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Plants as Machines: History, Philosophy and Practical Consequences of an Idea

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Abstract

This paper elucidates the philosophical origins of the conception of plants as machines and analyses the contemporary technical and ethical consequences of that thinking. First, we explain the historical relationship between the explicit animal machine thesis of Descartes and the implicit plant machine thesis of today. Our hypothesis is that, although it is rarely discussed, the plant machine thesis remains influential. We define the philosophical criteria for both a moderate and radical interpretation of the thesis. Then, assessing the compatibility of current botanical knowledge with both interpretations, we find that neither withstands scrutiny. We trace how biological and agricultural sciences have historically relied upon thinking of plants as machines and how they continue to do so today through rhetoric centred on breeding, biotechnology, and production. We discuss some of the most important legal and ethical consequences of obscuring the vitality of plants. Finally, we explore less reductive and destructive ways of thinking about, and using, plants.

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Notes

  1. ‘Machine’, CNRTL, Centre national de Ressources textuelles et lexicales. Retrieved October 18, 2021, from: https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/machine. Author’s translation.

  2. In 1706, the Jesuits condemned the Cartesian thesis that animals do not have souls.

  3. Descartes himself practiced vivisection and justified it by his mechanical conception of life (Descartes, Letter to Plempius, February 15, 1638).

  4. For this term, see Shuman, V., Sander, D., Scherer, K. (2013) ‘Levels of Valence.’ Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 261.

  5. Sensitivity is a necessary condition for feeling pain, but it is not a sufficient one. Thus, a mechanical sensor, although it is a stimulation detection tool, does not suffer. For some philosophers, perception is the ordering of raw sensations, hence an interpretation or a minimal representation of the world. In this sense, a mechanical sensor is sensitive but not necessarily perceiving. However, this technical debate goes beyond our present conceptual framework.

  6. Western philosophers and theologians mostly considered plant souls to be mortal, whereas the immortality of animal souls was the subject of some debate.

  7. Phenotype: the observable characteristics of an organism, determined by the interaction between its genotype and environmental factors.

  8. Descartes’ interest in plants is evidenced in at least two places in his work (Primae cogitationes circa generationem animalium (AT XI 534–535) and Excerpta antomica (AT XI 627–629)). However, he did not seem to integrate them into his more general theories about life in any systematic way (Baldassarri, 2019).

  9. Alliance Forêts Bois, the leading forestry cooperative in France, created and managed by private forest owners. https://www.allianceforetsbois.fr/allianceinfos/. Author’s translation.

  10. Statements collected during an interview as part of an unpublished survey on representations of the plant world, conducted in 2018 among French professionals in plant research and the plant industry.

  11. ‘Phytotron.’ Office québécois de la langue française. Retrieved December 16, 2021. http://gdt.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ficheOqlf.aspx?Id_Fiche=26516468.

  12. INA, National Audiovisual Institute, video, 1961 ‘Botany is now joining chemistry’ https://www.ina.fr/video/CAF97059044/jean-paul-nitsch-le-phytotron-de-gif-sur-yvette-video.html INA video, 1964, ‘A reduced model of what happens in nature’ https://www.ina.fr/video/I06199394. The phytotron, CNRS video, 1969, https://videotheque.cnrs.fr/doc=1342.

  13. Base Web of Science, All databases, topic = phytotron, June 2021.

  14. ‘Published Plant Genomes’, Forschungszentrum Jülich. Retrieved December 16, 2021. https://www.plabipd.de/plant_genomes_pa.ep.

  15. Some contracts between agri-food manufacturers and farmers who provide raw materials indeed go so far as to ask for financial compensation from the farmers in case of a natural disaster reducing the planned production: https://www.sillonbelge.be/5696/article/2020-03-19/relation-avec-lagro-industrie-quelques-cles-pour-un-contrat-equilibre-et-sans.

  16. Banana trees are said to be parthenocarpic because they produce seedless fruits without fertilization.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Juliette Archambeau, Cyril Firmat, the Émile Durckheim lab (University of Bordeaux) “Atelier environnement et capitalisme”, Didier Alard, Jérôme Santolini, Benoît Timmermans, Sarah Benharech, Thierry Labbé, Elis Jones and an anonymous reviewer for its useful comments.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS postdoctoral fellowship no 32740322) and by the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment–INRAE.

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  1. BIOGECO, INRAE, Univ. Bordeaux, 33615, Pessac, France

    Sophie Gerber

  2. Department of Philosophy, Ethics and Religious Sciences, PHI, National Fund for Scientific Research–FNRS, University of Brussels, Brussels, Belgium

    Quentin Hiernaux

  3. Écoles des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Institut Jean-Nicod, Paris, France

    Quentin Hiernaux

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Gerber, S., Hiernaux, Q. Plants as Machines: History, Philosophy and Practical Consequences of an Idea. J Agric Environ Ethics 35, 4 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-021-09877-w

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