The Unlikely Origins of Plant Consciousness: Fechner’s Vision
In the 19th century, Gustav Theodor Fechner pioneered the idea that plants possess souls—what we might today refer to as consciousness. His groundbreaking perspective, largely overlooked, re-emerged in contemporary discussions about plant life, partly thanks to an interdisciplinary reading group I co-lead at Harvard University. Our group delves into the complex literature surrounding plant consciousness, bringing together biologists, theologians, artists, and ethologists to explore this enigmatic concept. It was during one of our sessions that we encountered Fechner’s work, brought to light in Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins’ bestselling book, The Secret Life of Plants (1973). Michael Pollan aptly described this book as a “beguiling mashup of legitimate plant science, quack experiments, and mystical nature worship,” a blend that captivated the public’s imagination during a time when New Age thinking was seeping into the mainstream.
A New Frontier: Plant Neurobiology and the Quest for Vegetal Minds
Fast forward to 2006, 30 years after the publication of The Secret Life of Plants, when a group of audacious scientists introduced the concept of “plant neurobiology.” Their aim was to understand how plants perceive their environment and respond in an integrated manner—essentially exploring whether plants possess something akin to minds. This burgeoning field of study opens up a Pandora’s box of philosophical questions that have intrigued Western thinkers since Plato: What is a mind? How far does it extend? Who or what possesses it, and how can we know? While the scientific community increasingly acknowledges the sentience of various animal species, plants remain a contentious frontier. Many are reluctant to ascribe the same richness of experience to our vegetal counterparts as we do to animals or ourselves.
Fechner’s Revolutionary Thoughts: Healing the Divide Between Mind and Matter
Fechner, writing over 150 years ago, anticipated many of the claims made by today’s plant neurobiologists. His thoughts stand as an oasis in an intellectual desert largely dismissive of plants. Aristotle, in De Anima, relegated plants to the lowest form of life, considering them defective animals. Later, thinkers like Francis Bacon and René Descartes further deepened the divide between matter and mind. Descartes, in particular, not only reduced animals to unthinking automata but also fundamentally ruptured the relationship between mind and matter—a division that Fechner spent his entire life trying to mend. However, his journey to bridge this chasm began in the depths of madness.
The Tumultuous Life of Gustav Fechner: A Journey Through Madness to Enlightenment
Born on April 19, 1801, in Groß Särchen, Saxony, Fechner was the second child of Samuel Traugott Fischer and Dorothea Fechner. His father, a pastor and a man of science, died when Gustav was just five years old, leaving a profound impact on the young boy. At 16, Fechner entered the University of Leipzig as a medical student, but his studies led him to a bleak atheism, where he saw the world as nothing more than a mechanical gear. Disillusioned, he abandoned medicine to study physics.
In 1820, a chance encounter with Lorenz Oken’s Grundrib der Naturphilosophie (1802) illuminated Fechner’s world, striking him with a sense of urgent necessity. The grand unified worldview promised by Naturphilosophie captivated him, yet he couldn’t forsake his love for precise measurements, experiments, and equations. The grand speculations of German idealism seemed insufficient compared to the rigorous systematicity of physics, which Fechner believed was the only path to clear, reliable, and fruitful results. Despite his deep appreciation for the physical sciences, Fechner yearned to comprehend the invisible laws of creation—a quest that eventually led him to madness.
The Crisis of Faith and the Birth of a New Vision
Fechner’s journey into madness began with an experiment inspired by Goethe’s study of color. His attempts to study after-images by staring at the sun through tinted glasses severely damaged his eyesight, plunging him into a dark room for nearly four years, where he lived blindfolded and despairing. This episode, characterized today as a mix of depression, neurotic obsession, and mania, profoundly altered his life. But out of this darkness, Fechner emerged with a new vision—a glimpse beyond the boundary of human experience. On October 5, 1843, he stepped out into his garden without his eye cover and saw the world anew. Every flower seemed to shine with an inner light, and the entire garden was transfigured. This experience ignited Fechner’s belief in the consciousness of plants, leading him to write Nanna oder über das Seelenleben der Pflanzen (1848), a book that argued plants are conscious beings with feelings and desires.
Nanna: The Soul Life of Plants
Nanna, named after the Norse goddess of flowers, was Fechner’s attempt to articulate his vision of plant consciousness. Drawing from the latest botanical experiments of his time and his own observations, Fechner argued that plants, like animals, experience pleasure, pain, and meaning. He contended that while we may never fully understand the inner life of plants, we can infer their consciousness through analogy—just as we do when we assume other humans have minds based on their outward behavior. For Fechner, the differences between plants and animals in structure and function do not prove the absence of a soul; rather, they suggest that plants are “differently ensouled.”
Fechner’s analogies extended to challenging the assumption that a nervous system is necessary for consciousness. He proposed that plants have something analogous to a nervous system in their fibers and filaments and questioned why we should grant the nervous system such exceptional status in discussions of the soul. He even suggested that animals might be the “string instruments of sensation,” while plants are the “wind instruments,” each with its own unique way of experiencing the world.
Soulful Conversations: Plants in Dialogue with Humanity
Fechner’s vision of plant consciousness extended beyond mere analogy. He imagined a world where plants might apply their own criteria for consciousness to humans and find us lacking. To a plant, the ability to self-generate and self-adorn might be the true markers of a soul—traits that humans do not possess. Fechner believed that all beings, including plants, possess an “inward luminosity” corresponding to their physical form. In modern terms, we might describe this as the capacity for subjective experience—what some cognitive scientists call primary or phenomenal consciousness. For Fechner, there was indeed “something it is like” to be a plant.
The Soul and the Body: An Inseparable Duality
Fechner argued that a soul never exists independently of a body. The physical form is the outward expression of the soul, and the soul is the inward experience of that form. This view, which sees body and soul as two aspects of the same reality, was revolutionary in its time and remains relevant today. Contemporary philosophers like Peter Godfrey-Smith rely on experimental evidence to determine which creatures are conscious, with studies suggesting that animals like octopuses and bees have subjective experiences. Fechner’s ideas invite us to extend this consideration to plants, challenging the prevailing scientific view that consciousness is solely a product of neuronal activity.
The Challenge of Scepticism: Embracing the Reality of Other Minds
Scepticism about the existence of plant consciousness reflects a broader discomfort with acknowledging the interior lives of others, be they animals, plants, or even fellow humans. Stanley Cavell, in his work The Claim of Reason (1979), explores this scepticism, which he sees as rooted in a resistance to accepting the world as it is. This scepticism leads to what Cavell calls “soul-blindness,” an inability to recognize the rich interiority of other beings. Fechner’s work, with its emphasis on the soulful existence of plants, challenges this blindness, urging us to see the world with new eyes.
The Eremocene: An Age of Loneliness and Soul-Blindness
The biologist E. O. Wilson coined the term “Eremocene” to describe our current epoch of ecological extinction—an age of loneliness. But this loneliness, Fechner would argue, is not just a result of environmental degradation but also of our soul-blindness. By refusing to acknowledge the inner lives of plants, animals, and other beings, we isolate ourselves from the world around us, filling it with the ghosts of what we refuse to see. Fechner’s work reminds us that to truly know the world, we must look beyond the physical and embrace the possibility of a soulful existence in all things.
The Legacy of Gustav Fechner: A Vision for the Future
Fechner’s ideas, once dismissed as the ravings of a mind gone wild, are finding new relevance today. Contemporary plant neurobiologists are rediscovering many of his insights, arguing that plants possess something analogous to animal brains and exhibit intelligent behavior. While critics continue to challenge the idea of plant consciousness, Fechner’s work offers a bold vision that bridges the gap between rigorous scientific thinking and metaphysical speculation. His life and ideas serve as a reminder that soul-blindness carries risks—not just for our understanding of plants, but for our understanding of ourselves and the world we inhabit.
Conclusion: Seeing the World with New Eyes
Fechner’s journey from madness to enlightenment, from darkness to a new vision of the world, offers a powerful metaphor for our own times. As we face the challenges of the 21st century—wars, pandemics, ecological crises—we might do well to follow Fechner’s example and look at nature with fresh eyes. By embracing the possibility of a soulful existence in all things, we stand to gain not just a deeper understanding of the world, but also a renewed connection to each other. Fechner reminds us that the best way to apprehend the unseen in plants—and in life—is to take off the blindfold and look. What we might find is nothing less than the world, and nothing less than each other.