Plant Mind and the Emergence of Plant Physiology: Dutrochet on Plant Sensitivity and Motility

While some philosophers have addressed plants in their writings, they have rarely done so for their own sake. Instead, the plant question often serves as a counterpoint to thinking about the animal and the human, or as a stand-in for the general concept of ‘nature’. In this paper, I argue that this relegation of plants has resulted in unquestioned assumptions that have been perpetuated in modern science and even in contemporary physiology. At the same time, I show that the emergence of plant physiology by a figure such as René Joachim Henri Dutrochet (1776–1847) raised philosophical questions and positions on how to interpret plant behaviour, in a marked contrast to some later reductionist laboratory science. This whole narrative, in turn, sheds light on the very current controversies surrounding the attribution of sensations or a mind to plants.