TWPF Reading Group ​

Do plants think? Do fungi dream? What can the more-than-human world teach us about the nature of mind?

Recent scientific research has shed light on the sophisticated ways in which plants and fungi sense, make sense of, and interact with the world. Alongside these discoveries is a wave of interest in the “more-than-human” humanities. This scholarship raises fundamental questions about the nature of the human and the non-human: what is mind, where does it extend, and how? What is matter, and what does it mean to label it “animate” or “inanimate”? How do plants and fungi trouble our understanding of “thinking,” and perhaps cause us to reconsider what it means to be human? This year-long reading group will explore these questions and more, engaging works from leading thinkers such as Emanuele Coccia, Monica Gagliano, Suzanne Simard, Michael Marder, and more. 

The reading group was co-led by Rachael Petersen and Natalia Schwien Scott from 2022-2024 and led by Natalia from 2024-2025. 

2024-2025 Readings

Overview: What is Consciousness? 

Critical questions:

What is consciousness? Is this a helpful label? What are similar labels and how are they utilized to create or dismantle boundaries around intelligence and feeling? 

Required reading: 

  • Nagel, Thomas, What Is It Like to Be a Bat? (2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 21 Mar. 2024). 
  • Calvo, P. 2017. “What Is It Like to Be a Plant?” Journal of Consciousness Studies 24 (9–10): 205–27.

Suggested reading: 

  • Griffin, Donald R. 1998. “From Cognition to Consciousness.” Animal Cognition 1 (1): 3–16.
  • Seth, Anil. 2018. “The Fall and Rise of Consciousness Science.” PsyArXiv. August 26. doi:10.31234/osf.io/zhtfw

 

Grammar of Animacy & Recognizing Cultural Lenses  

Critical questions:

How does language shape our understanding of consciousness? How is consciousness situated culturally? What are examples of language we use in our vernacular that defy conventional demarcations around consciousness, intelligence, sentience, etc? 

Required reading: 

  • “Learning the Grammar of Animacy” from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer 
  • Mendoza, R. J. (2023). Ritual Relationships with Copal Incense: Reinterpreting 21st Century U.S. Contexts through Indigenous Mesoamerican Ontologies. Indigenous Religious Traditions, 1(1), 4-24. 
  • “A Tale of Two Trees: Unveiling the Sacred Life of Nature in Islamic and Christian Traditions” Dissertation by Munjed Murad 
  • “Traditional Anishinaabe Teaching about Plants” from Geniusz, Mary Siisip, Wendy Makoons Geniusz, and Annmarie Geniusz. Plants Have So Much to Give Us, All We Have to Do Is Ask: Anishinaabe Botanical Teachings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Suggested reading: 

  • “Trompe-l’Oeil Nature” from Beyond Nature and Culture by Phillipe Descola 
  • Please note that this text is dense. No need to read the whole thing; just skim. 
  • “The Force of Things” Chapter from Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter : A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press.

 

Current State of Plant Neurobiology Part I 

Critical questions: 

How do current questions around plant intelligence mirror those asked about animal intelligence? What counts as communication? 

Required reading: 

  •  Prologue, Chapters 1-3 from Schlanger, Zoë. 2024. The Light Eaters : How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. First edition. New York, NY: Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
  • Brenner, Eric D, Rainer Stahlberg, Stefano Mancuso, Jorge Vivanco, František Baluška, and Elizabeth Van Volkenburgh. 2006. “Plant Neurobiology: An Integrated View of Plant Signaling.” Trends in Plant Science 11 (8): 413–19. 
  • “Baldwin, Jan T., and Jack C. Schultz. “Rapid Changes in Tree Leaf Chemistry Induced by Damage: Evidence for Communication between Plants.” Science 221, no. 4607 (1983): 277–79. 
  • Karban, Richard. 2007. “Experimental Clipping of Sagebrush Inhibits Seed Germination of Neighbours.” Ecology Letters 10 (9): 791–97. 

Suggested reading: 

  • “On the Physical Basis of Life" (1868) by Thomas Huxley 

  • Pages 28-39 of Baluška, F, Stefano Mancuso, and Dieter Volkmann. 2006. Communication in Plants : Neuronal Aspects of Plant Life. Berlin ; New York: Springer.

     

Current State of Plant Neurobiology Part II

Critical questions: 

What is at stake by broadening definitions? How does the information presented in these papers engage with questions on ethics? How do these questions resonate with some of the cosmological materials discussed in previous sessions? 

Required reading: 

  • Chapters 4-7; Schlanger, Zoë. 2024. The Light Eaters : How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth. First edition. New York, NY: Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. 

  • Miguel-Tomé, Sergio, and Rodolfo R Llinás. 2021. “Broadening the Definition of a Nervous System to Better Understand the Evolution of Plants and Animals.” Plant Signaling & Behavior 16 (10): 1927562–1927562. 
  • Jaffe, M.J. 1973. “Thigmomorphogenesis: The Response of Plant Growth and Development to Mechanical Stimulation: With Special Reference to Bryonia Dioica.” Planta 114 (2): 143–57. 
  • Gilroy, Simon, and Tony Trewavas. 2023. “Agency, Teleonomy and Signal Transduction in Plant Systems.” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society/Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 139 (4): 514–29. 
  • Khait, Itzhak, Ohad Lewin-Epstein, Raz Sharon, Kfir Saban, Revital Goldstein, Yehuda Anikster, Yarden Zeron, et al. 2023. “Sounds Emitted by Plants under Stress Are Airborne and Informative.” Cell 186 (7): 1328-1336.e10. 
  • Yip, Eric C, Consuelo M De Moraes, John F Tooker, Mark C Mescher, and Ayub Oduor. 2021. “Sensory Co‐evolution: The Sex Attractant of a Gall‐making Fly Primes Plant Defences, but Female Flies Recognize Resulting Changes in Host‐plant Quality.” Journal of Ecology 109 (1): 99–108. 

Current State of Plant Neurobiology Part III 

Required reading: 

  • The Light Eaters, Chapters 8-11 
  • Gianoli, Ernesto, and Fernando Carrasco-Urra. 2014. “Leaf Mimicry in a Climbing Plant Protects against Herbivory.” Current Biology 24 (9): 984–87. 
  • Burns, K. C, Ian Hutton, and Lara Shepherd. 2021. “Primitive Eusociality in a Land Plant?” Ecology (Durham) 102 (9): 1–4. 
  • Tagawa, Kazuki, and Mikio Watanabe. 2021. “Group Foraging in Carnivorous Plants: Carnivorous Plant Drosera Makinoi (Droseraceae) Is More Effective at Trapping Larger Prey in Large Groups.” Plant Species Biology 36 (1): 114–18. 
  • Herman, Jacob J, and Sonia E Sultan. 2011. “Adaptive Transgenerational Plasticity in Plants: Case Studies, Mechanisms, and Implications for Natural Populations.” Frontiers in Plant Science 2: 102–102.

Suggested Readings: 

  • “Morphic Resonance and Morphic Fields - An Introduction” by Rupert Sheldrake 

     

An Ontological Separation of Human from Nature 

Co-facilitated with Aaron Scott, MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow

Critical questions: 

In what ways do both works grapple with the ethical implications of human intervention in nature, and how do they envision the role of humanity in shaping the environment? What do these readings teach us about the artificial division between humans and the rest of life on the planet? How do human individuals play a role in the overarching narrative of plants and people? 

Required reading: 

  • Chapters 1 and 2 from Wulf, Andrea. 2016. The Invention of Nature : Alexander von Humboldt’s New World. First Vintage books edition. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
  • Introduction and Chapter 7 from Martin, Laura J. 2022. Wild by Design : The Rise of Ecological Restoration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

 

Empire & Earth: Colonialism and Plants 

Co-facilitated with Rebecca McMackin 

Critical questions: 

How have colonial plant exploitative practices underpinned global systems of oppression? How might integrating the historical focus of The Botany of Empire with the narrative and ecological framing of The Nutmeg’s Curse provide a richer understanding of colonial legacies in our relationship with the natural world? What are practical ways of moving forward? What might reparations including plants look like? 

Required reading: 

  • Introduction, Chapter 4, and Chapter 9 from Subramaniam, Banu, and Project Muse. 2024. Botany of Empire : Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Suggested Reading: 

  • Chapter 1 and 3 from Ghosh, Amitav. 2021. The Nutmeg’s Curse : Parables for a Planet in Crisis. Chicago]: The University of Chicago Press. 

     

Posthumanism: Sounding More-than-Human Worlds

Guest facilitated with Elitza Koeva 

Required reading & listening: 

Recommended readings: 

  • Goh, Annie. Sounding situated knowledges: Echo in archaeoacoustics. Parallax, 23:3, 283-304, 2017.  
  • Helmreich, Stefan. “Transduction.” In Keywords in Sound, edited by David Novak and Matt Sakakeeny, 222–31. United States: Duke University Press, 2015. 

  • KANNGIESER, ANJA, and ZOE TODD. “3. FROM ENVIRONMENTAL CASE STUDY TO ENVIRONMENTAL KIN STUDY.” History and Theory :Studies in the Philosophy of History 59, no. 3 (2020): 385–93.

     

Northern European Plant Magic + Folklore

Co-facilitated with Christina Oakley Harrington 

Critical questions:

What are plant practices from European folk tradition that we still see practiced today? What is the role of ritual when engaging with plant personhood (here defined as agency and memory)? What are the boundaries between magical and medicinal?  

Required reading: 

  • Harrington, Christina Oakley. 2023. In The Treadwell’s Book of Plant Magic. United States: Red Wheel/Weiser. 

     

The Arrogant Ape: A Special Workshop Series with Dr. Christine Webb

Critical questions and description:

Darwin considered humans one part of the web of life, not the apex of a natural hierarchy. Yet today, many maintain that we are the most intelligent, virtuous, successful species that ever lived. This mistaken belief enables us to exploit the earth towards our own exclusive ends, throwing us into a perilous planetary imbalance. But is this view and way of life inevitable? In this series of workshops, we’ll explore human exceptionalism as an ideology that relies more on human culture than our biology, more on delusion and faith than on evidence. 

Required reading: 

Webb, Christine. 2025 (forthcoming). The Arrogant Ape: Unlearning the Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters. Penguin Random House. 

 

2023-2024 Readings

Intelligence, Sentience & Contemporary Plant Science

  • Gagliano, Monica. 2014. “In a Green Frame of Mind: Perspectives on the Behavioural Ecology and Cognitive Nature of Plants.” AoB Plants 7 (November): plu075.
  • Calvo, P. 2017. “What Is It Like to Be a Plant?” Journal of Consciousness Studies 24 (9–10): 205–27.

Auxiliary readings:

  • Nagel, Thomas. 1974. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review 83 (4): 435.

  • Pollan, Michael. “The Intelligent Plant.” The New Yorker, December 15, 2013. 

Anthropocentrism and Anthropomorphism: what can we learn from animal studies? 

  • "Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism" by Eduardo Viveiros de Castro 

  • "Conventional Science Will Not Do Justice To Nonhuman Interests: A Fresh Approach is Required" by Becca Franks, Monica Gagliano, Christine Webb, and Barbara Smuts 

  • "If Not All Stones are Alive: Radical Relationality in Animism Studies" by Graham Harvey 

  • "Anthropomorphism and Anthropodenial: Consistency in Our Thinking about Humans and Other Animals" by Frans B.M. de Waal 

  • "Un-Tabooing Empathy: The Benefits of Empathic Science with Nonhuman Research Participants" by Becca Franks, Monica Gagliano, Christine Webb, and Barbara Smuts 

  • "Towards an Ethnography of Animal Worlds" by Dominique Lestel 

Goethe’s Metamorphosis & Transformational Science: how can the observation of plants transform us? 

  • Henri Bortoft  “The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way Towards a Science of Conscious Participation in Nature” 

    • pg 77-83 “Goethe’s Organic Vision” 

    • pg 247-289 “The Goethean One”  

  • Introduction of Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, and Gordon L. Miller. 2009. The Metamorphosis of Plants. First Edition. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Speculative Fiction & Planting Worlds

  • Ursula K. LeGuin, The Word for World is Forest 

  • "Looking to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World is Forest to Find Ways to Respond to the Dilemmas of the Anthropocene" 

Hildegard von Bingen’s Ecological Theology

  • Michael Marder, Green Mass: The Ecological Theology of Hildegard von Bingen
  • Semiotics & the Amazonian Forest
  • Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think

Minimal Cognition & Plant Blindness 

  • Lyon, Pamela. 2020. “Of What Is ‘Minimal Cognition’ the Half-Baked Version?” Adaptive Behavior 28 (6): 407–24. (uploaded here) Paco Calvo runs a lab called the “Minimal Cognition Lab” which studies the intelligent behavior of plants. What is minimal cognition? What are some of the possibilities and constraints of this term? 
  • Wandersee, J.H.; Schussler, E. Toward a theory of plant blindness. Plant Sci. Bull. 2001, 47, pages 2–9. A short article from the scholars who introduced the term “plant blindness” in 1999.

Auxilary Readings: 

  • Segundo-Ortin, Miguel, and Paco Calvo. 2023. “Plant Sentience? Between Romanticism and Denial: Science.” Animal Sentience 8 (33). Bouteau, François, Etienne Grésillon, 2. Denis Chartier, et al. 2021. “Our Sisters the Plants? Notes from Phylogenetics and Botany on Plant Kinship Blindness.” Plant Signaling & Behavior 16 (12): 2004769.
  •  Bouteau, François, Paco Calvo et al. 2021. “Our Sisters the Plants? Notes from Phylogenetics and Botany on Plant Kinship Blindness.” Plant Signaling & Behavior 16 (12): 2004769. 

Christianity & Animism: Is there room for plants? 

Mark Wallace, When God Was a Bird

2022-2023 Readings

A Primer: are plants “conscious”? How do we know? 

  • Gagliano, Monica. 2018. Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants. Illustrated edition. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books.

  • Gagliano, Monica, Vladyslav V. Vyazovskiy, Alexander A. Borbély, Mavra Grimonprez, and Martial Depczynski. 2016. “Learning by Association in Plants.” Scientific Reports 6 (1): 38427.

  • Gagliano, M. 2013. “Green Symphonies: A Call for Studies on Acoustic Communication in Plants.” Behavioral Ecology 24 (4): 789–96.

  • Hendlin, Yogi H. “Plant Philosophy and Interpretation: Making Sense of Contemporary Plant Intelligence Debates.” Environmental Values 31, no. 3 (June 1, 2022): 253–76.

  • “Chapter 4: Breaking the Silence” in Gagliano, Monica, John C. Ryan, and Patrícia Vieira, eds. 2017. The Language of Plants: Science, Philosophy, Literature. 1st edition. Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press.

  • Pollan, Michael. “The Intelligent Plant.” The New Yorker, December 15, 2013. 

Anthropomorphism, Perspectivism, & Empathy: what plant studies can learn from animal studies

  • Castro, Eduardo Viveiros de. 1998. “Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 4 (3): 469–88.

  • Smuts, Christine Webb, Becca Franks, Monica Gagliano, Barbara. 2023. “Un-Tabooing Empathy: The Benefits of Empathic Science with Nonhuman Research Participants.” In Conversations on Empathy. Routledge.

  • Waal, Frans B. M. de. 1999. “Anthropomorphism and Anthropodenial: Consistency in Our Thinking about Humans and Other Animals.” Philosophical Topics 27 (1): 255–80.

Fungal Connections 

  • Adamatzky, Andrew. 2022. “Language of Fungi Derived from Their Electrical Spiking Activity.” Royal Society Open Science 9 (4): 211926.

  • Sheldrake, Merlin. 2020. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures. New York: Random House.

  • Tsing, Anna. 2012. “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species.” Environmental Humanities 1 (1): 141–54.  

Researching Tree Intelligence in the Field: stories, science, controversy

Vegetal Philosophies: the phenomenology and metaphysics of plants

  • Coccia, Emanuele. 2018. The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture. 1st edition. Medford, MA: Polity.

  • Marder, Michael, and Mathilde Roussel. 2014. The Philosopher’s Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium. European Perspectives. A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press.