What if absolutely everything is conscious?

Scientists spent ages mocking panpsychism. Now, some are warming to the idea that plants, cells, and even atoms are conscious.

If you’re feeling brave, sit and look — and I mean really look — at a plant on your windowsill as it bends toward the light. It seems simple, but stare at it long enough and you may find yourself doubting everything you thought you knew about your own mind.

Sure, you can look it up and find out there’s a thing called phototropism, which involves cells in a plant elongating to chase the sun. But that’s not really much of an answer. The question was: Why does the plant do that? Is its movement just a mechanistic response with no feeling behind it? Or does the plant want that delicious, warm light?

To many kids, it’s obvious: The plant wants the light! Yet as adults, at least in the West, we’re supposed to be embarrassed by that kind of language. Modern science warns us against anthropomorphizing — and not just when it comes to plants. Until a few decades ago, scientists also insisted on viewing animals as mechanistic bundles of instinct (even though any pet owner would find that absurd). They’ve gradually changed their minds about mammals, birds, and certain brainy species like octopuses, while continuing to believe that species with simpler nervous systems (or no nervous system at all) are not intelligent. They’re not even conscious.

From the Greek words pan (all) and psyche (soul), panpsychism is the view, held by many peoples around the world since antiquity, that consciousness resides in everything at least to some degree — that it’s a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical universe. Animals have it, plants have it, and even single cells have it. That doesn’t mean your chair is conscious — but, according to some panpsychists, the atoms inside it might be. How exactly that could work is a philosophical puzzle (more on that soon).

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