Michael Marder (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU, Vitoria-Gasteiz) 'Seeds for Thought, or Several Tips on How to Follow Plants'

Abstract: What does it mean “to follow plants”? How to re-learn the work and the play of thinking from them? I propose shifting the focus and perspectives of our thought and attention from the extremes to the middle, whence the extremes emerge and develop in their tireless interplay. Rather than commence with the earth and the sky—that is, with the elemental and metaphysical terrestrial and celestial grounds of vegetal life arranged in definite hierarchical formations—starting in the middle that is the seed is following the seed’s own trajectories, whether of germination or non-germination. My wager is that it will be possible to glean surprising implications from such an exercise for the practice of human thinking, which would be of a piece with and conducive to life.