Then (1998), The Cosmic Serpent
Plant Intelligence: From Fringe to Research Frontier
Narby's central methodological argument in The Cosmic Serpent (1998) was that Western science had foreclosed investigation of plant intelligence by assuming, a priori, that plants cannot communicate with their environment in any meaningful sense and that visionary states cannot be informative about external reality. These were not empirical findings; they were prior commitments that shaped which questions were considered legitimate. Narby argued that the evidence of indigenous pharmacological accuracy demanded that these priors be examined rather than assumed.
confirmed
The plant intelligence research of the twenty-five years since Narby published has substantially dismantled the priors he identified. Monica Gagliano's 2014 Oecologia study showed Mimosa pudica can learn and retain learned behaviors, a finding consistent with non-neuronal memory. Suzanne Simard's mycorrhizal network research (Nature, 1997; popularized in Finding the Mother Tree, 2021) reported that trees can exchange carbon through underground fungal networks; a 2023 review (Karst et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution) argued the field evidence for widespread sharing and kin support is weaker than often claimed. Gagliano's 2016 Scientific Reports study reported associative learning in pea seedlings, but a 2020 replication attempt (Markel, eLife) did not reproduce it. The journal Plant Signaling & Behavior, founded 2006, now publishes hundreds of papers annually on plant cognition and behavior. The International Society for Plant Signaling and Behavior holds an annual conference. None of this confirms Narby's specific biophoton hypothesis about shamanic vision. It does support his methodological point that plant behavior deserved investigation. The question he said deserved investigation is now being investigated.
Sources
- Gagliano et al., Oecologia (2014)
- Simard et al., Nature (1997)
- Gagliano et al., Scientific Reports (2016)
- Plant Signaling & Behavior (journal, 2006, present) [Source not found; under review]
- Karst et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution (2023)
- Markel, eLife (2020)