Dear Organlearners,
Maggi Linington <lngtn-mj@acaleph.vista.ac.za> write:
>Perhaps IF it was a trick. A plant consists of various parts:
>roots, stem(s) and leaves. Thus the plant is the whole and
>the root is a part.
Greetings Maggi,
Yes. When I have to explain to people what kind of succulent plants I have
been studying for almost 30 years of my life, I use the same distinction.
The succulence of a plant can be in the leaves (like an aloe species), or
the stem (like a cactus species) or in the root(s) (like a fockea
species). Root succulents are also called geophytic (earth-lover) plants.
(Now, is geophytism not an example of anthropomorphism? Many people reckon
that it is only humans who can love.)
When I have to guide people how to cultivate succulent plants or promote
their living in habitat, I go even further. The plant is not the whole,
but part of a gene pool of similar specimens. Even all these specimens
together are not the whole, but part of an ecological niche consisting of
other plants, animals, soil, climate, etc. Even this niche is not the
whole, but part of mother earth. Even ........
>Part of the whole can be written as roots of the plant. Not a trick
>at all. The original supposion that plant refered to only the part
>above the ground was incorrect.
I never assumed that only the visible part of the plant is the plant. But
it is possible that you have assumed that I have made such an assumption.
My passion for studying geophytic plants indicates that it is logically
impossible for me to assume that only the portion of a plant above the
soil is the whole plant. Furthermore, I would not have discovered that
South Africa "HAS" more geophytic plants than any other country in the
world!
I used the "plant HAS roots" as an example of anthropomorphism to
illustrate the "human" idea of possession. I could also have used as an
example the "atom HAS electrons". In fact, I used this example, but erased
it to keep physics and chemistry out of the picture since less fellow
learners on this list will have the experience to follow this example. A
simple sentence like "the atom has electrons each with spin moment" would
become monstrous to me if I had to write "the moment of the spin of the
electrons of the atom". (Assigning a property rather than to something
also depends on the idea of possession.)
Not lang ago, it was still a craze of linguiists in my own mother tongue
Afrikaans to insist on the use of compound names to replace a sentence
like "the moment of the spin of the electrons of the atom" with (will use
the corresponding English words) "atomelectronspinmoment". Is this not
monstrous? One of the famous examples of such compound names is the name
of a farm: tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein. (On the farm
two buffaloes were shot with one bullet so that both died instantly. There
was also a fountain on the farm.)
Monstrous? Hillarious!
Not all humans follow the idea of possession to the limit. Here is an
interesting example. In western culture it is acceptable to say that "I
have food and you have not food." But in the cultures of the San (Bushmen)
peoples, the Xhoi (Hottentot) peoples and the Banthu peoples of Southern
Africa before the days of colonialisation it was unethical to possess food
while a neigbour had no food. Thus trading in food was not practised. Then
came the first colonists, trading things like beads for food. Can we
imagine what a cultural shock it was to these peoples?
>When we see a portion of vegeatable matter that prtrudes
>from the ground we call it a plant taking into account that we
>are also refering to the roots. Stems and leaves on their own
>are twigs.
Twigs? When cactophiles read that the spines of any cactus are modified
stems and leaves, it confuses them out of their wits.
Cacti belong to the family Cactaceae. Almost all cacti are succulents, but
not vice versa. The property of succulence runs through 26 plant families.
The Cactaceae family has the most succulent species. It is the third
biggest family of all plants, only surpassed by the orchids (1 st) and
grasses (2 nd). This family is restricted almost exclusively to North and
South America. Close behind this family is the Mesembryanthemaceae, the
fourth biggest family of all plants .(How is that for a tongue knotter!)
99% of the species of this family occur in South Africa (the other 1%
occur in Nambia). But the area of South Africa is approximately 2% of that
the the Americas. How is that for a concentration of diversity!
The only way to convince a cactophile that spines are modified twigs
(stems and leaves), is to let them compare through a microscope the
growing tips of a cactus plant and a non succulent plant, trying to find
any differences. There are no differences.
What has this all to do with reification? When studying a few kinds of
ordinary plants, we get certain ideas. We then see how far these ideas
will go in all the other kinds of plants. This finding of material
examples of abstract ideas is a form of reification according to the
conventional meaning of the word.
Although there are not any visible differences on the macrosopic level
(even if we have to use a microscope), the differences on the molecular
level are substantial. All succulent plants use a much different
photosynthesis path than ordinary plants to produce glucose. (A
succullent plant cannot dare to open its stomata in the day because it
will lose too much water.) This different path results in a massive
variety of other biochemical and eventually physiological differences.
For example, the tip of a succulent plant's root will only grow (elongate)
once the upper tip of the plant is growing. In ordinary plants it is the
other way arround -- give them water to induce root growth and then twig
growth. But giving a succulent plant water to induce growth in its upper
tips is to invite certain death.
Hopefully the former paragraph illustrates how succulent plants are very
useful in testing the reification of botanical ideas. The wisdom which I
learn from this is that when there is an exception to the reification of
any idea, do not force the reification of that idea at all costs,
especially on the exception. When I think of "any idea", it does not mean
only "biological idea". For example, to make an assumption is a logical
idea rather than a biological idea. Even the reification of a logical idea
can lead to certain death.
Best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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