WEEK 9
Over the last two weeks Iâve gradually read two chapters from Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake. One chapter was Chapter 2 Living Labyrinths where Sheldrake discussed the nature of a fungusâ mycelium networks. This includes how a fungus grows, how it treats spatial problems, and the nature of fungus as a decentralized organism. The other chapter I read was Chapter 6 World Wide Webs, where Sheldrake talks about the ways fungus interacts with the natural world around it.Â
CHAPTER 2:Â
A fungusâ mycelium network is made up of a âswarm of hyphal tipsâ (in Sheldrakeâs words pg . 53). This network is the true body of the fungus, with the stereotypical representation of them being the organismâs fruiting body, formed by a group of hyphae inflated with water. The fruiting of fungi has incredible potential force, with this growth being documented as capable of lifting up to 286 lbs (130kg). These hyphal tips control the growth of the fungus, with no central brain or body to control the movement of each hyphal tip. An experiment mentioned that helped me to best understand this was the Francis Alys performance, where a hole was poked in a can full of paint with Alys traversing a city with the paint trailing behind them. In this performance, Alys would be the hyphal tip, determining where the paint will trail to next, with all the paint of before trailing behind them. However, unlike the paint, a fungus can retract hyphal tips and reprioritize growth when it encounters greater resources in another direction or area. As said by Sheldrake, fungi are âflexible networks that ceaselessly remodel themselvesâ (pg. 76).Â
All of these ideas are incredibly interesting to me. The intelligence of fungus is incredibly hard to conceptualize, as the organism itself is hard to understand. It has no central mind or central body, and yet itâs capable of making decisions on how to control a multitude of facets within itself. Each hyphal tip seems to manage itself, and yet is managed by the whole body as well. This body isnât finite, and can grow almost infinitely, making the body inconstant. Itâs also interesting that each part of the fungus is equally itself as another part. You cut off a section of the mycelium network and both parts are equally the same mycelium. However, you cut off the brain from the rest of the nervous system, and a human being is gone. It's interesting to think of a network with no center that can maintain itself without a center point for decision making. Rather, a fungus is a network purely for the transportation of information and, more importantly, resources; to take water from one area and distribute it throughout the whole organism. We explore this idea more in Chapter 6.Â
CHAPTER 6:Â
In this chapter, Sheldrake talks about how fungus interacts with the plant life around it. He starts by discussing Montropa, a plant that survives purely off of the resources provided by the mycelium network connected to it. When studied, scientists realized that mycelium isnât only a network within itself; for sharing resources amongst its own body, and information along its own channels. It can also distribute resources amongst the plants it networks with. Fungal connections brought Montropa all the carbon it needed to survive, to the degree that it doesnât even photosynthesize anymore, having lost its chlorophyll completely. This changes our ideas of plants completely. While plants can form root grafts on rare occasions, before it was thought that they all existed purely for competition, the same way animals live. This is true to a certain extent. Plants do compete for resources of light, space, and water. But despite this competition, fungal connections turn forests into communities. All these individuals fighting for survival begin to collaborate, a sign of intelligence that Iâd only ever seen in animals before. It's interesting then that collaboration is such a universal part of the natural world, and such an integral part of intelligence on Earth.















