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Future Perception in Plants

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Anticipation Across Disciplines

Part of the book series: Cognitive Systems Monographs ((COSMOS,volume 29))

Abstract

Although a few of the earliest naturalists, such as Theophrastus, made concrete observations regarding the sophisticated ways by which plants sense and respond to their environments, the prevailing attitude toward plants has been based on the Aristotelian paradigm, that at their low rank, slightly above minerals on Scala Naturae, plants are mere non-sentient soil-eating blobs. However, accumulating evidence demonstrates that plants are able to not only precisely gauge and respond to their immediate environments but can also perceive, integrate and adaptively respond to myriad internal and external signals and cues that are correlated with their future environments, in ways that maximize their life-time performance.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Hagai Shemesh, Omer Falik, Shachar Mauda, Tatiana Bogdanova, Danny Cohen, the late Tsvi Sachs, and the organizers and participants of the Anticipation Across Disciplines symposium held at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study for useful discussions. The study was supported by a research grant no. 1050/11 from the Israel Science Foundation. This is publication no. 880 of the Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Sede-Boqer Campus, 84990, Beersheba, Israel

    Ariel Novoplansky

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  1. Ariel Novoplansky
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Correspondence to Ariel Novoplansky .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Texas at Dallas, antÉ—Institute for Research in Anticipatory Systems, Richardson, Texas, USA

    Mihai Nadin

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Novoplansky, A. (2016). Future Perception in Plants. In: Nadin, M. (eds) Anticipation Across Disciplines. Cognitive Systems Monographs, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22599-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22599-9_5

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