A small hairy body emerges covered in pollen from within the folds of petals. Intoxicated on nectar, they are carried on the warm sweetnesses that cloud the air and are welcomed to another bloom. Invitation after invitation, flower after flower, their subtle stripes become barely visible, now coated in bright yellow grains. Laden and full, it is time to return home to the hive. They know the way; their internal compass maps the landscape as they navigate using the energetic lines of the Earth and are guided by the waymarkers of others. 

The bee’s sensory world is worlds away from mine. They see colours I do not. They experience a smellscape of perfumes I will never know. They feel the gentle utterances of atmospheric changes, the subtle tickles of winds conjured continents away. They experience the electrostatic come-hithers of plants. They journey relative distances far from possible for me under my own steam. Their perception, their comprehension, their entire experience differs from mine. I marvel at this creature so integral to my life through the gift of pollination while acknowledging that I could never know the world as they do. There is a beautiful unknowing in this.

Knowing is an obsession of Western science. Unknowns are voids to be filled. As philosopher, writer and Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence Stephen Cave outlines in his essay Intelligence: A History, “[Ancient Greek philosopher] Plato emerged from a world steeped in myth and mysticism to claim something new: that the truth about reality could be established through reason, or what we might consider today to be the application of intelligence.” This is an interesting postulation: that there could be a “truth about reality”, that there could be one way of knowing the world, be that by humans or more-than-humans.

….

I can only publish a section of this essay until it is published. Email me if you are interested in commissioning me for editorial writing and you’d like to read the rest of it – hello@rachelmariataylor.com.