• Question: Do you believe that plants have souls?

    Asked by Ola to Cristiane, Nicki, Nikolai, Richard, Samuel on 10 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Samuel Ellis

      Samuel Ellis answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      Obviously the topic of souls depends on your own personal beliefs. However most people usually associate souls with sentient creatures, which have a mind and personality etc.

      Plants don’t have a nervous system and don’t scientifically have sentience, so I imagine most people would say plants probably wouldn’t have a soul either.

    • Photo: Nikolai Adamski

      Nikolai Adamski answered on 10 Mar 2015:

      They better not have souls, as I have sent many across the river Styx. 🙂

      But seriously, this is a tricky topic. You can approach this from different angles. As a scientist I try to be very rational about everything and use the Scientific Method to explain the world around me. As such I would ask:
      How do you define a soul? Do people have souls and what is the scientific evidence for that? If people have souls and we can’t measure it, why shouldn’t plants have a soul?

      To answer your question, I haven’t seen any scientific evidence that plants have a soul, so “No, I don’t think that plants have a soul”.

    • Photo: Cristiane Calixto

      Cristiane Calixto answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      As Nikolai mentioned, us scientists tend to be very rational and none of us think plants have a soul.

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