Principiis Obsta

I. "I’m not an animal anymore, sister," she said, first scanning the empty ward as if about to disclose a momentous secret. "I don’t need to eat, not now. I can live without it. All I need is sunlight." "What are you talking about? Do you really think you’ve turned into a tree? How could a plant talk? How can you think these things?" From 'The Vegetarian' (2007), by Han Kang II. "Can we rely upon scientifically grounded indicators for the ascription of sentience to plants? We find justification for the ascription of consciousness to plants on the grounds that doing so furnishes the best explanation of the mounting available data. Which data? Indicators for the ascription of plant consciousness are the same ones we use for the study of animal-based interactions. To wit, anatomical and morphological traits, (electro)physiological responses, and behavioral/ethological data, among other evidence pools. Plant bodily actions, together with electrochemical activity, and phytohormone secretion and transport, serve among other roles to achieve purposeful movements [9], and sophisticated forms of plant behavior [9] have been comprehensively linked to plant electrophysiology [10]. (...) The case of plants under anesthesia [12–14] constitutes a specially promising avenue of research in this respect. As in human and nonhuman animals, behavior and sensory responsiveness of plants are also sensitive to anesthetics. Following in the footsteps of Claude Bernard’s pioneering work [15] (in his view, sensitivity to anesthesia marked the borderline between sentience and reductive chemical phenomena across phyla), we now know that plants not only biosynthesize anesthetic chemical compounds if stressed or wounded [16, 17], but are also subject to reversible anesthetic treatments." From Trewavas et al. (2020). Consciousness Facilitates Plant Behavior. Trends in Plant Science, 25(3), 216-217. III. "For if once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time." From 'On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts' (1827), by Thomas De Quincey