Showing posts with label White Rabbit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label White Rabbit. Show all posts

Sunday, September 1, 2019

Scientist Says She’s Received ‘Yoda-like advice’ from Shrubbery

I'm not old enough to remember the sixties. I am a child of children of the sixties & seventies, and have worked with many who were there and were part of making the sixties the sixties. So I am very aware that there was a time when if someone told you that a tree spoke to them, it was a very good sign the there was some 'Orange Sunshine' or 'Brown Microdot' floating around somewhere. But when you hear statements like that today, it gives you pause. And if weren't for those intrepid intellectual truth seekers of New York Times, you might never have learned about the scientist who was advised by an oak tree to pursue her studies. Which brings us to Dr. Monica Gagliano......
from the NYT:
"Monica Gagliano says that she has received Yoda-like advice from trees and shrubbery. She recalls being rocked like a baby by the spirit of a fern. She has ridden on the back of an invisible bear conjured by an osha root. She once accidentally bent space and time while playing the ocarina, an ancient wind instrument, in a redwood forest. “Oryngham,” she says, means “thank you” in plant language. These interactions have taken place in dreams, visions, songs and telekinetic interactions, sometimes with the help of shamans or ayahuasca. 
Back in 1973, an explosively popular book, “The Secret Life of Plants,” made pseudoscientific claims about plants, including that they enjoy classical music and can read human minds. The book was firmly discredited, but the maelstrom made many institutions and researchers reasonably wary of bold statements about botanical aptitude. 
Regardless, last year Dr. Gagliano published a heady and meandering memoir about the conversations with plants that inspired her peer-reviewed work, titled “Thus Spoke the Plant.” She believes, like many scientists and environmentalists do, that in order to save the planet we have to understand ourselves as part of the natural world. It’s just that she also believes the plants themselves can speak to this point. 
“I want people to realize that the world is full of magic, but not as something only some people can do, or something that is outside of this world,” she said. “No, it’s all here."
[SNIP] 

When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead, and the white knight is talking backwards, and the red queen's off with her head, remember what the dormouse said.
Feed your head. - Grace Slick

[NYT]
[TWITCHY]
[VGBA]