Human-Plant Relations in Scientific Practice: Epistemology in the Vegetal Realm

• In Event: Organisms and Us in Dialogue

Abstract

In this talk I explore how human embodiment informs the way that scientists relate to plants in laboratory, field, and everyday life, and how this affects the ways that plant behaviour is studied, conceptualised, and explained. I compare the study of plant behaviour with that of animals, looking at the roles that metaphor, affective relations, and pre-theoretic intuitions play in informing scientific practice, theorising, and pedagogy. I argue that an awareness of such influences can facilitate more effective and less ambiguous metaphor use in a range of contexts, and can drive research programmes in fruitful directions that enable us to study and relate to plants on their own terms, without reducing them to reflexive automata or succumbing to crude anthropocentrism.

Author

• Laura May Ruggles, University of Adelaide