Considering things from this perspective, Pollan suddenly saw the potato not as man’s pawn but his coevolutionary partner.
The bee may think she is plundering the flower, but it has cleverly manipulated her into hauling its pollen from blossom to blossom. Some plant species have found that the best way to do that is to play to animals’ desires and thus induce them to spread their genes.
On the most basic genetic level, every being cares only about making more copies of itself. We believe that gardeners, like bees, act in their own interest when they disseminate the genes of other species.But Pollan wondered whether this view could be all wrong. We humans divide the world into subjects and objects, and in the garden, as in nature generally, we cast ourselves as the subjects. One day while he planted potatoes and bees collected nectar from nearby apple blossoms, he thought, “What existential difference is there between the human being’s role in this (or any) garden and the bumblebee’s?” The idea for this book began in Pollan’s garden. Philosophy students will find a springboard for examining our species’s place in the natural world. While its content is most specifically about ecology and the natural sciences, Pollan’s ability to argue an original, complicated idea in a convincing way makes it a perfect text for writing or journalism students. This piece of creative non-fiction lends itself well to a wide diversity of subjects. Just who, he asks, is domesticating whom? By chronicling the evolutionary advantages enjoyed by plants that develop qualities favored by people, Pollan leads the reader to consider how we stand in relation to our fellow species. Pollan looks closely at our relationship with the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato, and shows how each plant has evolved to gratify human desires and thus has enticed us to help them multiply.
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The Botany of Desire examines our species’ role in nature and challenges the idea that people are the sole drivers of domestication.
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Also Available: For The Botany of Desire PBS television documentary Guide, please download the PDF attachment at the bottom of this page.
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