Date & Time
Sunday, December 5, 2021, 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM
Name
Planta Sapiens (or why good wine needs no bush)
Professor Dr. Paco Calvo
Description

Grapevines take action autonomously according to their own needs. Their behavior is truly flexible and anticipatory. Vines can navigate their surroundings courtesy of their sensory apparatus, and are able to adapt in a fast, and yet coordinated manner, despite lacking neurones. Their excitable vascular system forms a complex information-processing network that allows them to coordinate and integrate information signaling from root to shoot, and to take appropriate action as the need arises. The potential for such excitable network is currently unknown, and yet exciting. Today we know for instance that plants are subject to reversible anesthetic treatment. In fact, it is possible that the origins of subjectivity date back to the origins of life itself. Against zoocentric biases, my talk explores the very possibility and consequences of such idea; an approach that may ultimately bear upon our understanding of life and cognition more broadly, reaching all the way from single cell organisms to homo and planta sapiens.