Public Lecture: Engaging with Plant Agency

The evidence is now well established that natural environments, nearby nature, and just being with plants can improve mental wellbeing.  This is now driving social developments such as school gardening, therapeutic horticulture, increasing green spaces in urban environments, and doctors prescribing time in nature. How does it work? What is happening in human beings when we have plants around? And could that be deepened? Drawing on my experience of working with Colquhoun, Goodwin, and Bortoft (who all drew on Goethe’s scientific work) this talk will focus on one of the shifts in consciousness that they believed was required to explore plant-ness.  This shift relates closely to concepts important to holistic science, such as non-duality, and concepts important to ethics and aesthetics, such as unselfing.  However, unlike concepts as ideas one might read about, the plant realm itself can lead us to these beneficial experiences.

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This talk is part of our series of free monthly talks on the subject of Holistic Science, organised by Schumacher College in collaboration with the Field Centre.  You can view the full series, including recordings of previous talks, here.