phytophenomenology

English

Etymology

Coined by Ikerbasque philosopher Michael Marder in 2012, from phyto- +‎ phenomenology

Noun

phytophenomenology (uncountable)

1. The interdisciplinary study of plant intelligence, drawing on phenomenology, botany and population ecology.
   • 2012, Michael Marder, “Plant intentionality and the phenomenological framework of plant intelligence”, in Plant Signaling & Behavior, volume 7, number 11, →DOI, page 7:

     This article provided no more than the prolegomena to the fruitful interdisciplinary combination of phenomenology, botany and population ecology—an approach we may term phytophenomenology.

   • 2018, Katherine E. Bishop, “‘When ‘tis Night, Death is Green’: Vegetal Time in Nineteenth-Century Econoir”, in Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, volume 22, number 1, →DOI, page 8:

     This collocation, Marder posits, may have less to do with plants’ actual botanical mysteries and our human investigations into their biological truths and more to do with the ways that they inhabit and make sense of the world, what he calls their ‘phytophenomenology’, an extension of ecophenomenological work by scholars such as David Wood.

   • 2020, Yogi Hale Hendlin, “Sunlight as a Photosynthetic Information Technology: Becoming Plant in Tom Robbins's Jitterbug Perfume”, in Katherine E. Bishop et al., editors, Plants in Science Fiction: Speculative Vegetation‎^[1], University of Wales Press, page 153:

     Intertwined with Michael Pollan's thesis in The Botany of Desire on plant agency reversing traditional anthropocentric causation, Jitterbug Perfume encourages a closer look at plant biology as well as what Michael Marder names phytophenomenology, accentuating the superficiality of plant-thinking as an unexpected strength that might also benefit human comportment.