We’ve heard the expression, or we’ve learned the principle by experience: Laughter is contagious. So is yawning, and, some might argue, is creativity.
In the 1930s Mikhail Chailakhyan proposed that a substance he named florigen stimulated a host plant to flower in response to a grafted stem that was about to flower. No one has been able to identify florigen (from flora, “flower” and genno, to “beget”) to this day, but the principle seems to extend throughout the flowering plants. Again, a stem that is about to flower seems to stimulate the host plant into flowering. Chailakhyan even tried this in successful cross-species experiments with similar results.
I almost want to shout out Dylan Thomas’s “The force that through the green fuse…” when I think about Chailakhyan’s florigen. Here we are, supposedly highly sophisticated, rational, and learned people, and we can’t identify the cause of a similar effect in humans, one that we can definitely use to enhance our condition.
Laughter is contagious. Creativity, too. Put a smiling person in a room full of frowners, and watch expressions change. Put a laughing person in a room of gloom, and watch a dawning brightness. And put a creative person in a room, and watch the cognitive wheels turn.
You can be that human florigen. You can cause flowering in a seemingly dormant society. You don’t have to understand the process. You don’t have to identify the substance. Your flowering causes others to flower. It’s a mystery, but through experience in many cross-mood personal experiments, we all know about florigen.
In the 1930s Mikhail Chailakhyan proposed that a substance he named florigen stimulated a host plant to flower in response to a grafted stem that was about to flower. No one has been able to identify florigen (from flora, “flower” and genno, to “beget”) to this day, but the principle seems to extend throughout the flowering plants. Again, a stem that is about to flower seems to stimulate the host plant into flowering. Chailakhyan even tried this in successful cross-species experiments with similar results.
I almost want to shout out Dylan Thomas’s “The force that through the green fuse…” when I think about Chailakhyan’s florigen. Here we are, supposedly highly sophisticated, rational, and learned people, and we can’t identify the cause of a similar effect in humans, one that we can definitely use to enhance our condition.
Laughter is contagious. Creativity, too. Put a smiling person in a room full of frowners, and watch expressions change. Put a laughing person in a room of gloom, and watch a dawning brightness. And put a creative person in a room, and watch the cognitive wheels turn.
You can be that human florigen. You can cause flowering in a seemingly dormant society. You don’t have to understand the process. You don’t have to identify the substance. Your flowering causes others to flower. It’s a mystery, but through experience in many cross-mood personal experiments, we all know about florigen.
RSS Feed