Merlin Sheldrake

By coincidence, the book I read before this one was Robert Macfarlane's Underland, which is so closely related to Entangled Life that author Merlin Sheldrake is featured in one chapter. I think Entangled Life is an even more engaging exploration of life underground, from the perspective of fungi. We mostly know them through mushrooms, but those are of course only the equivalent of a plant's fruit, and most of their structure and operation is rarely directly visible to us. This makes fungi show more elusive but also exciting objects of research.

Sheldrake's fascination for fungi really transpires from the pages of this book. His writing is confident enough that he can write about real research and sound neither condescending nor overly academic. (There's also a large number of references and endnotes, which I really appreciate.) What really struck me, though, is how fungi seem to defy our existing classification systems. Throughout the book you're presented with a variety of ways people have tried to understand fungi and how they relate to their environment: symbiosis, parasitism, mycelium as a brain, wires connecting a forest, and even a sort of marketplace for nutrients -- and while these are all fascinating they also show how weird fungi are. Even the notion of an organism seems to be inadequate. If you think you have a good grasp on what life is you should definitely read this. show less

Welcome to the wonderfully wild and woolly word of - fungi. We eat it, walk over it, and don't even notice it deep under the forest floor. Truffles are highly sought after. Plants have a symbiotic relationship with it. And yet, how much do we really know about fungi, how it works, and its relationship with other elements of the natural world?

Milton Sheldrake delves into the fascinating lives of creatures that are neither animal nor plant but are essential to the natural world. I wasn't sold show more on the beginning of this book - usually when I pick up a book about the natural wold that I can't fathom, it tends to be about physics. But then, the chapter on mind-altering mushrooms introduced me to one that hijacks carpenter ants to spread their spores in most dramatic fashion, and I was suddenly hooked. Filled with all sorts of fascinating tidbits, acknowledgement of where we need more study, and envisioning a future where fungi may help answer the climate crisis, this book is sure to leave you with an appreciation for fungi that you never had before. show less

I really liked this book. Yes, I studied some mycology at university and I've always been rather fascinated by fungi ...especially by the km of mycelium that run underground, or through leaf litter and through the trunks of trees. Sheldrake has produced a work here that makes mycology really interesting and gives some dimension to the wealth of fungal life in our world. And most people are totally oblivious to fungi and to their importance to our lives. For example, Sheldrake draws attention show more to the carboniferous age 290-360 million years ago, when forest proliferated across the globe ...but for tens of millions of years the plant matter didn't decompose.......... hence the vast beds of coal in various locations.........because there were no organisms around that could break down lignin...and it was the emergence of the white rot fungi that had the the ability to do this that brought the formation of coal to an end. It also changed the climate because CO2 had been pulled from the atmosphere.....the reverse of the greenhouse effect.....so the world had cooled.
One of the things that I found most fascinating was his descriptions of Lichens. I'd long known that lichens are really a symbiotic relationship between an algae and a fungi but it's been found that lichens are also packed with bacteria and some of the bacteria appear to be necessary for the proper functioning of the organism ...so instead of it being a symbiont with two essential partners it may have three or four or many more organisms participating as a "holobiont". Sheldrake makes the comment that "it is no longer possible to conceive of an organism- humans included- as distinct from the microbial communities they share a body with........Life is nested biomes all the way down." I became quite fascinated by lichens when i lived in NZ. There seem to be so many marvellous lichens there...especially in the misty forests but also in the volcanic areas and hot springs. And Sheldrake points out that they are tough: One species sent into space can survive a dose of radiation six times the standard dose for food steerilization in the US and 12,000 time the lethal dose for humans. Even at double this dose they survived and were able to reproduce and photosynthesise.
Mycelia certainly form large networks and there is speculation that these networks might transmit electrical signals and act like a brain. (They certainly seem to be able to solve simple puzzles like growing towards food ....though I suspect that other explanations like positive feedback might account for much of this).
Of course we have the obligate description of zombie fungus that take over the brain of an ant which then climbs a grass stake to provide optimum conditions for the fungus to spread its spores. This leads into a very extended section about the mind altering substances in various fungi. A lot of attention is given to Psilocybin mushrooms. (Apparently, many fungi produce the hallucinogenic compound ...including many species in Australia. It's not just confined to Mexico). And there are many other fungi with mind-altering properties that rely on other chemicals. In one case with Entermophthora fungo a virus seems to be involved which infects a fly..so the hypothesis is that the fungus uses the virus to manipulate the mind of insects. (Wacky but plausible). A lot of research is taking place into the use of Psilocybin in treatment of psychological situations. In fact, Sheldrake himself undergoes treatment (in the cause of science). It seems that psilocybin works by closing down the default mode network (DMN) in the brain...the kind of schoolmaster unit in the brain.....so shut this down and you let the networks in the brain off the leash. Free to make all sorts of odd connections.
Some interesting statistics about mycorrhizal fungi; they make up between a third and a half of all living matter in the soil and globally the length of mycorrhizal fungi in the top 10 cm of soils around half the width of our galaxy (4.5 x 10 to power of 17 km) but they die and re-grow rapidly...between 10 and 60 times per year so the total length of all this mycelium would exceed the diameter of the known universe (4.8 x 10 to power of 10 for the hyphae).
Sheldrake, has a few little asides with people operating in the Mycology world. Stamets who is a consultant on Star Wars and who hopes to develop a fungal cure to the bee hive virus that is decimating bee hives in many parts of the world. McCoy who is founder of a group called "radical Mycology"....basically individuals who are working on fungal issues independently like crowdsourced science projects.....and many other interesting individuals.
There is a lot in this book and if I came away with one resounding message it would be that we should pay a lot more attention to fungi....they appear to be much more integrated into other living creatures (including humans) but certainly connecting trees and plants together and although usually unnoticed ....they are everywhere and much more active than I was aware. Happy to give this book five stars. I found it absolutely fascinating. show less

In the spirit of books like “Underland” by Robert MacFarlane (which actually features Merlin Sheldrake in his mycological splendor), “Entangled Life,” much like the dwarves arriving at Bilbo’s house, brashly pulls you, the reader, out on a rough-and-tumble adventure that engages the senses like few literary works. You’ll quickly find yourself sweaty, running alongside truffle dogs in the in the Italian countryside, brambles scratching your arms, or as a child, immersed in a giant show more pile of leaves, the moist scent of decomposition saturating your nostrils as you burrow down to the interface where leaves meet the earth, writhing with worms.

In his introduction, using the language of his friend and mentor David Abram, Sheldrake diffracts his narrative through the prism of phenomenology. “Our perceptions work in large part by expectations. It takes less cognitive effort to make sense of the world using preconceived images updated with a small amount of new sensory information than to constantly form entirely new perceptions from scratch…Tricked out of our expectations, we fall back on our senses."

On first glance, you might think that this is a book about fungi. And in a way, it is—as much as you might say that an oil painting is about paint and canvas. And yet, just like the painter, Sheldrake uses his medium of mycelium to illustrate not just the qualities of a natural kingdom, but to paint the icon of a new paradigm. In the world of “Entangled Life,” Sheldrake’s portraits dissolve the veil that normally crisply define the thresholds of individual organisms. Given that your corporeal subsistence as a human is reliant on yeasts (a form of fungi), both to maintain your microbiome, and to pre-digests your food, where do you end, and where does the fungal kingdom begin? Given that trees are unable to access the water and nutrients they need to thrive without mycelial networks, is it useful to refer to an individual tree as an organism, or must we expand our definition to include its fungal partners? To use the terminology of J. G. Bennett, maybe even the concept of individuality begins only at the scale of the species.

Sheldrake has PhD in ecology, and relies upon a scientific epistemology to construct and buttress his rhetoric. And yet where much of science hones in at the order of mechanism, to the degree that we lose the forrest in the trees, Sheldrake employs science in a way that invites in our somatic selves and leaves us awed by the synergies dancing our eyes and branching beneath our feet.

Like the effects of the psilocybin mushrooms which Sheldrake describes, this book can serve as a portal through our drab mental models into the vibrant, bustling, sonorous, and pungent world that has been longing for our attention. show less