Does water have agency? Does it need to?

Abstract

Michael Pollan recently published an essay in theNew Yorker(December 2013) introducing the notion of ‘plant intelligence’ and how plants have evolved by virtue of their lack of mobility to cultivate and attract the resources they require. Although not using the humanistic language identified with ‘agency’, a widely used term most frequently associated with human motivation, action and accomplishment, Pollan lends his implicit support for the communicative ‘behaviours’ of plants and their own brand of agency in effecting change in the world. Veronica Strang champions this view for the role of the non-human organic world, but moves a step or two further in suggesting that the inorganic has its own sense of agency. And though she and those phenomenologists whom she cites attribute agency to all things, it is difficult for some of us to entirely accept such a premise.

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