas, incorrect
or not, are somehow 'superior' to beliefs based on modern, accumulated,
information. At one time 'culture' believed the Earth was flat and was
the center of the Universe. That hardly makes it a worthy cosmological
point of view.

I'll have to read the article more closely, but if using two science
fiction stories is the basis of the idea that plants have sentience in
any real sense, then the article should be read as science fiction. BTW,
I read science fiction all the time, enjoy it. Ursula Le Guin, before
she began to specialize in fantasy, was one of my favorite authors.

Anyway, which is more difficult to believe; (1) that human society has a
collective view of the natural world and that plants are sentient, or
(2) Prof. Scheekloth is barking up the wrong tree (sorry 'bout that).

Steven


-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion forum for environmental ethics.
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chris Perley
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2003 9:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: The Culture-Nature nexus - the question of relatedness

Hi all,

I thought this might interest some - and perhaps stir some debate.
Chris
Perley

http://www.geocities.com/organdi_revue/December2002/Schneekloth01.html

Abstract and first para below.

ALIEN KIN:
Humans and the Forest
By Lynda H. Schneekloth
School of Architecture and Planning
State University of New York
Buffalo, United States
about the author:
Lynda H. Schneekloth, ASLA, is a Professor in the School of Architecture
and
Planning, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA. She is author
with
Robert Shibley of Placemaking: The Arts and Practice of Building
Communities
(1995); Ordering Space: Types in Architecture and Design with Karen
Franck
(1994); and Changing Places: ReMaking Institutional Buildings (1992).
She
has written and published extensively in her area of scholarship,
namely,
how humans construct their relationship with the world.
Abstract
This paper explores western culture's imagination of vegetation and the
forest through an examination of two science fiction stories by Ursula
Le
Guin, The Word for World is Forest and "Vaster than Empires and More."
The
review of these texts provides the opportunity to reveal the varied
constructions of the human relationships with vegetation, questioning
our
imagination of the plant world as passive and offering thoughts on
vegetative sentience, agency and intentionality. The paper both confirms
and
challenges current conceptions of humans as separate from the earth and
attempts, through the power of stories, to demonstrate that plants are
our
kin, and that the forest has been/can be our home.


How do we imagine ourselves in relationship to other forms of life?
Humans
have always struggled with this question, knowing and not knowing during
our
tenure as a species that otherness is one of our makings and that there
is
only one vast interconnected world. The response to the question of
relationship has shifted across cultures and over time, but seems
especially
critical today with the current ecological crises. Of particular
importance
is the question of relationship with beings that are familiar, yet alien
to
us, beings like trees, vegetation, and communities of plants such as
forests.