Below I have outlined a few of my general research projects at the moment (all at various stages of development).
Speculative Tree Thinking
In his book How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (2013), Eduardo Kohn argues that trees, and many other nonhuman entities, create thought processes similar to humans. He makes his case based on semiotics, stating that all beings can create, interpret, and represent signs. He does not claim that trees use language, but rather that trees participate in a sensitivity toward the world that enables them to respond to sensations—to make decisions based on their environment. This is the type of “forest thinking” that Richard Powers considers in The Overstory (2018), where the dendrologist Patricia Westerford says, “A forest knows things. They wire themselves up underground. There are brains down there, ones our own brains aren’t shaped to see. Root plasticity, solving problems and making decisions. Fungal synapses. . . . Link enough trees together, and a forest grows aware.” This resembles what N. Katherine Hayles calls “unconscious cognition,” the neurological processes distinct from higher-order logical reasoning. The decisions that trees make, albeit unconsciously, still resemble an act of cognition through the intertwining network of roots, branches, and all forms of organic life dependent on the forest.
I take the stance that forest unconscious cognition is not distinctly other than human cognition, but instead both exist on a spectrum. By better understanding how trees think, humans can better engage with other cognitive processes than merely those of logical, rationalistic thinking. That is, the Enlightenment ideal of “man thinking” masks other less rational, but no less valuable, forms of thought. I argue that through “thinking with plants,” to use T. Hugh Crawford’s term, we can better understand the ways that our own cognition is like forest thinking, a type of thinking that engages with what Isabelle Stengers calls “the ragged edge of nature.” Combining these influences, I argue for “speculative forest thinking,” which is thinking that solves problems and makes decisions more like a tree’s roots rather than through logical deduction. This is the type of thinking, for example, that Henry David Thoreau describes in Walden (1854), particularly when thinking like a plant radicle. Such thinking is not uniquely human or uniquely plantlike, but rather it exists ambiguously between the two on the spectrum of cognition.
I take the stance that forest unconscious cognition is not distinctly other than human cognition, but instead both exist on a spectrum. By better understanding how trees think, humans can better engage with other cognitive processes than merely those of logical, rationalistic thinking. That is, the Enlightenment ideal of “man thinking” masks other less rational, but no less valuable, forms of thought. I argue that through “thinking with plants,” to use T. Hugh Crawford’s term, we can better understand the ways that our own cognition is like forest thinking, a type of thinking that engages with what Isabelle Stengers calls “the ragged edge of nature.” Combining these influences, I argue for “speculative forest thinking,” which is thinking that solves problems and makes decisions more like a tree’s roots rather than through logical deduction. This is the type of thinking, for example, that Henry David Thoreau describes in Walden (1854), particularly when thinking like a plant radicle. Such thinking is not uniquely human or uniquely plantlike, but rather it exists ambiguously between the two on the spectrum of cognition.
The Divided Brain
In her introduction to Thinking with Whitehead (2011), Isabelle Stengers explains that the French word expérience translates both into experience and experiment, thus expanding “experiment” to mean “an experience that implies an active, open, and demanding attention.” Such attention is not only focused, but it is also flexible. It pursues not merely what is predicable, but also what is possible. This type of experimentation is speculative, both in Whitehead’s sense in Science and the Modern World (1925) and in Donna Haraway’s multifarious acronym “SF.”
This discussion in the philosophy of science has not fully considered the role of brain structure in this experimenting process. Iain McGilchrist, in his newly reissued book The Master and His Emissary (2nd edition, 2019), argues that the left and right hemispheres of the brain contain their own worldviews—the left is more narrow and focused, the right is more open and flexible. He eschews the clichés of being “right-brained” or “left-brained,” and instead argues that both ways of seeing the world are necessary. In Stengers’s construction, experimental attention is active, open, and demanding because the entire brain participates; the “slow” science she praises in Another Science Is Possible (2018) is one that uses the whole brain.
I examine McGilchrist’s text, along with other brain imaging and split-brain research, in light of recent research in the philosophy of science. While McGilchrist provides a convincing narrative for how the two hemispheres interact, I push further into the margins. That is, I argue that experimental attention, in Stengers’s sense, fluctuates not only between the two hemispheres’ way of thinking, but also to the margins of the brain—what William James calls “consciousness beyond the margin.”
This discussion in the philosophy of science has not fully considered the role of brain structure in this experimenting process. Iain McGilchrist, in his newly reissued book The Master and His Emissary (2nd edition, 2019), argues that the left and right hemispheres of the brain contain their own worldviews—the left is more narrow and focused, the right is more open and flexible. He eschews the clichés of being “right-brained” or “left-brained,” and instead argues that both ways of seeing the world are necessary. In Stengers’s construction, experimental attention is active, open, and demanding because the entire brain participates; the “slow” science she praises in Another Science Is Possible (2018) is one that uses the whole brain.
I examine McGilchrist’s text, along with other brain imaging and split-brain research, in light of recent research in the philosophy of science. While McGilchrist provides a convincing narrative for how the two hemispheres interact, I push further into the margins. That is, I argue that experimental attention, in Stengers’s sense, fluctuates not only between the two hemispheres’ way of thinking, but also to the margins of the brain—what William James calls “consciousness beyond the margin.”