Scientist Monica Gagliano writes on plant cognition. Chapter Eight cites an article about her work https://www.news.uwa.edu.au/archive/201401156399/research/move-over-elephants-mimosas-have-memories-too/ Move over elephants – plants have memories too , where she proves that mimosa can learn how to r...

trees appear to learn how to conserve water for dry spells. This is a really interesting scientific finding that challenges concepts of consciousness. It seems reasonable to argue that any organism that can learn is conscious. If trees can learn, changing their behaviour in response to stimuli, and...

Chapter Seven, Forest Etiquette, touches on the causal elegance of evolution. Why are old trees beautiful? One reason is that to get old, a tree needs good shape. If it has bad shape, such as a bendy trunk, it is far more likely to either fall over in a storm or get cracks that allow fungus and othe...

In Chapter Six, Slowly Does It, Peter Wohlleben tells of a small beech tree, just six feet tall. He estimated it was about ten years old, but studying the nodes on its branches revealed it was over 80. Young forest trees are shaded by their parents, preventing them from growing rapidly. In a thick d...

I am now in England on a holiday, and this morning walked through Orrest Forest at Windermere in The Lake District on the northwest coast. The oak and beech trees in this forest above a carpet of bluebells and bracken reminded me of the German forest in The Hidden Life of Trees . Although it seems o...

Here is a new Australian radio interview with Peter Wohlleben about his new book https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pr ... /102391798

Islandsofrune wrote: ↑Tue May 16, 2023 9:35 pm I've done European and Asian philosophy rather well. African or Native American philosophies would be much appreciated.

Carlos Castaneda provides an interesting perspective on Native American philosophies. I found his book Tales of Power particularly fascinating.

The heart of the final chapter is a section entitled "Inertia, scale and mass". In this he argues that improvement in technical proficiency is likely to continue, and he uses the example of food production. He dismisses speculation about hydroponics replacing farmland and argues that the ...

Chapter Five – The tree lottery Consider, if a species of tree maintains a stable population, then on average one seed from each tree grows to maturity. A poplar tree produces a billion seeds over its lifetime. Therefore, the probability of any given seed producing a mature tree is about one in a bi...

Flat Earth Theory is a powerful example of the seductive allure of the Dunning-Kruger Syndrome, the ability of those with a sufficiently advanced level of stupidity to systematically ignore all evidence in order to maintain the compelling elegance of their beautiful idea.