Plant–Thinking – A Philosophy Of Vegetal Life

For too long has the human mind been limited by thinking like a machine. Mechanistic thought has allowed humans to unleash violence on other species, both animals and plants. Plant-Thinking will help plants, but, even more importantly, it will help humans by understanding the sanctity and continuity of life and our place in the Earth Family. -- Vandana Shiva, activist and ecofeminist Recent advances in plant sciences reveal plants are sensitive organisms capable of rich sensory and communicative activities, based on complex and integrated signaling that allows for surprisingly sophisticated forms of behavior. Marder offers philosophical perspective on this paradigm shift with important consequences for theoretical philosophy, ethics, and politics. -- Frantisek Baluska, Friedrich Wilhelms-Universitat Bonn (Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultat) Marder argues that recent advances in animal ethics, for all their virtues, are often blind to the blinkered instrumentality of our...