评论
打印
Would you mind introducing yourself?
你能先介绍一下自己吗？
I'm Zoe Schlanger. I'm a climate reporter at the Atlantic.
我是佐伊·施兰格。我是《大西洋月刊》的气候记者。
And about five years ago I started researching the world of plant-intelligence research, which is really plant-behavior research, with a small cluster of botanists who are trying to push forward the idea that what we're seeing plants be able to do is, in fact, signs of intelligence and possibly even consciousness.
大约五年前，我开始研究植物智能领域，其实就是植物行为研究，我跟一小群植物学家合作，他们想要推动这样一种观点：我们看到的植物所做的事情，其实是智能的体现，甚至是意识的体现。
So I wrote a book called The Light Eaters that came out very recently, and it's all about these incredible findings and what they might mean for our understanding of nonhuman minds.
所以我写了一本书叫《The Light Eaters》，最近刚出版，这本书都是关于一些令人难以置信的发现，以及它们对我们理解非人类思维的启发意义。
Zoe, thanks so much for sitting down to chat. I'm really looking forward to talking about the book.
佐伊，非常感谢您能抽出时间来跟我们聊聊。我迫不及待想聊聊你的书了。
It's so great to be here. So what initially drew you to writing about plants?
能来这里很开心。那最初是什么吸引你开始写关于植物的文章呢？
Well, like I said, I'm a climate reporter, and I, about five years ago, was feeling really burnt out. As you can imagine...
就像我说的，我是一名气候记者，大约五年前，我开始感到精疲力竭。你应该能想象到...
Yeah, I know what that's like.
嗯，我知道那种感觉。
Covering wildfires and melting sea ice becomes really depressing.
报道野火和海冰融化的事真的让人很沮丧。
And I was feeling quite numb and detached from the material and decided I need to go seek out something that felt hopeful or awesome-in the literal sense.
然后我就开始感到麻木，与素材脱节了，于是我决定去寻找一些充满希望或令人敬畏的东西——就是字面意思。
And I started kind of changing my filters for looking at journals to botany journals as opposed to only climate journals.
于是我改变了筛选阅读期刊的方式，从只看气候期刊转变为也看植物学期刊。
And the timing was so incredible because I was seeing botanists argue in real time in these journals about whether or not plants might be intelligent.
而且这个时机非常巧，我恰好看到植物学家们在这些期刊上连载争论植物是否可能具有智能。
And it was accompanied with this kind of flurry of papers that was coming out asking questions like, "How is sound experienced by a plant?"
随之而来的是一大堆论文，它们提出了这样的问题，“植物是如何体验声音的？”
Can plants, you know, quote, unquote, "hear"-with big air quotes around that?
植物能不能，带有引号的“听见”？
Of course, sound is, like, pure vibration to plants-it's a physical stimulus-but they do respond to it.
当然，对植物来说，声音就像是纯粹的振动——这属于物理刺激——但它们确实会对此做出反应。
Or can plants experience touch, which is also this physical input?
或者植物能感受到触摸这种物理刺激吗？
And about how plants were communicating and having-not just communicating but having, like, regional dialects: communicating differently with, like, their family group as opposed to strangers.
还有关于植物是如何交流的，还不仅是交流，而且是类似于使用方言之类的东西：它们跟同类和与陌生物种的交流方式是不一样的。
And I just could not believe that this stuff was sort of, in a way, hiding in plain sight.
而且我不敢相信，在某种程度上，这些东西竟然就藏在我们眼皮子底下。
So it felt like I just stumbled on the best story of my career.
我当时就感觉，我好像偶然发现了我的最佳职业领域。
To back up a little bit I think (for) a lot of our listeners, this will probably be a very new concept for them.
稍等一下，我觉得对许多听众来说，这可能是一个全新的概念。
And they may even think it sounds kind of fringe.
他们甚至可能觉得这听起来有点神经质。
What is it that scientists think is going on with plants, and does this feel so surprising to folks who are paying attention to mainstream science?
科学家认为植物在发生什么，这对关注主流科学的人来说是否会非常惊讶？
Yeah, I totally know what you mean about this all sounding maybe a little New Age.
嗯，我完全明白你说的这一切听起来就像新纪元的感觉。
And I came into this with a lot of skepticism, too, and the truth is: I don't know where things will shake out in terms of intelligence and consciousness with plants.
我刚接触这个领域时，也是持有怀疑态度，事实是：我不知道植物的智能和意识方面会如何发展。
But I think what we're really talking about is whether or not plants are far more active and responsive to their environments than we've kind of culturally given them credit for up to this point.
但我认为，我们真正探讨的是，植物对环境的活跃度和回应是否比我们现在所认为的更强。
I think a lot of us think of plants-in terms of, like, hierarchy of complexity and responsiveness-as somewhere, like, above rocks but below most animals, which is not our fault exactly.
就复杂性和反应性等级而言，很多人都认为植物介于岩石和大多数动物之间，这并不全怪我们。
It's the kind of, like, Western scientific cultural heritage.
这是西方科学文化遗产。
Most of us were raised within this scala naturae of, like, where things are on this, like, "ladder of life."
我们大多数人都是在这种自然等级中长大的，万事万物都位于这个“生命阶梯”上。
And it's such an interesting moment for that, right?
正因如此，这一刻也非常有趣，对吧？
Like, we have collectively-I say "we," I mean-what I mean is, like, biologists and philosophers have conferred now, very recently consciousness-or at least the possibility of consciousness-on to mammals and birds.
我们已经共同——我说“我们”，是指，像生物学家和哲学家最近已经达成共识，他们认为意识——或者至少是意识的可能性也存在于哺乳动物和鸟类身上。
That was in this 2012 declaration, this Cambridge Declaration.
这是2012年发表的剑桥宣言。
And then just, like, a month ago at New York University the same group got together and put out a declaration saying that insects and crustaceans and fish may also have the substrates for consciousness.
然后，就在大约一个月前，同一小组又聚在纽约大学，发表了一份声明，称昆虫、甲壳类动物和鱼类也可能具有意识的基质。
So we keep widening this circle.
这个范围一直在扩大。
And so now some people are stepping in-some people in the plant sciences and kind of the neuroscience world-and asking, "Huh, are we circumscribing the circle still too small?"
所以现在一些人介入了——一些植物科学领域的人和一些神经科学领域的人——他们问，“哈，这个圈子是不是限制的太小了？”
Like, do you need a brain to have something like consciousness-or intelligence, which is something kind of higher order than consciousness in some ways.
是否必须得有大脑，才能拥有意识这种东西，或者说是智能，从某种程度上来说，智能比意识更高阶。
Consciousness is kind of this awareness of your situation, but then what happens when you make good decisions, have memory that you use to make wiser choices to thrive-all of which are things that we are finding plants absolutely can do, and they do it spontaneously.
意识是对自身处境的一种认知，但是当你做出正确的决定、利用记忆来做出更明智的选择以实现繁荣时，会发生什么呢——我们发现植物完全能做到这些事情，而且它们是自发做到的。
There's, like, an incredible amount of behavioral flexibility with plants.
植物具有令人难以置信的行为灵活性。
So it might be time to kind of include them in that conversation.
所以，也许是时候让它们也加入了。
Yeah, well, and one thing that I love about this book is that, you know, obviously, the idea of plant intelligence is going to be very new and exciting for some people.
是的，关于这本书，我喜欢的一点是，植物智能这个概念对一些人来说明显是全新的，令人兴奋。
But I think that the conversation about what consciousness and intelligence is is something that a lot of people are not clued into, and that has really, really broad implications.
但我认为，关于意识和智能是什么的对话，很多人都不了解，这确实具有非常广泛的影响。
What did you learn about that larger conversation?
从这个更宏观的角度来讲，你了解到的是什么？
