h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hmm, isn´t that the forum we´re already at? And about the bees, since they usually move in three dimensions perhaps they all have an idea of up and down already that they use in their communication. So also bees that live in a plain have words for up and down, just don´t use them.

Yeah plants can communicate with each other, and can also feel pain. They´re not just a form of machines as some people think. So there goes that argument for vegetarianism.

Oops... too many different forums. I'm getting them all confused now.

Who in the world said that plants can communicate? And that they feel pain? Both of the above require a brain... with neurons... neither of which are possessed by plants.

I dunno, I'll ask my "source"

There were some "experiments" done which seemed to show that plants could feel pain. These were done in very uncontrolled circumstances and looked to me like no more than the work of a good magician such as Paul Daniels.

I am sure that my friendly houseplants can feel the pain and also they feel better when I talk to them. The ferns like it most. They are very vain, too. I have no scientific to it, I just feel so.
And when I am sick I usually know which herb I have to use to make me feel better. I just feel it. You may call this intinct, too.

You don't need a brain for sensory perceptions of "pain" . Some of the smaller, bodily organisms can feel "pain" ... though I can't remember how.....

Since pain is just a single from one part of your body to another to tell it something is wrong, some of the actions of plants could certainly be described as "feeling pain". That debate could run a long time, because it is arguing about something which is not really defined. Let's not do that.

Getting closer to the topic of this forum, what about communication between plants? Is there any evidence that one plant can react to events happening to another plant?

I haven't noticed this kind of reaction. I have noticed that sometimes they dislike each other, this is not connected with genera - the plants of the same genus can act differently.
I still can't get any contact with cactuses but I started with them about 6-7 years ago, maybe I just don't understand them. My Mostly Harmless Cactus (lophophora williamsee - not sure about spelling) is so self-absorbed that I only disturb him once a week to say Hallo

I still fail to understand how anything without a brain can communicate at all. In order for there to be communication, there must be some form of understanding. If there is no brain, how can it understand anything?

In terms of talking to plants, who said that any resulting difference is due to them "knowing" that they are being spoken to? Perhaps it just has to do with the sounds. Perhaps there is a chemical that responds to sound waves?

And how can anything without a brain have a personality? How can it behave? I wasn't aware that plants *could* behave - I have always been under the impression that behaviour is a characteristic belonging only to animals (without getting into the primitive reactions of single celled organisms, which is not behaviour as we think of it, but rather chemical reactions to the environment).

It is a very interesting idea, but I find myself remaining skeptical in the absence of any reliable scientific studies.

How does one neuron 'communicate' with another?

One neuron is not awareness...
two are not awareness...
somewhere on the way to 10^42, it becomes aware...

I have no idea how the brain makes us concious. I know about neurons jumping across one synapse to the next, I know about the electricity generated, and the different parts of the brain used for different actions, but it is beyond me, and I think any human, to understand how the brain makes us concious. Perhaps "why" would be a better way to phrase it.... I think scientists tend to steer clear of it because it smacks of Divine Intervention. It's very easy to say "God did it", but not very scientific. The important thing, as far as we're concerned, is that it DOES work

Well my definition of pain is when one part of the body is damaged and tells another part. And if an organism didn´t have pain, I don´t really think it would survive very well. It wouldn´t be able to repair itself if it didn´t know something was wrong. But about plants feeling pain, I can´t remember how they came to the conclusion. But it sounded right to me, something about chemicals being released.

Regarding communication, I´ve read about this situation: A bug crawls onto a tree and start eating it. The tree(or perhaps it was a bush) sends out a chemical to the trees surrounding it. They then start to produce an anti-bug chemical in their cells. So if the bug crawls onto any of them it dies. I think they also have a lot of other examples of plants using chemicals to communicate.

I really wish somebody hadn´t said it´s good if you talk to your plants. It makes ppl think the plants actually understand what you´re saying. But there is no mumbo-jumbo to it. It is simply when you talk to your plants you breathe on them. And they live of the carbon dioxide that you breathe out. It´s the same as if somebody gave you an oxygen tank.

About when awareness pops out, that is what scientists call Emergence. When things suddenly emerge without anybody knowing where it came from. The cells are like bricks, how many bricks do you need to put on top of each other before it´s a house?

Thanks for the explanations.

It makes sense now, although I'm still a bit sketchy on calling it "communicating". Communicating implies a concious will to make another being aware of a thought. Sending off chemicals has nothing to do with any of that.

But as for the brick anaolgy - I don't think it fits very well here (I hope you don't mind a bit of constructive criticism). Perhaps I'm not fully understanding it... but when you build a house, you know what is going to be the outcome, you know how many bricks it will take. You never just start piling bricks up, one atop another, until it comes out looking like a house. Even evloutionary theorists would tell you that it would take millions of years to get a house with that method

OK
Thank You, the explanations were nice. I just don't like the scientific approache. And I don't want to see how sausages are made. I am afraid that the next issue will be the exact chemical formula of love. I feel myself comfortable in my beliefs from the Middle Ages. I know the up-to-date science exists and is true, I simply don't like it.

CH3CH2OH usually does the trick... (I think that's right...)

mis siis nüüd saab?
...
there goes the neighbourhood

I think you misunderstood me about the house. What I meant was, let us for example say that we have a house that´s been built. Out of 10000 bricks or whatever. Then we remove one brick, is it still a house then? If it is, how about if we remove one more brick? When does it stop becoming a house?

I still don't think it's a good analogy. Houses come in all differen shapes and sizes. You can't say one thing looks like a house over another, because they all have house-like properties. Our idea of a house is a psychological prototype. We think of four walls and a roof as a house. We can have as many bricks in there as we want - as long as it has a set number of walls and a roof. But how big does the roof have to be? Does it really have to have four walls? Is an igloo a house? What about a teepee?

As far as the brain is concerned, no matter how many neurons you have - you still don't know where any of it is coming from.

Equally, the neurons have to be *connected*

Someone once said, "if the human brain were simple enough for us to understand, we'd be too stupid to understand it". But that doesn't mean we can't study it and figure out the basics of what it does.