A Response to “Entangled Life” by Merlin Sheldrake
Entangled Life: How fungi make our worlds, change our minds and shape our futures is a book about mycology written by a biologist named Merlin Sheldrake. This book is basically about how mycelial networks inform every system we know! In the opening of his book, Sheldrake references fungi as the “connective tissue” of the Earth. Fungi are present in almost every ecosystem. They adapt to form symbiotic relationships with a diverse variety of different organisms. They have unique characteristics and incredible abilities, including the ability to create these complex networks.
In chapter two, Sheldrake explains the functions of the vegetative part of fungi, called the mycelium. The mycelium is what allows the fungi to be able to grow in even the most difficult areas, decomposing matter and absorbing nutrients from its surroundings through the hyphae. He explains how mycelium is formed and how it allows the fungi to create these complex systems, which can sometimes stretch for miles underground: he calls them the “fungal highways”. This is because of their efficient communication abilities these highways allow— the mycelial networks are able to send signals to other networks through this highway, and also exchange nutrients. Mycelium also aids our climate by breaking down nutrients to keep soil stabilized, allowing the growth of other organisms. It can also store carbon, helping to remove it from our atmosphere.
It’s obvious that the fungal networks have already been compared to highways. But these networks sort of mimic all systems on Earth. Fungi have been around for at least a billion years. They are one of the oldest systems in our ecosystem. It seems that every system that came after it may have been modeled in the same way, and therefore have informed not just the physical systems on Earth, but also the abstract systems.
For example, the neurons in our body often have axons that can connect to many other neural pathways in our brain, allowing for quick and efficient signaling within any given moment. Thousands of neurons can be firing at once, communicating with one another to make our brain operate. Rivers are another organic example of this mimicry. One river source can stretch its path to carry fresh water across a country, and they often have many branches into obscure corners of forests or become reservoirs or estuaries.
The point is, every system has anatomy. And, to understand something’s function, we can take a look at its structure. These systems all look similar— rivers, highways, white matter bundles, and mycorrhizal networks. While they are all different, they all manipulate this structure to optimize their goals. For efficiency, humans build highways, neural pathways are deeply interconnected, rivers make a straight shot and branch off frequently rather than spreading over every area without a water source, and myelin networks form to aid their growth.
How does this system model become abstract? I think of how we spread ideas and make connections with the same efficiency as the mycelial networks, connecting and facilitating communication between different organisms in the soil. Human networking through social media allows for a similar “efficiency”. I think of the rapid rate at which ideas or opinions can be spread across the country, or how quickly we can receive news about something that just happened on the other side of the world. This rapid spread of information, where anyone can choose to be a part of the conversation, is the closest that the human network has gotten to mimicking the speed of the mycelial spread of nutrients and signals.
