The View from the Flowerpot

An interesting question studied by ethologists is whether a given species of animals exhibits a “theory of mind”---for instance, whether a chimpanzee can understand what another chimpanzee is perceiving or ‘thinking’ or feeling in a particular situation. An unusual version of this process of attempting to identify with the mental state of another being came into play for me in New York in 1971, an experience I’ve thought about a lot in the last thirty-five years or so.

I had stopped by to see my friend Jerry Weil in his apartment one afternoon, and after we had a sip of wine and other refreshments, Jerry turned on a local radio station and immediately the sound of Roberta Flack singing and playing piano filled the apartment with its dense beauty. On a window-sill with its view of the fire escape and the assembled bricks of the building next-door was a small flowerpot in which a single geranium grew amidst some random stems and leaves. The music filling the room was perfect for that moment, simple and soulful and moving, and for some reason I walked through that sound over to the window to have a closer look at the flower. There among the leaves was a tiny green segmented being about three-quarters of an inch long going about its business of staying alive, just like the rest of us.

Some caterpillars can detect vibrations conducted by the surface of the plant they’re on, but none can hear air-borne sounds. So it occurred to me as I stood there that this little fellow simply didn’t have the equipment to hear the gorgeous singing of Roberta Flack my friend and I were enjoying so much. The sound of her voice was right there in the flowerpot, just as it was right here in the apartment at large, but the little caterpillar just didn’t have the biology to be aware of its existence. Born to be dumb indeed.

But wait, I said to myself, there’s more. The unheard music was only the beginning. What could that little clump of life know of my friend Jerry, whose apartment it shared? What could it know of New York City and the complexity of what goes on there? Or the presidency of Richard Nixon or the expanding universe? Clearly its understanding of what actually exists was limited by the equipment it possessed to discern that reality in the first place. What could be more obvious?

But why do humans think that we are not in the same situation (I’m not interested here in religious beliefs, the supernatural, etc.)? Compared to that of even our nearest relatives, the human set of tools to perceive and understand the world is supreme, but to assume that the human species has evolved without inherent limitations is absurd. Our view from this planet looks out on a universe of a hundred billion galaxies, each one with a hundred billion suns on average, more stars than grains of sand on all our beaches combined. At that scale, I don't think it makes a lot of difference whether we're munching on a leaf in a flowerpot or sipping a glass of wine a few feet away. What we can know depends on how we actually evolved, how we're put together, unless the omniscient "God" we hear so much about really did make us in "His" illustrious image.