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Plant perception (paranormal)
Encyclopedia
Plant
Plants are living organisms belonging to the kingdom Plantae. Precise definitions of the kingdom vary, but as the term is used here, plants include familiar organisms such as trees, flowers, herbs, bushes, grasses, vines, ferns, mosses, and green algae. The group is also called green plants or...
s are sentient
Sentience
Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive or be conscious, or to have subjective experiences. Eighteenth century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think from the ability to feel . In modern western philosophy, sentience is the ability to have sensations or experiences...
- they can certainly communicate through chemical signals and have complex responses to stimuli - but that may respond to humans in a manner that amounts to ESP
ESP
-General use:* Extrasensory perception, a paranormal ability* English for Specific Purposes, a subset of English language learning and teaching* Effective Sensory Projection, a term used in the Silva Method* Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York, U.S.A...
and that may be interpreted as experience of pain
Suffering
Suffering, or pain in a broad sense, is an individual's basic affective experience of unpleasantness and aversion associated with harm or threat of harm. Suffering may be qualified as physical or mental. It may come in all degrees of intensity, from mild to intolerable. Factors of duration and...
and fear.
The theory is apt to be received with contempt in scientific circles while skeptics criticize the conditions of many observations of 'plant perception' and state that, since plants lack a complex nervous-sensory system, they are not capable of having feelings or perceiving human emotions or intentions.http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/plantbio/1999-November/022303.htmlhttp://skepdic.com/plants.html
Gustav Theodor Fechner
The notion that plants are capable of feeling emotions was first recorded in 1848, when Dr. Gustav Theodor Fechner, a German experimental psychologist, suggested that plants are capable of emotions and that one could promote healthy growth with talk, attention, and affection.Chandra Bose
IndianIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
scientist Sir Jagdish Chandra Bose
Jagdish Chandra Bose
Acharya Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose, CSI, CIE, FRS was a Bengali polymath: a physicist, biologist, botanist, archaeologist, as well as an early writer of science fiction...
began to conduct experiments on plants in the year 1900. He found that every plant and every part of a plant appeared to have a sensitive nervous system
Nervous system
The nervous system is an organ system containing a network of specialized cells called neurons that coordinate the actions of an animal and transmit signals between different parts of its body. In most animals the nervous system consists of two parts, central and peripheral. The central nervous...
and responded to shock by a spasm just as an animal muscle does. In addition Bose found that plants grew more quickly amidst pleasant music and more slowly amidst loud noise or harsh sounds. He also claimed that plants can "feel pain, understand affection etc.," from the analysis of the nature of variation of the cell membrane
Cell membrane
The cell membrane or plasma membrane is a biological membrane that separates the interior of all cells from the outside environment. The cell membrane is selectively permeable to ions and organic molecules and controls the movement of substances in and out of cells. It basically protects the cell...
potential of plants under different circumstances. According to him, a plant treated with care and affection gives out a different vibration compared to a plant subjected to torture.
One visitor to his laboratory, the vegetarian playwright George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, was intensely disturbed upon witnessing a demonstration in which a cabbage
Cabbage
Cabbage is a popular cultivar of the species Brassica oleracea Linne of the Family Brassicaceae and is a leafy green vegetable...
had "convulsions" as it boiled to death. Bose found that the effect of manures, drugs, and poisons could be determined within minutes, providing plant control with a new precision. He repeated his tests on metals, administering poison
Poison
In the context of biology, poisons are substances that can cause disturbances to organisms, usually by chemical reaction or other activity on the molecular scale, when a sufficient quantity is absorbed by an organism....
s to tin
Tin
Tin is a chemical element with the symbol Sn and atomic number 50. It is a main group metal in group 14 of the periodic table. Tin shows chemical similarity to both neighboring group 14 elements, germanium and lead and has two possible oxidation states, +2 and the slightly more stable +4...
, zinc
Zinc
Zinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...
, and platinum
Platinum
Platinum is a chemical element with the chemical symbol Pt and an atomic number of 78. Its name is derived from the Spanish term platina del Pinto, which is literally translated into "little silver of the Pinto River." It is a dense, malleable, ductile, precious, gray-white transition metal...
, and obtained astonishing responses which, when plotted on a graph, appeared precisely like those of poisoned animals. In conclusion he said: "Do not these records tell us of some property of matter common and persistent? That there is no abrupt break, but a uniform and continuous march of law?"
Cleve Backster
Bose's experiments stopped at this conclusion, but Cleve BacksterCleve Backster
Cleve Backster is a best known for his experiments with biocommunication in plant and animal cells using a polygraph machine in the 1960s which led to his theory of "primary perception." Backster began his career as an Interrogation Specialist with the CIA, and went on to become Chairman of the...
an Interrogation
Interrogation
Interrogation is interviewing as commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and Intelligence agencies with the goal of extracting a confession or obtaining information. Subjects of interrogation are often the suspects, victims, or witnesses of a crime...
Specialist with the CIA, conducted research that led him to believe that plants can communicate with other lifeforms. Backster's interest in the subject began in February 1966 when he tried to measure the rate at which water rises from a philodendron
Philodendron
Philodendron is a large genus of flowering plants in the Araceae family, consisting of close to 900 or more species according to TROPICOS . Other sources quote different numbers of species. According to S.J. Mayo there are about 350-400 formally recognized species whereas according to Croat there...
's root into its leaves. Because a polygraph
Polygraph
A polygraph measures and records several physiological indices such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity while the subject is asked and answers a series of questions...
or 'lie detector' can measure electrical resistance, which would alter when the plant was watered, he attached a polygraph to one of the plant's leaves. Backster stated that, to his immense surprise, "the tracing began to show a pattern typical of the response you get when you subject a human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
to emotional stimulation of short duration".
In 1975 K.A. Horowitz, D.C. Lewis and E.L. Gasteiger published an article in Science giving their results when repeating one of Backster's effects - plant response to the killing of brine shrimp
Brine shrimp
Artemia is a genus of aquatic crustaceans known as brine shrimp. Artemia, the only genus in the family Artemiidae, has changed little externally since the Triassic period...
in boiling water. The researchers grounded the plants to reduce electrical interference and rinsed them to remove dust particles. As a control three of five pipettes contained brine shrimp while the remaining two only had water: the pipettes were delivered to the boiling water at random. This investigation used a total of 60 brine shrimp deliveries to boiling water while Backster's had used 13. Positive correlations did not occur at a rate great enough to be considered statistically significant. Backster criticized them for misunderstanding certain fundamentals of what he termed "primary perception", such as that the time spent rinsing the plants might have affected their relationship to the experimenters.
Mythbusters
The television show MythBustersMythBusters
MythBusters is a science entertainment TV program created and produced by Beyond Television Productions for the Discovery Channel. The series is screened by numerous international broadcasters, including Discovery Channel Australia, Discovery Channel Latin America, Discovery Channel Canada, Quest...
performed an experiment to verify or disprove the concept. The tests were done by connecting plants to a polygraph galvanometer
Galvanometer
A galvanometer is a type of ammeter: an instrument for detecting and measuring electric current. It is an analog electromechanical transducer that produces a rotary deflection of some type of pointer in response to electric current flowing through its coil in a magnetic field. .Galvanometers were...
and employing actual and imagined harm upon the plants or upon others in the plant's vicinity. The galvanometer showed some kind of reaction about one third of the time. The experimenters, who were in the room with the plant, surmised that the vibrations of their actions or the room itself could have affected the polygraph. After isolating the plant the polygraph showed a response slightly less than one third of the time. Later experiments with an EEG
EEG
EEG commonly refers to electroencephalography, a measurement of the electrical activity of the brain.EEG may also refer to:* Emperor Entertainment Group, a Hong Kong-based entertainment company...
failed to detect anything. When the presenters dropped eggs randomly into boiling water the plant had no reaction whatsoever. The show concluded that the theory was not true. The anomalous readings were unrepeated during their tests and it was stated that "if it's not repeatable it's not science."
Miscellaneous
- Will EisnerWill EisnerWilliam Erwin "Will" Eisner was an American comics writer, artist and entrepreneur. He is considered one of the most important contributors to the development of the medium and is known for the cartooning studio he founded; for his highly influential series The Spirit; for his use of comics as an...
wrote a graphic novel entitled Life on Another PlanetLife on Another PlanetLife On Another Planet, also known as Signal from Space, is a science fiction story by Will Eisner serialized in The Spirit and later collected into a single volume....
that uses Backster's ideas as one of the main plot devices. A long description of Backster's life and thoughts appear in the comic as a letter read by one of the characters. The letter is included in the comic as a full page of text.
- English author Roald DahlRoald DahlRoald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, fighter pilot and screenwriter.Born in Wales to Norwegian parents, he served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, in which he became a flying ace and intelligence agent, rising to the rank of Wing Commander...
wrote a short story entitled The Sound Machine dealing with the theory, in which the protagonistProtagonistA protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
develops a machine that enables him to hear the sound of plants, especially when they are under pain. With the machine he hears the scream of roses being cut, and the moan of a tree when he strikes it with an axe.
- Stevie WonderStevie WonderStevland Hardaway Morris , better known by his stage name Stevie Wonder, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer and activist...
sang of Bose's findings in the song "Same Old Story" on the Secret Life of Plants soundtrack album for the movie of the same name. The lyrics are as follows: "for most felt it was mad to conceive/that plants thought, felt, and moved quite like we/but with instruments Bose would devise/would take science itself by surprise." The song also includes references to George Washington CarverGeorge Washington CarverGeorge Washington Carver , was an American scientist, botanist, educator, and inventor. The exact day and year of his birth are unknown; he is believed to have been born into slavery in Missouri in January 1864....
and his advocacy of crop rotationCrop rotationCrop rotation is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons.Crop rotation confers various benefits to the soil. A traditional element of crop rotation is the replenishment of nitrogen through the use of green manure in sequence with cereals...
.
Sources
- The Reader's Digest, Wonders of the Natural World, The Reader's Digest Association Ltd., 1975
- Stone, Robert The Secret Life of Your Cells, Whitford Press, 1994
- Jensen, D., The Plants Respond: An Interview with Cleve Backster, 2006, http://www.derrickjensen.org/backster.html, Accessed 30 Nov 2006
- Horowitz, K.A., Lewis, D.C, and Gasteiger, E.L. Plant 'Primary Perception': Electrophysiological Unresponsiveness to Brine Shrimp Killing, Science, New Series, Vol. 189, No. 4201 (Aug 8, 1975), pp. 478–480
- Carey, S.S. A Beginner's Guide to Scientific Method - Third Edition, Thomson-Wadsworth, 2004
- Carroll, R.T. Plant Perception (a.k.a The Backster Effect), 2005, http://www.skepdic.com/plants.html, Accessed 30 Nov 2006
- Tortora, Gerard J. Principles of Human Anatomy - Tenth Edition, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005.
See also
- The Secret Life of PlantsThe Secret Life of PlantsThe Secret Life of Plants is a book by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, described as "A fascinating account of the physical, emotional, and spiritual relations between plants and man."...
- Harold Saxton BurrHarold Saxton BurrHarold Saxton Burr was E. K. Hunt Professor of Anatomy at Yale University School of Medicine. His early years were spent in Springfield, Massachusetts, while most of his later life was spent in New Haven. In 1908 he was admitted to the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale and received his Ph.B. in...
- List of parapsychology topics