# G. T. Fechner (1848): Plants as sentient living beings

## TL;DR

This paper re-examines Fechner's 1848 work on plant sentience, arguing it was based on empirical reasoning and offers a new perspective on intelligence and perception.

## Contribution

Reveals Fechner's plant sentience ideas as empirically grounded and relevant to modern discussions on plant intelligence.

## Key findings

- Fechner's arguments on plant sentience were based on empirical observation and inductive reasoning.
- Fechner proposed that plants may experience environmental stimuli intensely due to their sessile nature.
- The paper suggests sentience may be an intrinsic property of life, not just a result of neural complexity.

## Abstract

While Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801-1887) is widely celebrated as the founder of experimental psychophysics, his pioneering work on the psychic life of plants - Nanna, oder über das Seelenleben der Pflanzen (1848) - has historically been relegated to the margins as mystical or unscientific. However, a contemporary re-examination reveals that Fechner’s arguments were deeply rooted in empirical observation and inductive reasoning, anticipating current discourse on plant intelligence, learning, and communication. Regarding plant awareness, for instance, Fechner posits that their intimate physical immersion in earth, water, air, and light necessitates that every environmental fluctuation be accessible to their experience. For a sessile organism, survival demands total immersion in the present moment; thus, while the plant may lack the temporal cognitive representations (memory and anticipation) typical of animals, Fechner hypothesizes that its immediate sensorial experience may have reached a degree of intensity even exceeding that of human beings. Overall, Fechner’s perspective offers plant biologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists an original framework to reconceptualize intelligence and perception, suggesting that sentience is an intrinsic property of life itself rather than a mere derivative of neural complexity.