WHAT DOES THE PLANT SAY?
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WHAT DOES THE PLANT SAY? 〰️
A white oak tree at the corner of South Finley and Dearing Streets in Athens, Georgia, US, unlike the others sitting on someone else’s premises, was granted ownership to itself, which it had the right of a plant being, in the summer of 1890. It became that Tree that Owns Itself.
Justice William O. Douglas suggested in his dissent for the case Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727 (1972), that environmental objects should be granted legal personhood by the public and should have the standing to sue for their own protection.
Ecuador’s 2008 constitution proclaimed the rights of nature “to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles”, which is the world’s first constitution to reflect rights for nature. This means that nature has the right to continue existing and functioning in a healthy and sustainable way, as well as the right to regenerate and recover from any damage that may have been inflicted upon it. The recognition of these rights for nature was a significant development in the field of environmental protection and conservation.
Te Urewera was declared an environmental legal entity in 2014, followed by the Whanganui River in 2017 by New Zealand. To Māori, the river was a single and indivisible entity and not something that could be owned. It was where their culture and ancestors were rooted, and they said, “I am the river, and the river is me.”
Professor Christopher D. Stone published an article, “Should trees have standing? Towards legal rights for natural objects”, in the 1970s, which first discussed the idea of attributing legal personality to natural objects. Standing is a legal term that people are more familiar with, or to be read as locus standi in Latin form, meaning “place to stand”, refers to whether or not someone has the right to be heard in court.
Western philosophy, which is the dominant philosophical tradition in the Western world, generally does not recognize plants as persons or intelligent beings. In contrast, many indigenous cultures around the world have traditionally recognized plants as active and intelligent beings that deserve respect and care. Philosopher Michael Marder has argued that the idea that plants should have rights derives from the concept of "plant subjectivity," which refers to the idea that plants have their own subjective experiences and ways of being in the world. Other researchers, such as Hall, have also argued for the ethical consideration of plants based on plant neurobiology, which suggests that plants are autonomous, perceptive organisms that are capable of complex and adaptive behaviours, including the ability to recognize self/non-self.
The Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology analysed scientific data on plants. It concluded in 2009 that plants are entitled to a certain amount of "dignity", but the "dignity of plants is not an absolute value."
In the field of plant physiology, plants are understood to have mechanisms that allow them to recognize and respond to environmental changes. This is known as plant perception. This concept should not be confused with the idea that plants can feel emotions, which is sometimes also referred to as plant perception. This latter concept, along with the idea of plant intelligence, can be traced back to 1848, when German experimental psychologist Gustav Theodor Fechner suggested that plants are capable of experiencing emotions and that one could promote healthy growth by talking to, paying attention to, and showing affection to plants. While these ideas have been the subject of debate and controversy, some scientists and researchers have continued to explore the possibility of plants having emotions and intelligence.
Plant electrical signals are physiological traits that reflect a plant's overall physiological state. These signals can be detected through various methods and are thought to transmit information about the plant's internal processes. The cells of biological organs, including plants, generate electrical potentials that can result in the flow of electric currents. These electrical signals are often studied as a way to understand the physiological responses of plants to different stimuli. For example, the action potentials evoked by external stimuli in plants may be associated with changes in gene expression related to stress tolerance. These electrical signals can provide valuable insights into the functioning and response of plants to their environment.
This project involves using electrodes and a programmable microcontroller to detect and analyze the electrical signals of plants. The electrodes are placed on the leaves of the plants and are used to measure microcurrent fluctuations, which are tiny changes in the electrical conductivity between the electrodes. These fluctuations are then fed into the microcontroller and graphed as MIDI data, which can be sonified into musical nodes that can be heard. The pitches of the musical nodes are used to represent different emotional states in the plants, with low pitches indicating a calm state and high pitches indicating a more emotional or stressful state.
By monitoring the plant over time and analyzing the patterns in the MIDI data, it may be possible to infer the plant's emotional or mental state. By analyzing a pool of data from multiple plants, it may be possible to interpret these "feelings" and understand how different plants respond to different stimuli. For example, the data from this project suggests that the Monstera plant is more sensitive than the Snake Plant, while the Snake Plant is more robust.
From a hypothetical approach, the project aims to study plants as they have the ability to act as a single entity. By quantifying their feelings, human-plant relationships will be further developed to an infectious level through language. We should hear their words first to understand where plants stand, before legally representing them as guardians.