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    Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants
    Unavailable
    Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants
    Unavailable
    Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants
    Audiobook5 hours

    Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants

    Written by Monica Gagliano

    Narrated by Julie Slater

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    An accessible and compelling story of a scientist's discovery of plant communication and how it influenced her research and changed her life.

    In this "phytobiography" — a collection of stories written in partnership with a plant — research scientist Monica Gagliano reveals the dynamic role plants play in genuine firsthand accounts from her research into plant communication and cognition. By transcending the view of plants as the objects of scientific materialism, Gagliano encourages us to rethink plants as people — beings with subjectivity, consciousness, and volition, and hence having the capacity for their own perspectives and voices. The audiobook draws on up-close-and-personal encounters with the plants themselves, as well as plant shamans, indigenous elders, and mystics from around the world and integrates these experiences with an incredible research journey and the groundbreaking scientific discoveries that emerged from it.

    Gagliano has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers on how plants have a Pavlov-like response to stimuli and can learn, remember, and communicate to neighboring plants. She has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, for the first time experimentally demonstrating that plants emit their own "voices" and, moreover, detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. By demonstrating experimentally that learning is not the exclusive province of animals, Gagliano has reignited the discourse on plant subjectivity and ethical and legal standing. This is the story of how she made those discoveries and how the plants helped her along the way.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateMay 7, 2019
    ISBN9781623174330
    Unavailable
    Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants
    Author

    Monica Gagliano

    Monica Gagliano is a Research Associate Professor in evolutionary ecology. A former fellow of the Australian Research Council, she is Research Associate Professor (adjunct) at the University of Western Australia and a Member of the Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of Sydney. She is currently based at Southern Cross University where she directs the BI Lab–Biological Intelligence Lab as part of the Diverse Intelligences Initiative of the Templeton World Charity Foundation. Her work has extended the concept of cognition (including perception, learning processes, memory) in plants. Her latest book is Thus Spoke the Plant (North Atlantic Books, 2018).

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    Reviews for Thus Spoke the Plant

    4.5/5

    8 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This can be a transformative book if read with an open mind. Monica Gagliano is a research scientist who brings together science and shamanism to uncover the voice of plants. Indigenous populations have always had communication with plants. Through her work, Gagliano has been experimentally uncovering plants’ abilities to communicate within a laboratory setting. But this book is more about Gagliano’s personal experience communicating with plants. Actually, she relates how her research is a collaboration with plants. It takes courage for a practicing scientist to undertake a bold and unorthodox line of research, and Gagliano has paid a professional price for her boldness. This is an important book, though, for its challenge to the orthodox Western scientific and commercial views of plants as objects to be exploited rather than fellow beings sharing this planet. This book is recommended reading for anyone who is concerned about the state of the earth and who is seeking a healing paradigm that recognizes that all living things, including plants, are crucial to the survival of life on earth.
    • 3/5
      Plants are intelligent sentient beings. Most cultures have known this for aeons, but it is something that science-based cultures are just coming around to.Gagliano is an Australia-based PhD researcher into plant communication. This book is focused on the story of two scientific discoveries:1) Plants (specifically the mimosa) have the ability to learn and remember2) Plants (specifically peas) have the ability to navigate using acoustics, and are sensitive to electro-magnetic radiationAround this scaffolding Gagliano builds a story exploring her relationship with various medicinal and psychotropic plant teachers (piñon blanco, ayahuasca, tobacco). Via various "dietas," Gagliano spent intensive time with these plants, and received guidance on her research.I actually found Gagliano to be overselling her work. I already have phenomenal trust in the magnificence of plants; I suspect they have far greater capacities than the ones to which Gagliano's research points.Much of the book is spent weaving in platitudes around Gagliano's research to plants. Although I agree with her underlying message (that deeper relationship with plant intelligence will be vital to the future of humanity and the planet), I found her delivery detracted from her message.Lastly, I'll mention that this sort of work—elaborating upon scientific discovery to explain the magic of nature—is a rhetorical framework that actually detracts from the very magic it is trying to uplift. Not to minimize the importance of scientific research in this area. Just to say that humanity isn't going to be convinced into plant intelligence; we will come to it through the intrinsic magic of plants, and through direct relationship with them.