Do Plants Have Souls?
Plants is part of our life, and it is used for many purposes; for trees, it shield us from too much heat, for flowers it adds beauty in our surroundings, for fruits and vegetables it makes us more healthy and serve a delicious food. These things that I have mentioned are just few to hundreds and thousands of benefits that plants can offer to our life. But does it comes in your mind if they have souls too?
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Biotic and Abiotic Factors
In Science, we have these two factors which make up the ecosystem. First is the Biotic factors, these are the living things, such as human, plants and animals. While Abiotic factors are those non living things such as, air, water and light.
My former biology teacher asked us if black board (the one the we are using in school) is Biotic of Abiotic factor, ofcourse we all answered that it was Abiotic as it is a nonliving thing, yet he explained that it was still a Biotic factor since it was made from a tree which is a living thing. For the plants, we know that Bio means life, in which some people and Philosophers considered plants to have souls, as for them every living things have souls as part of life.
Human Behavior
Talking to plants is so common for those Plant Titas and Plant Titos out there. According to them, talking to plants help them to grow healthy and nice. Just like how we pet our animals, that we must also treat them as part of our family. In human body, we have the brain and spinal cord, as the center of our nervous system which controls our actions. Plants don't have these, which could be conclude that there's a possibility that they have souls, although some said that the reason why they grow is only because of the carbon dioxide that we produce while talking. Lol
The movements of plants is also one of the basis which others believe that they are literally alive. In the Philippines, we have Makahiya as the most common plant which closes when you touch. At first you will see that it is alive, but in studies this is only how the plant reacts to stimuli, to avoid predators.
If you haven't seen Makahiya yet, this is how it looks;
I laughed when one commentor said, "see vegetarians? Plants have feelings too". Then one user replied, "Oh then, What should we eat?".
We also have Carnivorous plants such as Venus Flytrap.
Just imagine that we are not taking care of our nature, then climate change worsen. This kind of plants evolve in order to survive and now looking for humans instead of insects to eat. Nothing, just reminding.
Aristotle's Philosophy
Aristotle believed that there are 3 Types of Souls : nutritive, sensible, and rational. According to him, everything with life has a soul, not just humans but even plants. Particularly, for the plants, there's this vegetative/nutritive soul being the most prevalent soul found in living things. This type of souls help the plants for it's development and reproduction, referred to be "material" not because it is made up of stuff, but because it is organically dependent on matter for its growth and survival. Just like humans that can produce offspring, plants also produce their own offspring through asexual reproduction urges by it's nutritive soul.
Whether the plants have souls or none, what we MUST do is to take care of them. Plants is equal to our nature, and how we treat them is one major outcome of our future. Our planet is already exhausted, let's help it to relax through taking care of our plants.
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Images were edited using Canva/PicsArt
April 23, 2022
-Ling
This is my first time to see this kind of plant. I have question to you buddy, Is this plant really can feel human touch?