“Are Plants Intelligent?”
By Craig Holdrege and Jon McAlice
The language used in contemporary plant intelligence studies generally portrays plants as having human-like intelligence. But what are the pitfalls of limiting our inquiry to particular expressions of human intelligence and projecting them onto all other forms of life?
“How Do Biomolecules “Know” What To Do?”
By Stephen L. Talbott
The general capacity of biological molecules to contribute holistically and lawfully to functional order and organization rather than to go their own disinterested ways could be considered definitive of life. Yet all this molecular activity poses the question of an apparent wisdom that must be brought to bear in a currently unknown fashion upon exactly this moment’s ever-changing, somewhat chaotic, and evolutionarily unprecedented configuration of diverse molecules within the cell’s swirling plasm.
“Organisms and the Phenomena of Life”
By Ryan Shea
In this review of Properties of Life: Toward a Theory of Organismic Biology (2023), by Bernd Rosslenbroich, Ryan explores the author’s central assertion that the empirical findings of modern biology are almost always more qualitative, holistic, and organism-centered than the theoretical assumptions of modern biology allow.
“Springing into Color”
By Ceinwen Smith
A biologist from South Africa, Ceinwen Smith, completed our Foundation Course in Goethean Science in July 2022, and returned to The Nature Institute in 2023 for a research project on the emergence of spring colors in maple and oak trees. She shares some of her experience here.
Read about staff activities at The Nature Institute and elsewhere.