The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth ― A NYT Bestselling Popular Science Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2024 • TIME’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 • New York Magazine’s 10 Best Books of the Year • Washington Post’s 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction of 2024 • Smithsonian’s 10 Best Science Books of the Year • A Best Book of the Year: Boston Globe, Scientific American, New York Public Library, Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly • An Amazon Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Nonfiction Prize • Finalist for the Chautauqua Prize • Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History
“A masterpiece of science writing.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass
“Mesmerizing, world-expanding, and achingly beautiful.” —Ed Yong, author of An Immense World
“Rich, vital, and full of surprises. Read it!” —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky and The Sixth Extinction
Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of natural history and popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom, “destabilizing not just how we see the green things of the world but also our place in the hierarchy of beings, and maybe the notion of that hierarchy itself.” (The New Yorker)
It takes tremendous biological creativity to be a plant. To survive and thrive while rooted in a single spot, plants have adapted ingenious methods of survival. In recent years, scientists have learned about their ability to communicate, recognize their kin and behave socially, hear sounds, morph their bodies to blend into their surroundings, store useful memories that inform their life cycle, and trick animals into behaving to their benefit—a fascinating display of plant behavior and sensory abilities, to name just a few remarkable talents.
The Light Eaters is a deep immersion into the drama of green life and the complexity of this wild and awe-inspiring world that challenges our very understanding of agency, consciousness, and intelligence. In this captivating exploration of plant intelligence, we see that plants, rather than imitate human intelligence, have perhaps formed a parallel system. What is intelligent life if not a vine that grows leaves to blend into the shrub on which it climbs, a flower that shapes its bloom to fit exactly the beak of its pollinator, a pea seedling that can hear water flowing and make its way toward it? Zoë Schlanger takes us across the globe, digging into her own memories and into the soil with the scientists who have spent their waking days studying these amazing entities up close.
What can we learn about life on Earth from the living things that thrive, adapt, consume, and accommodate simultaneously? More important, what do we owe these life forms once we come to understand their rich and varied abilities? Examining the latest epiphanies in botanical research, Schlanger spotlights the intellectual struggles among the researchers conceiving a wholly new view of their subject, offering a glimpse of a field in turmoil as plant scientists debate the tenets of ongoing discoveries and how insights into plant communication influence our understanding of what a plant is.
We need plants to survive. But what do they need us for—if at all? An eye-opening and informative look at the ecosystem we live in, this book challenges us to rethink the role of plants—and our own place—in the natural world, tackling the enthralling question of plant consciousness along the way.
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Community Reviews
2 stars as "it was okay" is pretty much the perfect description.
A journalist tackles botany. She doesn't give us any overview. Doesn't present the basic science or methodology. We jump headfirst into her theory about plants being animals. Plants can think, feel, decide, react, manipulate, control, see, eat, observe.
There is supposedly a small group of researchers making this argument. Largely as a way to protect plants and nature via activism. If plants feel then they have rights and privileges and need to be protected by law as they are persons. The issue with this book is caused by several factors. Firstly she is not a researcher and when she interviews a researcher she seems unable to critically analyze any study or claim. Meaning they merely present arguments then she goes "this could be true, or this could be false". That's it. Even some obscure researcher who did a single study by himself 20 years ago that was never replicated gets 20 pages to make his long philosophical argument. We get zero data on how much data he collected or what the stats show so it's impossible to understand how the study even looked like.
The arguments are largely philosophy and the author saying stuff like "I do feel plants can think so I believe these findings". Then makes a long argument about how plants have brains. At the end her tiny critique is as always "or maybe this is not the case". As she moves onto new studies the old studies are then presented as already being commonly accepted findings as she herself presented them in the book prior so she uses those old vague arguments to now make even larger claims. Despite herself saying those findings were not conclusive.
Her not fully understanding the science also means she makes weak arguments and never tells us about study replication or what other researchers uncovered when tackling some of these insanely controversial findings. When an Indian was largely forgotten about she blames racism. Claiming that if he was White then, who knows? Maybe all would see plants as having brains by now then? When talking about a woman presenting her research the critique is "always by men and they seem to not criticize each other this way". When a researcher can't get funding and quits research it's because there is a big conspiracy against these plants are like humans researchers caused by evil powerful fanatics refusing to listen to modern science.
She never tackles a scientific argument from a scientific way start to finish by presenting alternative findings. Instead she uses common journalist explanations for why an idea wins or loses in a scientific field. Clearly a White man needs to do the research as otherwise the idea will never win! Yet when she interviews White men this reasoning is ignored and suddenly something else is at play causing all this good science to get overlooked.
It's decent for what it is. Yet it's not quite science. Rather it's a journalist trying to explain her worldview about plants using any and all research she can find to prove her claims no matter how insane some of these researchers are. One even claimed that computers have consciousness too and are organisms. Most of the studies won't replicate, some will. Yet it's impossible to say which will as there is no critical overview. So huge studies that are likely already replicated are mixed in with some personal unpublished findings. All as one big argument. If you want to then understand any of it you'd need to look up each single study and see how it was done. I don't think all this is fringe research, but that's just my guess.
Another issue is how she makes arguments countering basic scientific thinking. She for example describes plant mechanisms then argues that "maybe plants control this as they feel and perceive and react with their intelligence". So we already have a simple explanation yet she argues for a much more advanced mechanism. It's not typically how evolution works. If no brain is needed then it won't be selected for. Occam's razor means the simplest explanation will be seen as more proper unless the more advanced mechanism has more supporting evidence. She does the exact opposite each time. The most complex explanation always wins out as "plants have rights and can think". And either way the more complex explanation is more engaging so it wins.
If you want a scientific overview stay away from this. If you want philosophy about plants this will be a must-read for you. For me it felt like a waste. But if I was an expert in botany already I'd love to read such quite out there philosophy with hazy or no proof.
A journalist tackles botany. She doesn't give us any overview. Doesn't present the basic science or methodology. We jump headfirst into her theory about plants being animals. Plants can think, feel, decide, react, manipulate, control, see, eat, observe.
There is supposedly a small group of researchers making this argument. Largely as a way to protect plants and nature via activism. If plants feel then they have rights and privileges and need to be protected by law as they are persons. The issue with this book is caused by several factors. Firstly she is not a researcher and when she interviews a researcher she seems unable to critically analyze any study or claim. Meaning they merely present arguments then she goes "this could be true, or this could be false". That's it. Even some obscure researcher who did a single study by himself 20 years ago that was never replicated gets 20 pages to make his long philosophical argument. We get zero data on how much data he collected or what the stats show so it's impossible to understand how the study even looked like.
The arguments are largely philosophy and the author saying stuff like "I do feel plants can think so I believe these findings". Then makes a long argument about how plants have brains. At the end her tiny critique is as always "or maybe this is not the case". As she moves onto new studies the old studies are then presented as already being commonly accepted findings as she herself presented them in the book prior so she uses those old vague arguments to now make even larger claims. Despite herself saying those findings were not conclusive.
Her not fully understanding the science also means she makes weak arguments and never tells us about study replication or what other researchers uncovered when tackling some of these insanely controversial findings. When an Indian was largely forgotten about she blames racism. Claiming that if he was White then, who knows? Maybe all would see plants as having brains by now then? When talking about a woman presenting her research the critique is "always by men and they seem to not criticize each other this way". When a researcher can't get funding and quits research it's because there is a big conspiracy against these plants are like humans researchers caused by evil powerful fanatics refusing to listen to modern science.
She never tackles a scientific argument from a scientific way start to finish by presenting alternative findings. Instead she uses common journalist explanations for why an idea wins or loses in a scientific field. Clearly a White man needs to do the research as otherwise the idea will never win! Yet when she interviews White men this reasoning is ignored and suddenly something else is at play causing all this good science to get overlooked.
It's decent for what it is. Yet it's not quite science. Rather it's a journalist trying to explain her worldview about plants using any and all research she can find to prove her claims no matter how insane some of these researchers are. One even claimed that computers have consciousness too and are organisms. Most of the studies won't replicate, some will. Yet it's impossible to say which will as there is no critical overview. So huge studies that are likely already replicated are mixed in with some personal unpublished findings. All as one big argument. If you want to then understand any of it you'd need to look up each single study and see how it was done. I don't think all this is fringe research, but that's just my guess.
Another issue is how she makes arguments countering basic scientific thinking. She for example describes plant mechanisms then argues that "maybe plants control this as they feel and perceive and react with their intelligence". So we already have a simple explanation yet she argues for a much more advanced mechanism. It's not typically how evolution works. If no brain is needed then it won't be selected for. Occam's razor means the simplest explanation will be seen as more proper unless the more advanced mechanism has more supporting evidence. She does the exact opposite each time. The most complex explanation always wins out as "plants have rights and can think". And either way the more complex explanation is more engaging so it wins.
If you want a scientific overview stay away from this. If you want philosophy about plants this will be a must-read for you. For me it felt like a waste. But if I was an expert in botany already I'd love to read such quite out there philosophy with hazy or no proof.
If you like plants this should definitely be on your list to read. Such an interesting book that looks at the science of plants and how they communicate, are they intelligent, how they adapt. The author cites various studies done by scientists trying to prove or disprove. Also is the ethical position that would arise should all plants be looked upon as intelligent beings of sort. I really enjoyed this book even if it was a bit like a science book 😂 I might just be a serial plant killer😳
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