The Genius of Trees: Learning How to Learn From the Forest
This article is part of a series, in collaboration with the Civic Paths working group at the University of Southern California.
Forests are highly sensitive to climate and responsive to climate change. The observations made by these living systems are meaningful, as is their interpretation of the conditions of their existence.
However, their non-human perspective has been grossly underappreciated by human science.
In the realm of observation, forests may be sensitive to phenomena that humans overlook or disregard. In terms of interpretation, they may respond to conditions in ways we cannot, given the workings of our brains, which are evolutionary and anatomically distinct from the distributed intelligence of nature's manifold interacting parts.
On account of these distinctions, forests might not interpret phenomena causally or as an act of God, but might be inclined instead to conceptualize the world in terms of system-wide correlations. This may actually be a more accurate representation of the universe.
Searching for causality may lead us to delusions much as religion deceived previous generations into believing there was a divine purpose underlying everything in the cosmos. Or correlation may merely be the surface of a deeper truth, much as the quantum mechanics may merely be a superficial representation of particle physics.
The world may work in ways that are not adequately represented by purpose, causality or correlation.
Our attempts to extract ourselves from nature may distort our understanding of interdependencies in ecosystems.
The cultural context of forest life is also notably distinct from ours, because organisms in the forest are symbiotically interdependent and responsive to internal feedback. Our attempts to extract ourselves from nature may distort our understanding of interdependencies in ecosystems and even desensitize us to interdependencies within the underlying domain of physics.
The human scientific preference for analysis, and preferences for analysis and reductionism, might be artifacts of our lived experience, our senses and the genetic history of our species. Because our scientific conclusions are profoundly influenced by the institutional context of human research, cultural differences between forests and people may make a profound difference in terms of their scientific output.
Therefore we need to respect forests as non-human scientists, and learn to read their research by observing their biology and ecology. We already do this — but from the vantage that they are objects of study, not principal investigators of planet Earth.
Forests should not only be engaged by ecologists but should also be engaged as ecologists (and as biologists and chemists and physicists). We should not only publish about them, but also co-author publications with them.
Humans still have to learn how to read the research produced by forests. This must be done without treating them as though they were human. More broadly, it must be done with due respect for their inherently holistic worldview, meaning that we must not oversimplify their biology and ecology to fit our preconceived notions of scientific research. And every human being needs to take part, because the science of forests requires our collective attention to be perceived in its full richness.
This science is directly relevant to all of us. Spending time in nature is good citizen science. Citizen science is foundational to good citizenship.
Once we have learned how to learn from forests, we will be ready to pose scientific questions to them directly, including them intellectually in human research initiatives. Problems must be modeled in ways they can experience on their own terms. These problems may range from matters of quantum mechanics to those of economics and politics.
In fact, forests should always be included in any research that has bearing on them, especially research that will influence governmental policies. They should be mandatory collaborators on grants — with compensation to support their contributions — and the credibility of scientific research should be judged on the basis of whether they co-authored it. We need to support the position of forests institutionally in universities through tenure and endowed chairs. Biodiversity in the university should be a right of nature.
As a first stage of this paradigm shift in science, human scientists need to share their research with the systems they study, for the benefit of those systems and validation by them. Some scientific journals currently require visual abstracts, which represent key findings in graphic form for human readers. Key findings need also to be represented in a form accessible to the forest and the species comprising it. This non-verbal representation of key findings — which may be disseminated through chemical signaling or other languages native to forests— should be submitted to the forests for peer review by the living system prior to publication, and should thereafter be considered an integral part of the paper, which should be freely available to the living system for future consultation and research, including falsification.
The status of the forest as a peer reviewer needs to be explicitly acknowledged by the journal.
What applies to forests also applies to other living systems, from deserts to mountains, and to individual animals and plants and microbes. Our respect for other intelligences is the ultimate measure of our own intelligence.
