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The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
by Michael Pollan

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13839.The_Botany_of_Desire_A_Plant_s_Eye_View_of_the_World?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1166573832m/13839.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13839.The_Botany_of_Desire_A_Plant_s_Eye_View_of_the_World?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2121.Michael_Pollan">Michael Pollan</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5150900?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 4 of 5 stars Wonderful, wonderful book, full of fantastic info and insights. My main critique of the book is Pollan's central conceit, and the language used to express it: plant species have domesticated humanity just as much as humanity has domesticated them. My problem is his constant insertion of agency into the process of evolution and mixing metaphors of individuals and of species. Flowers are not individually clever, and neither are species of flowers. Flowers do not manipulate bees in the same way that a botanist manipulates a flower species through artificial selection or genetic modification. Species do not have agency, the will to act. Only individuals have that, and individuals bees, potatoes, or water buffalo do not (to our knowledge), have the will to offer themselves up as willing partners to humanity.
 
 Pollan draws an interesting distinction that I haven't encountered in my amateur meanderings between "wilderness" and "wildness." He uses "wilderness" in the sense of the Wilderness Act of 1964, "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." "Wildness," on the other hand, is anything that humans cannot control. As Bill McKibben famously pointed out, the atmosphere of our planet is no longer a wilderness, tainted as it is by the byproducts of our industry, but as every hurricane and tornado reminds us, it is still profoundly wild.
 
 Pollan uses this distinction to emphasize that while all domestication is a destruction of wilderness, it is almost never an abolition of wildness. The gardener uses his sense of order not to control his plants absolutely, but to guide and shape their wildness in certain ways. He goes on to suggest that genetic engineering may violate this pact, that by attempting to guide evolution on such a basic level is a powerful new way to write wildness out of the equation. He also offers the counterpoint that current techniques for gene insertion are (sometimes literally) so scattershot as to yield results that are even less predictable that conventional breeding.
 
 The topic of wilderness feeds into another interesting point, which is that "memory is the enemy of wonder" (168). He argues that cannabinoids like THC help us experience awe and wonder but forcing constant short term memory loss, and that meditation or physical exertion probably induce the same effect, making the view from a mountain peak infinitely more profound after having hiked to it instead of having driven.
 
 Another insight he had about marijuana is that drugs could be considered the mutagens of culture. If one assumes a meme is like a gene, then a culture is like a genome. Memes are constantly recombining through thought and discourse (intercourse in both culture and biology), but genuinely new ideas are rare. At the risk of spreading a metaphor too thin, Pollan suggests that drugs could be thought of as mutagens, radiation nuking the genetic fundaments of culture, producing mostly irrelevant or deleterious nonsense, but now and again creating viable gems (149). Kind of a fun thought.
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/216786?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Ken-ichi's review
rating:
bookshelves: learning

Wonderful, wonderful book, full of fantastic info and insights. My main critique of the book is Pollan's central conceit, and the language used to express it: plant species have domesticated humanity just as much as humanity has domesticated them. My problem is his constant insertion of agency into the process of evolution and mixing metaphors of individuals and of species. Flowers are not individually clever, and neither are species of flowers. Flowers do not manipulate bees in the same way that a botanist manipulates a flower species through artificial selection or genetic modification. Species do not have agency, the will to act. Only individuals have that, and individuals bees, potatoes, or water buffalo do not (to our knowledge), have the will to offer themselves up as willing partners to humanity.

Pollan draws an interesting distinction that I haven't encountered in my amateur meanderings between "wilderness" and "wildness." He uses "wilderness" ...more Wonderful, wonderful book, full of fantastic info and insights. My main critique of the book is Pollan's central conceit, and the language used to express it: plant species have domesticated humanity just as much as humanity has domesticated them. My problem is his constant insertion of agency into the process of evolution and mixing metaphors of individuals and of species. Flowers are not individually clever, and neither are species of flowers. Flowers do not manipulate bees in the same way that a botanist manipulates a flower species through artificial selection or genetic modification. Species do not have agency, the will to act. Only individuals have that, and individuals bees, potatoes, or water buffalo do not (to our knowledge), have the will to offer themselves up as willing partners to humanity.

Pollan draws an interesting distinction that I haven't encountered in my amateur meanderings between "wilderness" and "wildness." He uses "wilderness" in the sense of the Wilderness Act of 1964, "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." "Wildness," on the other hand, is anything that humans cannot control. As Bill McKibben famously pointed out, the atmosphere of our planet is no longer a wilderness, tainted as it is by the byproducts of our industry, but as every hurricane and tornado reminds us, it is still profoundly wild.

Pollan uses this distinction to emphasize that while all domestication is a destruction of wilderness, it is almost never an abolition of wildness. The gardener uses his sense of order not to control his plants absolutely, but to guide and shape their wildness in certain ways. He goes on to suggest that genetic engineering may violate this pact, that by attempting to guide evolution on such a basic level is a powerful new way to write wildness out of the equation. He also offers the counterpoint that current techniques for gene insertion are (sometimes literally) so scattershot as to yield results that are even less predictable that conventional breeding.

The topic of wilderness feeds into another interesting point, which is that "memory is the enemy of wonder" (168). He argues that cannabinoids like THC help us experience awe and wonder but forcing constant short term memory loss, and that meditation or physical exertion probably induce the same effect, making the view from a mountain peak infinitely more profound after having hiked to it instead of having driven.

Another insight he had about marijuana is that drugs could be considered the mutagens of culture. If one assumes a meme is like a gene, then a culture is like a genome. Memes are constantly recombining through thought and discourse (intercourse in both culture and biology), but genuinely new ideas are rare. At the risk of spreading a metaphor too thin, Pollan suggests that drugs could be thought of as mutagens, radiation nuking the genetic fundaments of culture, producing mostly irrelevant or deleterious nonsense, but now and again creating viable gems (149). Kind of a fun thought....less

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