Description
Book SynopsisExplore ideas, consider the big questions and learn life lessons in your garden.
Gardening is an
innately thoughtful as well as practical pastime: planning ahead, imagining how plants will grow, deciding what will make a 'good' garden, wondering at the beauty of flowers and noticing how ecosystems work.
This delightful and
engaging collection of essays illustrate how many
philosophical ideas arise naturally in gardeners’ everyday work.
Growers by their nature are in fact already philosophers:
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existentialists who try to live and work by their own rules in a garden;
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stoics who put up with slug damage again and again, and try to work in harmony with nature;
- and practical quantum scientists who witness incredible processes going on in plant cells beneath the ground.
In
Philosophy for Gardeners, Kate Collyns use
Trade Review"It’s perfect for anyone inclined to ponder life lessons while tending to their greenery and features lovely line drawings." * The Boston Globe *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Part 1: Soil
1.Mysteries of the soil
Plato's Cave & unobserved causes 2.Planning the Garden
Imposing our individual rule on the natural world 3.Natural harmonies
Becoming one with nature 4. Utilitarianism & the greater good
Fairness in the garden 5.What's in a name?
How important are definitions and accuracy? Part 2: Growth
6.Evolution & the plant-pest arms race
Darwin & worries about genetic modification in plants 7. The kindness of plants
Game theory & why cooperation is best 8.Nature versus nurture
When is a blank slate not blank? 9.Photosynthesis: quantum biology in plants
Quantum physics in the garden 10.Weeding: Zeno's Paradox
How can change happen when distance & time are infinitely divisible? Part 3: Harvest
11.The perfect tomato
Do ideal forms exist on a higher plane? 12.Art & beauty
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? 13.Miracle berries: are senses reliable?
Is a lemon sweet or sour? 14.Minding your peas & cues
How can we know anything? 15.Wealth from the dirt
Economics & the origin of value Part 4: Cycles
16.Methuselah trees
The Ship of Theseus identity paradox 17.Heaps of seeds
Logic & the sorites paradox 18.Composting: ultimate recycling
Entropy & reincarnation 19.In the shed: ethics & the pursuit of happiness
How to live the Good Life 20.The pragmatic gardener
Practical philosophy & getting off Buridan's Ass Further Reading
Index
