Holdrege promotes “living thinking” (versus object thinking) as a more participatory, concrete mode, oriented “around the living organism and living processes instead of around the idea of interacting object-like entities.” This is a mode that “would be as dynamic, coherent, and responsive as a living organism”; “thinking that is relational, that recognizes how living ‘things’ interpenetrate and, in reality, are not things at all.” Reading Thinking like a Plant, I was ambivalent about how this approach sharply contrasted with that of “my” botanists because, with the notion of living thinking and active attention, he aims to “transcend the boundaries we construct when we look at an organism from a taxonomic standpoint.” But I also heard a resonance with the anthropological axiom that “things” are not independent objects as much as sets of relationships, as in “We can begin to see organisms as intersecting relationships that are part of the greater web of life.”
⚘ How to Interview a Plant