Re: Botany of Desire

Anyone catch the PBS Documentary based on book "Botany of Desire" or the City Arts and Lectures (San Francisco) interview with Michael Pollen about the book of same name ?
Interesting concept that certain successful plants adapt to the selection pressures applied by humans-- that humans are one part of the natural environment of plants and human behavior can be "exploited" by plants to increase the chance that a given plant species will flourish or disperse worldwide. The central theme of the book is that certain plants have been very successful because they indulge particular human desires (for esthetic beauty, for security, for intoxication, for sweetness, etc.) and often human behaviors are driven by the propagation requirements of these certain plants.

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan

To me that concept smacks of making the facts fit the data.

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Old Dude

Quote
mrcondron
To me that concept smacks of making the facts fit the data.

??? huh?
Aren't the facts the data?

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most responsive to change.
—Charles Darwin

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The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2009 10:31PM by Frank Furter.

I purposely didn't see it b/c I have the book and wanted to read it first. I think the concept is interesting though. I read an article recently about how Harris Ranch threatened to pull donations from Cal Poly due to the author's scheduled solo lecture and as a result, the school included a speaker who is well liked by the cattle industry for a panel discussion.