Controlling roots

[From Bill Powers (960927.1520 MST)]

Mr. Remi Cote 290996.1734 EST --

Question:

A tree is a livign organism.
Are the roots controllign for something? For nutrient, minerals...

You are a living organism. Are your legs controlling for something?

Best

Bill P.

From Mr. Remi Cote 960927.0009 EST

[From Bill Powers (960927.1520 MST)]

Mr. Remi Cote 290996.1734 EST --

>Question:

>A tree is a livign organism.
>Are the roots controllign for something? For nutrient, minerals...

You are a living organism. Are your legs controlling for something?

answer:

There are a lot of living cell in my leg who control for oxygen level.

In my wonderful question I am not asking if tree have CNS.

Best

REMI

[From Bill Powers (960928.0600 MD
T)]

Mr. Remi Cote 960927.0009 EST --

Remi:>> >A tree is a livign organism.

>Are the roots controllign for something? For nutrient, minerals...

You are a living organism. Are your legs controlling for something?

My answer:

There are a lot of living cell in my leg who control for oxygen level.
In my wonderful question I am not asking if tree have CNS.

You asked about a unit larger than a cell. A cell probably controls for
hundreds of variables, in any living organism. Inside the cell are genes
which control for -- how many genes are there? -- 100,000 variables? This is
a hierarchical system all the way down. There are biochemical control
systems; a CNS is not necessary.

Best,

Bill P.

[Martin Taylor 960930 13:20]

Remi Cote 960927.0009

>A tree is a livign organism.
>Are the roots controllign for something? For nutrient, minerals...

In my wonderful question I am not asking if tree have CNS.

Remi, since you live in Montreal, you should be able to get a copy of
last Saturday's Globe and Mail (Sept 28). In it you will find an article
in which the "thoughts" of trees are discussed. It talks of trees as
clever warriors, thinking on time scales of decades rather than minutes.
They fight wars against changes in their environment, against bugs, and
against all sorts of what we would call "disturbances." What they do is
oppose the disturbance. And that seems like "control."

The article isn't PCT, but it's fun. Furthermore, if you have learned to
imagine what one might say from a PCT view when you read a "conventional"
statement about people, you might be able also to imagine a PCT view of
what the article says about trees.

There are a lot of living cell in my leg who control for oxygen level.

And there are a lot of muscle fibres that control for tension, and joints
that control for angle (except that, of course, these are the _external_
--CEV--correlates of what is actually controlled, the neural signal,
presumably).

In the tree, what is controlled? Do the Test. Does the tree control for
canopy shape? Cut out a few branches, and see whether the canopy regains
its old shape without them. Let's say it does. Then we ask whether the
tree can detect canopy shape. We can't see any sensors for that, so it
is hard to say for sure that the tree is controlling for canopy shape
(we can't say it doesn't, because it might have sensors that we haven't
discovered). Perhaps it is controlling for something else that correlates
with canopy shape. Say, nutrient flow from leaves, which doesn't happen
when the leaves are shaded. Try to find a way of affecting nutrient flow
from some leaves or branches, and see whether canopy shape changes when
the tree does whatever it does to counter the disturbance. And so forth.

You can apply The Test to a tree in the same way you can do it for a person,
but you have to wait longer for your answers.

Martin