PLANTS’ KNOWLEDGE: ONTOLOGIES, PRACTICES, AND RELATIONSHIPS

What can philosophy say about plants? Also, what can reflections on plants add to the philosophical debate? Those are just two of the several questions that could arise when confronting the so-called “philosophy of plants”, a vibrant and relatively young field that attempts to investigate and deepen our understanding of botanical species from a philosophical viewpoint. Indeed, the answers to these questions can be various, since the philosophical perspectives on plants are manifold: from Critical Plant Studies to plant neurobiology, and passing through Traditional Ecological Knowledge, ethnobotany, and biosemiotics, there are several positions from which we can discuss about plants and investigate their role not only in ecosystems, but also within human (or, as we should call them, multi-species) societies. In this brief contribution, we will present the Dossier Plants’ Knowledge: Ontologies, Practices, and Relationships, underlining how the line that will link all the contributions will be plurality: a multitude of positions and perspectives, which best represents not only the contemporary landscape of plant philosophy, but also the structure of the plants themselves, which, unlike human and more-than-human animals, have a non (totally) centralised organization and growth. From the alterity of plants, a different form of knowledge can emerge, and this Dossier illustrates not only some of the reflections that philosophy can bring to plants, but also the consequences plant philosophy has beyond the plant world, providing some answers to the two questions that opened this abstract.