Hallé compares plants and animals

Hallé, F. 2002. A Visit to the Landscape of Form. pg. 41-124, & Evolution. pg. 173-184 in In Praise of Plants. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon & London, UK.

Hallé's book is translated from the French, and the writing is sometimes entertaining, sometimes odd.  The subject matter is scientific, based in the language of biology. We read chapters two and five.

Hallé writes about how the science of form (morphology) describes plants and animals differently. He starts chapter two arguing how important he sees morphology as to science, saying the form of an organism gives the most essential information about it.

He describes plants as “vast, fixed surfaces,” and animals as “small mobile volumes.” He explains this comes down to the way they gather energy. Plants need a large surface area in order to glean constant low-level energy from the sun, whereas animals need to be mobile and therefore compact in order to capture their more densely-energy-packed food.

Hallé raises the oft-used metaphor that eating is like feeding an engine fuel. No, he says, it's not. An organism needs energy not simply for functioning but existing. I found this profound. I reflected on the phrases, “Without energy, an organism is condemned to death”... “The organism cannot be dissociated from the energy that feeds it.” What a good thing this would be to point out to those who, steeped in the individualized industrial capitalist paradigm, see everything as so separate.

Hallé says the roots of a single rye plant would, if placed end to end, be 622 km long, and would increase daily by five km. This is mind-blowing. Go rye. Go all plants.

Later he also talks about how plants, to live, need to continue to keep growing, as opposed to animals who grow from baby to adult form and then stop. It's an interesting and significant difference.

Animals have vast internal surfaces, including the lungs and digestive tract, which form huge surface areas. I loved this quote, which illustrates the difference in surface areas between plants and animals: “Animals are confused plants, turned inside out like a glove, with infolded leaves and roots in their digestive tracts. Plants are fantastic animals, their insides turned out, bearing their entrails like feathers.” Beautiful.

There is a large section in chapter two about polarities and symmetry, where Hallé diagrams various objects and organisms showing on which planes they are symmetrical, or not. It is quite detailed and involves physics. Hallé highlights some advantages and disadvantages of various forms of (a)symmetry, and compares organisms at different scales of existence from microscopic to macroscopic and in-between.

When Hallé talks about hormones, I found it interesting and relevant to learn that the study of plant hormones began to be applied practically in agriculture in the second-half of the 20^th century.

Hallé describes the organization of trees in terms that I would call anarchism. He quotes Michel Leneau saying, “Our internal organization recognizes neither God nor a master. It is a free association of elements of different and complimentary organs. These obey nobody but themselves and ask of their followers a simple and essential agreement: growth.” Yeah trees. I tend to believe that as human beings we need to base our systems of political organization more closely on lessons that can be learned from nature. Perhaps different kinds of nature than the ones we have based them on now.

Hallé talks about certain plants, fascinatingly, as being potentially immortal. He goes on to describe that animals and plants die differently. Animals are either alive or dead, whereas plants can kill parts of themselves and allow these parts to drop off, while continuing to live. I find it interesting to reflect on these various differences he points out between plants and animals.

Overall I didn't find this the most exciting read, but it did hold my interest, and I learned some of the aforementioned physical facts about plants and animals that have opened my mind in a new way. The things Hallé points out are not exactly the way I choose to see the world, because I don't tend to dissect details in the manner he does. I do pay attention to details and difference, and find it interesting, but I don't have the in-depth desire to measure and compare things on the scale he does. I'd rather draw conclusions, philosophy, and political inspiration from it, seeing the poetry in the facts.