Can trees think? We understand very little about the nature of nature
From the end of the corridor in my hospital ward there is a beautiful view of the forest and a glimpse of a newly harvested field. I know the farmer because my home is close to this hospital. His fields are my neighbours. I love to walk on them. My thoughts go to the former US Ambassador in Finland, Bruce Oreck. When Nokia crashed he concluded that Finland should concentrate on what we have and not on what we wish to have. We have an abundance of trees and clean water. Here in Finland we do not see the trees for the woods.
When I started my neurology-career seven years I first bought a lot of bio-signal measurement devices. I joined meetups, Quantified Self and went to a lot of conferences. I had four different types of brainwave recording devices (EEG) and various heart rate monitors both as optical armbands and electrical which are placed on the chest (ECG). I measured the conductivity of the skin, the electromagnetic fields, sleep, breathing and a lot of other data from the body. I invented a ring to estimate stress from brainwaves and electrical heart-signals. Then I started to do brain- and neuro-stimulation to see how the body reacts to changes. I collected huge amounts of data. I have learned a lot but mostly I have learned how little we know.
As an amateur philosopher, I have always contemplated on the nature of life. Since Homo Sapiens are on the ‘top of ladder’ of animal evolution I have always been keen to understand our counterpart in the plant-kingdom; the tree. From this curiosity rose the decision to do an experiment. I rigged a human brainwave recording device to our oak in France. To my great surprise, the data looked rather like my own brainwaves. What? Does a tree think? Back to Wittgenstein — what is thinking?
We can measure the result of thinking with EEG:s and for instance MRI:s but no living neurologist, scientist or even philosopher has any scientific proof or even a generally accepted hypothesis of what the phenomenon we call ‘human thinking’ actually is. We know it involves neurons and electrical activity in the brain but that is about as much as we know today. All the measurements we can do today are like Plato’s famous allegory of the cave. There I would be chained in a cave and facing the blank back wall. I am unable to turn so I can see only shadows on the wall which are projecting what really is happening outside. This is the closest any scientist has yet come to measure thinking. So how can I answer the question ‘does a tree think’ when we have not yet invented any way to measure human thought in a meaningful way.
I hope the trees can think.
Gustaf
