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Featured image: A collection of growing guides inside a University of Wisconsin – Madison (UW-Madison) undergraduate horticulture greenhouse, D.C. Smith Greenhouse. Among them, the Ball RedBook by Ball Seed (Ball Horticultural Company).
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“Plants function like chemical factories. […]
Meneses, Gustavo. “Plant Metabolites”. PlantResearchOrg (PRO). Accessed Feb 23, 2024. https://plantresearchorg.wordpress.com/2023/11/15/secondary-plant-compounds/
Plants can’t chase away nor run away from their predators, so they poison them. […]
Plants are dangerous and can hurt you for the rest of your life.”
To better understand the different facets of plant study, we should think about philosophy and the things that drive us to understand. Dividing botany into its philosophical approaches can warn us of what people think about plants and why that its important. Each one has its positive and negative aspects and legacies. The shamanic, cultivated, and scientific schemas give us the sensual, practical, and radical elements in the pursuit of botanical knowledge.
The pre-historic and first of these approaches is shamanic thought. Today, the term ‘shaman’ is synonymous with a botanical folk-priest, but its origin lies in Siberia, where European explorers encountered exotic Asiatic cultures in their proximity, and romanticized the connection that their priests had to nature. To understand this, think of the similar romanticism people hold about Native Americans and nature in the United States. The stereotype of the shaman and the power to commune with the natural is so universal in humanity, that we now refer to all medicine men and nature-priests as shamans.
Shamans played significant roles in ancient groups of humans and in current traditional societies. They are medicine men, story tellers, and spiritual guides. Their observations allowed for the base of all botanical knowledge, which is: all plants have some obscured purpose. The positive legacy of their works are that they are immemorial examples of humans, who are very attuned to the plants in their immediate environment and are conscious of its delicate nature. This vision would likely permeate the entire society so that every facet of it could learn to interact with the environment in constructive ways.
There are aspects to shamanism that are destructive. The use of elixirs can result in death or poisoning. The delicate mind can be hurt by the use of psychedelic plant compounds. The worship or deification of mortal plants can override the rational and productive insights that humans have to offer. Many people who belong to industrialized societies hold stereotypes, which allow inexperienced and uneducated people of obscure backgrounds to portray themselves as shamans for reasons of prestige and personal gain.
Shamanic ideals are still present among us, and this can be dangerous to novice plant enthusiasts, who may not realize the dangers of experimenting with botanical extracts. Plants create secondary compounds to protect themselves from predators like mammals. There are fewer edible plants than toxic plants. Knowing what simple steps to take when processing plant material is what separates poison from food. So much of this is unknown, and much of what is said to known is being called into question. Plant science has been at the frontier of human advancement. The gap of understanding and immense quantity of information needed to be an adept plant handler generates mysticism behind the idea of shamanism.
Today shamanic thought holds sway over many traditional societies, and various avant-garde new age sub-cultures. To ignore and dismiss this form of thought is foolish, because it is integral to the foundation of humans’ connection to nature. However, it is important to recognize that our understanding of plants has advanced and that any modern equivalent to a shaman must take these advancements seriously. It is also important for botanical knowledge to be used for the good of mankind, and to dissuade the use of plants for the short-sighted temptations such as our personal desires like revenge, lust, and greed. For this, the wisdom of ancient people is readily available to guide anyone who is enthusiastic to pursue a path of goodwill.
The sensual nature of discovery and observation which characterizes the work of shamans must be included in any serious and holistic approach to the pursuit of botanical knowledge.
Another powerful archetype of thought is the culture which guides cultivation. Cultivation of plants has its roots in the formation of society. Due to this link, much of plant cultivation is done to directly serve society. Plant cultivation can be part of your cultural tradition, but it can also be a skilled profession.
The categories used to differentiate types of plant cultivation can be confusing. The most popular types of plant cultivation are agriculture (field cultivation) and horticulture (garden cultivation). Originating from Latin, these distinctions lost some of their meaning since they have cemented into a rigid format, where it is thought that each is a branch of the plant sciences.
Some academic institutions define all plant cultivation for direct human consumption as horticultural. Instead of being a discrete branch of plant science, horticulture and agriculture are cultural practices that embody many sciences but also transcend them, since they are responsive to scientific discoveries and are also concerned with the utilitarian traditions surrounding the processing, growing, and reproduction of plants which is in many cases not supported by reason but tradition.
There are additional categories like pomiculture (apple cultivation), and arboriculture (tree cultivation) that are not treated as professions or a formal science. Terms like monoculture and polyculture are related, but these terms are used describe the diversity of plants within a cultivated system.
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As human society began to become more complex, its needs became complex as well. Providing food, medicine, clothing, and variety of other things to the members of society has been perhaps the most important activity since the dawn of complex human order. These interests characterize plant cultivation, and acknowledge humanity’s role as caretakers and dominators of the land. In order to provide our people with the necessities of life, we must become dominators of the world and conquer the landscape with the plants that will aid us in the pursuit of life.
The positive legacy of these ideas have manifested themselves globally. Many humans live in an almost idyllic state of abundance. For some this abundance meets the bare-minimum, but for others, such as the citizens of the industrialized nations, this abundance has trended towards wastefulness and destruction. The average cultivator’s mode has been one that is primarily concerned with the outputs and economics without regard of the consequences.
The introduction of complex chemical agents, mismanagement of water, the destruction of natural plant communities, and the loss of top soil are all mistakes that have led to devastating effects to our planet and its complex life. The cultivation of plants at an industrial scale has introduced large-scale problems that have affected entire regions of the Earth, such as the Gulf of Mexico, and will have cascading effects long into the future.
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A common thought is that it is our growing population that has forced us into destroying our environment. The Malthusian model was influenced by observations on plant cultivation and its capacity to feed the masses. It is important to question these ideas, since they negate the role of humans and society as stewards of the environment and agents for remediation.
Overpopulation is most certainly a primary factor, but it is important to consider all the other important factors contributing to environmental degradation such as education and the importance given to the plant sciences, the influence of war-born chemical companies on plant cultivation, the efficiency of our delivery and storage systems, the habits of consumers, the expectations of producers, the faulty assumptions and shortcomings of scientific advancement, and the lack of diversity of thought in these areas of study.
Social systems and politics has always influenced plant cultivation. Extractive, repressive, and discriminatory systems often marginalize those who work in close proximity with plants in the field, which creates dependencies on oppressive social orders for continued cultivation, and isolates others from nature, which inhibits them from learning about plants. In the end, everyone loses.
The beauty of the cultivator’s mindset is that it is ever-changing and responsive. Despite its significant failures, there are new burgeoning methods of farming and gardening that are providing not only commodities for people but safe havens for the living organisms that are being threatened by changes in our environment.
Characterized by an ideal of reason and procedure, the scientific process influences our way of relating to plants and learning about plants in a profound and radical way. Almost all of our modern botanical knowledge owes its thanks to scientific inquiry. The advances in scientific thought are crucial in determining the causal nature of the world.
In the case of plants, science has atomized plants into their various parts and illuminated their various functions. Our ability to examine their worth has greatly increased. The secrets of plants that have been hidden from humans for millennia are now coming to light. We have been collecting and examining unthinkable amounts of observations and discoveries.
The positive legacy of science in the pursuit of botanical knowledge is that of apprehension, which is required to subdue our ideas in search of new more reasonable ones. New ideas are found through research. Research can be applied, which means that it is in search for a solution to a problem, or basic, which is interested in learning for sake of learning. Basic research of plants can involve researching the biological function within a plant without a particular desire for an outcome or use of this information for economic gain. Much of applied research depends on the knowledge gained in basic research.
Science, as a word, can set off many ideas in a person. These ideas are influenced by what we see in documentaries, shows, radio and podcasts. If science is used to justify our actions, but the consequences of those actions indicate that there is nothing rational nor intelligent about them, it is likely that the idealization of science is the culprit.
The perfect ideal is that science is not a philosophy or cultural, but a procedure of discovery with definitive rational steps, also known as the scientific process. Falling short of that ideal, sometimes the things that feel like science are truly philosophical and cultural phenomena. Without a rational alternative, cultures influenced by this ideal set themselves itself apart from what they see as irrational: religion, traditions, folklore and popular culture. Because humans are in many ways irrational and influenced by intuition and faith in their decision making, the ideal of science is seldom achieved when scientific experimentation is held to scrutiny. Peer-review is a method used to provide feedback and to combat this within the scientific community. Interestingly, the process used to form a hypothesis is in many cases irrational. Very respected and irrefutable ideas have been attributed to scientists who conceived their hypotheses in dreams, their imagination or in drug induced states.
The scientific model of discovery does not involve morality. Therefore, great scientists can do bad things and get away with it. This is where great conflicts occur in the plant sciences. Warnings from laymen and the public like, “This is bad because its unprecedented and unknown,” are sometimes insufficient to convince scientists, who looking to each other and to research for evidence.
Much of our moral inclination is based on intuition. There are a great variety of opinions amongst the public regarding morality. Any rejection of inventions, like Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and synthetic pesticides, are interpreted by many scientists as a failure to understand the mechanics behind genetics or a failure of education in instilling faith in the scientific process. In the scientific community, correcting or dissenting is restricted to the educated and the informed. Dissenters must go through the proper scientific procedures to determine whether evidence supports their ideas. Ideally this prevents superstitions and maniacal suppression from hindering insights. It a slow process of negotiation that is concerned with empirical data and proper procedure. Some negotiations leave the realm of the scientific community when inventions become commercialized.
It seems that without science, superstition would win. Whether or not science is at all what people say it is, is a matter of debate and an important one. It is certain that science is a great mechanism in the enlightenment of humans. To be a plant scientist is being a biologist. In our day to day and work, we may never achieve the perfection that science requires and so we strive for it; keeping in mind its limitations.
These various archetypes in thinking meld with each other to different degrees. What could agriculture be without scientific discovery? What could science be without its shamanic inception? Understanding the delicate balance between these sensual, practical, and radical approaches to plants is extremely important. Together they will aid your pursuit of botanical knowledge, and give you insights into the nature of nature.
Author: Gustavo Meneses
Published: 2019-04-23
Last Revised: 2024-03-26
PRO - Plant Research Organization 
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