In speaking of “perception”, I refer to direct knowledge of the environment, not mediated by any signals that present-day science knows how to measure. This is a radical hypothesis which has the advantage of being eminently testable. There is already evidence suggesting that plants and even microbes know what is around them without sense organs or nervous systems.

I had heard about cases of “blindsight”. Children are reported to be able to read with their fingers. Blind cyclists who navigate traffic. Then, last winter, I read about Dalia Burgoin, who can see colors and shapes, identify objects, read text — all with her eyes completely covered. In April, I had the opportunity to take a course which Dalia led, and I experienced all these abilities as she demonstrated them.

Dalia claims that we all have this ability to a greater or lesser extent, and it has atrophied from disuse and denial. I was not able to learn blindsight in the week-long course, but some of my classmates did.

Educated, Western humans learn that this is impossible, but telepathy and clairvoyance are experienced and understood as natural human senses in many indigenous cultures. A. P. Elkins published a book [1949] about his experience with medicine men (“karadji”) in the aboriginal populations of Australia. He claimed they are able to transmit thoughts over hundreds of miles, diagnose illnesses, and “see” events at distant places and times. In 1969, Loren McIntyre, a Nat Geo journalist, became lost in the Amazon jungle of Peru and lived two months with the Mayoruna tribe. He had no knowledge of their language, nor did they have any knowledge of his. Years later, he wrote a book about communicating with his hosts telepathically, a mode which they regarded as routine. In this century, Robin Rodd writes about shamans of the Piaroa peoples in Venezuela, and the powers of knowing and healing that they derive from ayahuasca ceremonies.

Animals are reported to have easier natural access to psychic abilities than humans. They know when a storm or an earthquake is coming. Rupert Sheldrake wrote a whole book about pets who know when their owners are coming home. He went to great lengths to demonstrate that this ability does not depend on sound or on schedule.

In a Scientific Reports article by Silvia Guerra [2019], pea plants were shown to respond to a nearby post, toward which they aimed their tendrils until they found the support. A picture of a support was substituted, but the plants were not fooled. In a New Yorker video, Michael Pollan narrates the pea plant’s quest in a time-lapse photography. Two plants, equidistant from a post between them, vie for the support. They look like fly fishermen casting for trout.  But when the plant on the left reaches the pole and latches on, the plant on the right gives up and looks elsewhere. How does it know?

The single-celled ciliate Lacrymaria olor hunts for microbial prey by creating a “neck” which extends out in search of food. Is the neck flailing at random? Is it exquisitely sensitive to chemical gradients which tell it where to look? Or does Lacrymaria have a sixth sense which helps to guide its search in the direction where dinner is more likely to be found?

Since the pioneering work of Suzanne Simard in the 1990s, evidence has accumulated that plants have cooperative relationships, sharing nutrients and warning one another of pests via chemical signaling. Monica Gagliano has pioneered experiments in which she demonstrates that plants “know” what other plants are growing in their environs, even in the absence of chemical cues. In this study, chilli seeds germinate more quickly in the neighborhood of a basil plant, even when all chemical signals and even light and sound communication is blocked. A year earlier, she had demonstrated that chilli seeds are less likely to germinate in the presence of fennel plants, which are territorial and emit chemicals to poison their neighbors. The inhibitory effect was still strong when all chemical signaling between the two was blocked.

C. elegans roundworms have chemical sensors, which we might analogize to smell or taste, but they lack eyes and ears. In the proposed experiment, worms are placed at the center of an agar plate with a food source at one point on the periphery. Crucially, it must be arranged that there is no chemical signal at the location where the worms are. That is to say, there must be no chemical gradient suggestive of the food source. If the worms nevertheless move toward the food source, this is an indication that they have access to knowledge about their environment independent of their senses.

Variant #1 Worms are placed on an agar plate with a Y maze. At the top of the Y, the paths join, and there sits a food source. But the left path is blocked with a barrier that chemicals can cross but the worms cannot. This way, the chemical gradient is equal on both arms of the maze, and this can be confirmed with chemical sensors. Will the worms nevertheless choose the right arm preferentially, “knowing” that they can get to the food via the right arm but not the left?

Variant #2 The task of the worms might be made easier if they have telepathic ability. On the left is a colony of worms happily consuming abundant food. On the right is a colony of starved worms, with no food at all. Do the subject worms in the middle choose to move in the direction of the well-fed worms?

Variant #3 Confound the worms with a false chemical gradient suggesting that the food source is on the left, while the real food source is on the right.

Variant #4 Place a separate Petri dish with food on the right of the dish containing the target worms, another dish on the left with no food. There is no possibility of the worms reaching the separate dishes, and no possibility of chemical signals traveling between the dishes. Do the worms tend toward the dish with food?

Variant #5 Similar to #4 except add “telepathic” worms to the dishes on the right and left. The worms in the dish on the right are well-fed and on the left they are hungry. Do the worms in the middle receive information from the telepathic worms and modify their course as a result?

It’s my reasonable outrageous hypothesis that “life knows what it needs to know”, that this is a primitive ability as old as life itself, and that the chemical senses, sensitivity to touch, light and sound, arose only much later to enhance the indigenous knowing. This is a stronger version of “biopsychism”, in which all living things have consciousness, and it is related to philosophical traditions in which consciousness is the foundation of reality.