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| Awareness
by Gosia (April 2009) Humans have the tendency to see the world from their own perspective. Naturally, it is easier to understand the world in a way that the world looks like from where we are standing. Not so long ago, humans assumed that animals have no self-awareness and hence do not suffer. Scientists now know that all the sensitivities that were thought to be peculiar to humans, exists in the animals. Next, it is used to be assumed that the intelligence and awareness is proportional to the size of one's nervous system. Scientists now know that even creatures with nervous systems made off just a few cells are capable of such amazing self-aware intelligence that it defies the prior understanding of what it means to be aware. Not so long ago, it used to be assumed that the plants have no awareness either. Scientists now know that there is plenty of evidence that it might not be so. And so like this, one by one, the old understanding of awareness falls, inevitably. I feel that all beings have awareness of self, whether humans are aware of it or not. I also feel that a step up from those veganism-inspired ideologies that focus only on the suffering of animals, is to be able to see all beings on this living organism of Earth, and acknowledge the rights of them all. Food for thought: (1) CELL SIGNALING - POTENTIAL AWARENESS OF PLANTS, Keith Roberts, Nature 360, 14 - 15 (05 November 1992) (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v360/n6399/abs/360014a0.html) See also the References within: 1. BAYDOUN EAH THE IMMOBILITY OF PECTIC SUBSTANCES IN INJURED TOMATO LEAVES AND ITS BEARING ON THE IDENTITY OF THE WOUND HORMONE PLANTA 165 : 269 1985 2. BOWLES D CURR BIOL 1 : 165 1991 3. CREELMAN RA JASMONIC ACID METHYL JASMONATE ACCUMULATE IN WOUNDED SOYBEAN HYPOCOTYLS AND MODULATE WOUND GENE-EXPRESSION PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 89 : 4938 1992 4. DOHERTY HM THE WOUND RESPONSE OF TOMATO PLANTS CAN BE INHIBITED BY ASPIRIN AND RELATED HYDROXYBENZOIC ACIDS PHYSIOLOGICAL AND MOLECULAR PLANT PATHOLOGY 33 : 377 1988 5. ENYEDI AJ SIGNAL MOLECULES IN SYSTEMIC PLANT-RESISTANCE TO PATHOGENS AND PESTS CELL 70 : 879 1992 6. FARMER EE INTERPLANT COMMUNICATION - AIRBORNE METHYL JASMONATE INDUCES SYNTHESIS OF PROTEINASE-INHIBITORS IN PLANT-LEAVES PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 87 : 7713 1990 7. FARMER EE REGULATION OF EXPRESSION OF PROTEINASE-INHIBITOR GENES BY METHYL JASMONATE AND JASMONIC ACID PLANT PHYSIOLOGY 98 : 995 1992 8. GREEN TR WOUND-INDUCED PROTEINASE INHIBITOR IN PLANT LEAVES - POSSIBLE DEFENSE MECHANISM AGAINST INSECTS SCIENCE 175 : 776 1972 9. HILDMANN TH CELL 4 : 1157 1992 10. KERNAN A AUXIN LEVELS REGULATE THE EXPRESSION OF A WOUND-INDUCIBLE PROTEINASE-INHIBITOR II-CHLORAMPHENICOL ACETYL TRANSFERASE GENE FUSION INVITRO AND INVIVO PLANT PHYSIOLOGY 91 : 73 1989 11. MALONE M KINETICS OF WOUND-INDUCED HYDRAULIC SIGNALS AND VARIATION POTENTIALS IN WHEAT SEEDLINGS PLANTA 187 : 505 1992 12. MCGURL B STRUCTURE, EXPRESSION, AND ANTISENSE INHIBITION OF THE SYSTEMIN PRECURSOR GENE SCIENCE 255 : 1570 1992 13. PEARCE G A POLYPEPTIDE FROM TOMATO LEAVES INDUCES WOUND-INDUCIBLE PROTEINASE-INHIBITOR PROTEINS SCIENCE 253 : 895 1991 14. PENACORTES H ABSCISIC-ACID IS INVOLVED IN THE WOUND-INDUCED EXPRESSION OF THE PROTEINASE INHIBITOR-II GENE IN POTATO AND TOMATO PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 86 : 9851 1989 15. ROBLIN G ANALYSIS OF THE VARIATION POTENTIAL INDUCED BY WOUNDING IN PLANTS PLANT AND CELL PHYSIOLOGY 26 : 455 1985 16. RYAN CA THE SEARCH FOR THE PROTEINASE INHIBITOR-INDUCING FACTOR, PIIF PLANT MOLECULAR BIOLOGY 19 : 123 1992 17. RYAN CA PLANT PHYSIOL 54 : 328 1971 18. VANSAMBEEK JW MEDIATION OF RAPID ELECTRICAL, METABOLIC, TRANSPIRATIONAL, AND PHOTOSYNTHETIC CHANGES BY FACTORS RELEASED FROM WOUNDS .1. VARIATION POTENTIALS AND PUTATIVE ACTION POTENTIALS IN INTACT PLANTS CANADIAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY-REVUE CANADIENNE DE BOTANIQUE 54 : 2642 1976 19. WILDON DC SYSTEMIC RESPONSES ARISING FROM LOCALIZED HEAT STIMULI IN TOMATO PLANTS ANNALS OF BOTANY 64 : 691 1989 20. WILDON DC ELECTRICAL SIGNALING AND SYSTEMIC PROTEINASE-INHIBITOR INDUCTION IN THE WOUNDED PLANT NATURE 360 : 62 1992 (2) Further scientific references: 1. Title: Signaling role of action potential in higher plants Author(s): Pyatygin SS, Opritov VA, Vodeneev VA Source: RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGY Volume: 55 Issue: 2 Pages: 285-291 Published: MAR-APR 2008 2. Title: A simple CA model for signal transduction in plants Author(s): Mukherjee S Source: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MODERN PHYSICS C Volume: 18 Issue: 10 Pages: 1627-1639 3. Title: From semi-conductors to the rhythms of sensitive plants: The research of J. C. Bose Author(s): Shepherd VA Source: CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY Volume: 51 Issue: 7 Pages: 607-619 Published: 2005 4. Title: Relationship between environmental factors and diurnal variation of bioelectric potentials of an intact jute plant Author(s): Datta P, Palit P Source: CURRENT SCIENCE Volume: 87 Issue: 5 Pages: 680-683 Published: SEP 10 2004 5. Title: Ways of signal transmission and physiological role of electrical potentials in plants Author(s): Dziubinska H Source: ACTA SOCIETATIS BOTANICORUM POLONIAE Volume: 72 Issue: 4 Pages: 309-318 6. Title: The effects of mechanical vibration on the microstructure of Gerbera jamesonii acrocarpous callus Author(s): Wang BC, Long XF, Liu YY, et al. Source: COLLOIDS AND SURFACES B-BIOINTERFACES Volume: 23 Issue: 1 Pages: 1-5 Published: JAN 2002 7. Title: Magnetic detection of injury-induced ionic currents in bean plants Author(s): Jazbinsek V, Thiel G, Muller W, et al. Source: EUROPEAN BIOPHYSICS JOURNAL WITH BIOPHYSICS LETTERS Volume: 29 Issue: 7 Pages: 515-522 Published: 2000 8. Title: Changes in the resistance of photosynthesizing cotyledon cells of pumpkin seedlings to cooling and heating, as induced by the stimulation of the root system with KCl solution Author(s): Retivin VG, Opritov VA, Lobov SA, et al. Source: RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGY Volume: 46 Issue: 5 Pages: 689-696 Published: SEP-OCT 1999 9. Title: Bioelectricity and the rhythms of sensitive plants - The biophysical research of Jagadis Chandra Bose Author(s): Shepherd VA Source: CURRENT SCIENCE Volume: 77 Issue: 1 Pages: 189-195 Published: JUL 10 1999 10. Title: Changes of electric potential in pistils of Petunia hybrida Hort. and Brassica napus L. during pollination Author(s): Wedzony M, Filek M Source: ACTA PHYSIOLOGIAE PLANTARUM Volume: 20 Issue: 3 Pages: 291-297 Published: 1998 (3) "Just as Descartes managed to ignore the obvious when he said that animals were unfeeling machines, there is considerable evidence that plants are much more aware than we commonly believe. Using a definition of pain that is based on possession of a nervous system deliberately and arbitrarily excludes plants. Yet plants are clearly aware of when they are being attacked because they mobilize chemical defenses. Just as meat eaters try to deny the fact that animals feel pain, vegans try to deny the fact that plants feel something akin to pain--something that could be used to justify not killing them. If we ever encounter aliens, the chances that they have a nervous system like ours is vanishingly small, but we would nonetheless assume that they feel what we would categorize as pain. Plants have all kinds of chemical defense systems that go in to action when the plant is damaged. Plants have ways to avoid being eaten--thorns, phytoestrogens (found in over 300 plants), poison, taste, growing high off of the ground. As Barbara McClintock, a Nobel laureate geneticist who worked with corn for over 30 years, said, "Animals can walk around, but plants have to stay still to do the same things, with ingenious mechanisms....Plants are extraordinary. For instance,...if you pinch a leaf of a plant you set off electric pulses. You can't touch a plant without setting off an electric pulse.... There is no question that plants have [all] kinds of sensitivities. They do a lot of responding to their environment. They can do almost anything you can think of. But just because they sit there, anybody walking down the road considers them just a plastic area to look at, [as if] they're not really alive" (Keller 199-200). If anyone should be at least open to the possibility that plants have some level of awareness, it is vegans since we continually chide others for not acknowledging animal awareness." (http://www.vegetus.org/essay/plants.htm) References within: Groves, Julian McAllister. Hearts and Minds: The Controversy over Laboratory Animals. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1997. Keller, Evelyn Fox. A Feeling for the Organism. New York: W H Freeman, 1983. Mason, Jim. An Unnatural Order: Why We Are Destroying the Planted and Each Other. New York: Continuum, 1993. (Read this book!!) Tompkins, Peter and Christopher Bird. The Secret Life of Plants. Philadelphia: Harper & Row, 1973. (4) One evidence of the evolution of the scientific thought on plants: Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ Cell Mol Biol (Noisy-le-grand). 2005 Dec 14;51(7):607-19.Links From semi-conductors to the rhythms of sensitive plants: the research of J.C. Bose. Shepherd VA. Department of Biophysics, School of Physics, The University of NSW, NSW 2052, Sydney, Australia. vas@phys.unsw.edu.au J.C. Bose (1858-1937) was one of the world's first biophysicists. He was the first person to use a semi conducting crystal to detect radio waves, and the ingenious inventor of a portable apparatus for generating and detecting microwaves (approximately 1 cm to 5 mm radio waves, frequency 12-60 GHz), as well as inventing many instruments now routinely used in microwave technology. Bose extended his specialist knowledge of the physics of electromagnetic radiation into insightful experiments on the life-processes of plants. He became a controversial figure in the west. He invented unique, delicate instruments for simultaneously measuring bioelectric potentials and for quantifying very small movements in plants. He worked with touch-sensitive plants, including Mimosa pudica, with plants that perform spontaneous movements, including the Indian telegraph plant Desmodium, and with plants and trees that did not make obvious rapid movements. Bose concluded that plants and animals have essentially the same fundamental physiological mechanisms. All plants co-ordinate their movements and responses to the environment through electrical signalling. All plants are sensitive explorers of their world, responding to it through a fundamental, pulsatile, motif involving coupled oscillations in electric potential, turgor pressure, contractility, and growth. His overall conclusion that plants have an electromechanical pulse, a nervous system, a form of intelligence, and are capable of remembering and learning, was not well received in its time. A hundred years later, concepts of plant intelligence, learning, and long-distance electrical signalling in plants have entered the mainstream literature. (5) |
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(Stacia Tauscher) You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance. (Franklin P. Jones) A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm. (Bill Vaughan) Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music. (William Stafford) Children are one third of our population and all of our future. (Select Panel for the Promotion of Child Health, 1981) Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man. (Rabindranath Tagore) In the United States today, there is a pervasive tendency to treat children as adults, and adults as children. The options of children are thus steadily expanded, while those of adults are progressively constricted. The result is unruly children and childish adults. (Thomas Szasz) Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're going to catch you in next. (Franklin P. Jones) Children seldom misquote. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said. Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything. (Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone Scelto) Women gather together to wear silly hats, eat dainty food, and forget how unresponsive their husbands are. Men gather to talk sports, eat heavy food, and forget how demanding their wives are. Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun. (Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960) Anyone who thinks the art of conversation is dead ought to tell a child to go to bed. (Robert Gallagher) There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million. (Walt Streighttiff) A child can ask questions that a wise man cannot answer. |