Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, an evolution and ecology professor, quoted in "This tree survived the last ice age. It’s now threatened by development. The Jurupa Oak is older than almost any other plant on Earth. Soon it may face off with a business and housing development" (WaPo).
[The Jurupa Oak is] a collection of shrubs nestled atop a hill in a rocky gully. But those shrubs are just the crown of a giant, spreading oak tree, 90 feet long and 30 feet wide. Most of the tree is underground. Estimated to be 13,000 to 18,000 years old, the tree... is older than almost any other plant on Earth. It has survived an ice age and rapid climate warming. Its leaves may have brushed against saber-toothed cats and 500-pound ground sloths....
The Planning Commission of Jurupa Valley, a city of 100,000 an hour east of Los Angeles, is poised to approve a 1.4-square-mile development that includes a business park, 1,700 homes and an elementary school. Light-industry buildings would stand just a few hundred feet from the ancient tree....
It’s a Palmer’s oak, which is a species of “clonal tree,” a network of genetically identical shrubs connected through a shared root system. Unlike in normal trees, none of the original tissue is still present; instead, after a wildfire, the tree will spring out new, genetically identical shoots from burned stumps....
While the area around Jurupa Valley was peppered with Palmer’s oaks around the last ice age, all of them are now gone — except for this one. Somehow, the tree is surviving in conditions that should be too hot and too dry....
ADDED: Is Professor Ross-Ibarra thinking of the philosophical question about the Ship of Theseus?
The Ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's Paradox, is a thought experiment and paradox about whether an object is the same object after having had all of its original components replaced over time, typically one after the other.
In Greek mythology, Theseus, mythical king of the city Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians would commemorate this by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honour Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several hundreds of years of maintenance, if each individual piece of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one after the other, was it still the same ship?
In contemporary philosophy, this thought experiment has applications to the philosophical study of identity over time, and has inspired a variety of proposed solutions and concepts in contemporary philosophy of mind concerned with the persistence of personal identity....
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68 comments:
Maybe quit worrying about the tree. Sounds like it’ll survive this as well. Thing will be here long after the author (and everyone reading this garbage) has shuffled off this mortal coil.
I'm sure the pure leftist greenies of CA - the political kings and gods of the green democxratic party - will do the right thing.
Of course, if the current tree is the same as its immediate predecessor, then it necessarily is the same as that tree's predecessor, and so on to the initial sapling. 10,000 times, 100,000 times, makes no difference.
But that's the wrong question. There may be a romantic value to the idea that the roots of this tree have been there for many thousands of years, but what real value is that? In what way is its loss greater than the loss of some other tree that wasn't so long lived?
When the oldest person in the world dies, we don't regret their death, we rejoice in their long life, identify the next longest living person, and then forget the whole thing and go on with our lives.
No man ever steps in the same river twice. ~Heraclitus
If the developers kill that tree they are stupid.
They should build it into the development and make it part of the attraction.
I would be interested in seeing this space at some point just because of that tree.
It should not take government action to save this Tree.
So take some cuttings.
This whole ethical dilemma is moot. The writer just raised RAPID CLIMATE WARMING as the tree’s enemy. And no one, no where can ever defeat that monster propaganda fear. Unless reality arrives.
are there plans to clear the root system?
if not offer to bury FJB there to add DNA for ever more!
That’s the line about George Washington’s original ax. It’s had three new handles and six new blades, but it’s still the original ax.
No man ever steps in the same river twice. ~Heraclitus
=================
usually explained as river changing!
but man is not same either!?
can you say squirrel in philosophy under First Amendment
The Planning Commission of Jurupa Valley, a city of 100,000 an hour east of Los Angeles, is poised to approve a 1.4-square-mile development that includes a business park, 1,700 homes and an elementary school. Light-industry buildings would stand just a few hundred feet from the ancient tree.
They should just build it on an ancient burial ground like in Poltergeist.
They should just build it on an ancient burial ground
I think the whole story of the tree is as authentic as the "ancient burial ground" in Canada that was developed upon.
If you cut a hole in the stump and dump in some Roundup it won't come up again.
Oddly enough, I'm having a similar dilemma regarding musical groups. Is a band still the same band after all of the original (or classic lineup) members are gone (either left or dead)? Does a whole-new lineup make it a tribute band?
Reason being, Kansas is playing my area in a couple months and I was going to go see them, but nowadays there is only a single member left of the classic 1970s lineup. Maybe two if the drummer comes back from a medical issue.
In England at Boscobel House is "The Royal Oak", the tree that sheltered Charles II from the roundheads after the battle of Worcester. However, the tree that is on display at Boscobel is only a scion of the original, not the actual tree, which was destroyed by some calamity I cant recall. A lot of peolle also believe that the current tree is actually a scion of a scion, 2 generations removed from the original.
It doesn't seem to bother Brits that much, who treat the offspring of the royal oak much the same way they would the original. It even has a cute little gate around it, lest the knights who say Nee attempt to chop it down with a herring. Food for thought.
Affluenza perhaps? Who, besides affluent, tenured White people worry about things like this? If a tomato is grown from seeds from its previous generation is it still the same organism? Really? About the time they get a satisfactory answer to this burning question they'll be nearly, if not totally, extinct. So WTF?
"Every tree is a potential stump." - a timber faller I used to work in the woods with.
Is this unrelated to the destruction of ancient trees near Joshua, that are being bulldozed to make way for the glorious new solar farm? So....capitalism 'bad', green new deal 'good'?
Well, I was reading how Californians were to cut down 4000+ Joshua trees for a solar panel install.
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-05-31/solar-project-to-destroy-thousands-of-joshua-trees
They'll do the right thing?
The Ship of Theseus argument is cleverly used by an AI character (about himself) in the horribly banal Marvel show "Wandavision".
Light-industry buildings would stand just a few hundred feet from the ancient tree....
So, in other words, the planned development is not posing any risks to the tree/root system?
Wait, we had an ice age?
When it was really cold?
And it ended ten thousand years ago?
What caused it to warm up when there were only a few tens of thousands of humans on earth at the time?
I guess we'll never know (adjusts sunglasses to combat glare)...
'If you cut a hole in the stump and dump in some Roundup it won't come up again.'
Ha!
Brutal : )
Some philosophical questions are dumber than others.
Surely some billionaire could underwrite this instead of undermining the Republic.
”But if you do it 10,000 times in a row, is it still the same tree?"
Yes. It only stops being the same tree if sexual reproduction takes place. This is clearly asexual reproduction. No matter how many times it happens.
We didn’t call it the “Ship of Theseus.” As a computer design philosophy we called it the “lumberjack’s axe,”. He’s replaced the handle five times and the head twice but it’s still the same axe!. Isolate, encapsulate, modularize — expect the underlying hardware to be replaced, probably more than once. Expect operating system upgrades or replacements. Expect DBMS to be upgraded or changed. Make all your developed code able to be unplugged and replaced. As a bonus, this lends itself to modern agile software development methodologies.
"Somehow, the tree is surviving in conditions that should be too hot and too dry."
"Experts say..."?
Meanwhile, about an hour north...
Solar project to destroy thousands of Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert
A renewable energy company will soon begin clearing thousands of protected Joshua trees just outside this desert town [Boron], including many thought to be a century old, to make way for a sprawling solar project
Joshua trees are protected by law in California. Apparently, *these* trees are to be sacrificed to the gods of Climate Change.
Some philosophical questions are dumber than others.
Heh
I will not be sure what to think about this until I hear a poem from Henry Gibson.
The thing about that solar farm that really, really galls me is that there is no mitigation, not even a public attempt. There is no 'let's figure out how to arrange our solar farm so that we don't have to bulldoze those trees. Let's set that as a boundary condition that must be satisfied'.
Nope. Push'em over. The funny thing is, it's not like they're working through an area of, say, samaan trees, which have an astonishingly huge shade canopy. Joshua trees are like sticks, by comparison. Is it really that hard? You couldn't map the 3-D space, create a digital plot, and have a supercomputer figure out the optimal layout, accounting for the trees? Maybe use 3000 acres instead of 2300? Maybe even iterate to some optimum that saves most of the trees and limits the sacrifice?
You know what those imbeciles at Aratina project are crowing about? 'It'll be quiet.
This is the same kind of flawed argument that environmentalists use to justify first class airfare or worse, travel on private jets.
The same questions arise with human identity since so many of our body's cells are regularly changing. I perceive myself to be the same person I was thirty years ago, or sixty years ago, but I am not really. And who really is this 'I'? Just a bundle of shifting perceptions.
The Green blight over land and sea. Excess population growth through immigration reform.
That's like asking about our Posterity, who are not delivered by Stork.
We should also note the Canucks have one too. They whoop up big time about the British North American Act of 1867. The Monarchy allowed them some home rule. But really they want to keep up with the Yankee Jones to the south. The CBC has quite a monopoly on all Canadian thought, and they say so excitedly treating Canada Day on July 1st as if it’s our 4th.
We spent several 4ths in Stratford, On. We especially remember the BIG DEAL in Canada several years back was Farage’s win that they called Brexit. Boy were the CBC guys gobsmacked. Of course Trump got blamed for it as it was his Orange Scapegoat’s role.But really Farage did it all..
"You couldn't map the 3-D space, create a digital plot, and have a supercomputer figure out the optimal layout, accounting for the trees?"
Even if you do that, there's the desert tortoises (protected, of course) to be aware of, too.
This is a common occurrence in classical music. The Berlin Philharmonic has been around for ca. 140 years. Obviously no one in it at its founding is in it today. String quartets are the same -- the Budapest Quartet, for example, began as three Hungarians and a Dutchman, and ended as four Russians. The Takacs Quartet has only one Hungarian left in it; the other three are an Englishman, a South Korean, and a Japanese woman.
Southeastern Cali is a nauseating sea of solar panels and wind farms. The Left who push for these are just as imperial as the historical colonizers they hate with all their being. Native flora and people are problems to bulldoze so that their religion can flourish.
Mea Sententia:
The same questions arise with human identity since so many of our body's cells are regularly changing. I perceive myself to be the same person I was thirty years ago, or sixty years ago, but I am not really.
This is where devotion to pedantry leads. It's similar to the answers to "What is a woman?" that dwell on the .001% exceptions to biological indicators.
Yes, you are.
According to Saul Kripke's Causal Theory of Names the answer to the ship's identity is yes, it was still the same ship, until that theory was defeated and replaced with a more robust theory.
Forgive me if I don't take a cheap shot at Kamala. She's our Vice President, worthy of respects and admiration... the truth is, I don't have anything.
Achilles suggestion @10:27 AM is the best one so far.
My view is there are no deep insights to be had here. There is no need to declare 'this is the same tree/ship/axe or 'this is a different tree/ship/axe'. The facts are what they are and everybody can see them. End of ruminations.
After a lifetime of thinking about it I've concluded that philosophy in general is overrated.
It should not take government action to save this Tree.
I agree. Problem is the people (responsibilizasing is not a word) taken on the responsibility of saving the tree, are probably terrible salespeople.
You can say their evangelism has not taken much root.
Original Mike:
After a lifetime of thinking about it I've concluded that philosophy in general is overrated.
Philosophy is the attempt to impose thought on reality.
"Jurupa Valley, a city of 100,000" that somehow I have never heard of.
Trees are poems the earth writes upon the sky, We fell them down and turn them into paper, That we may record our emptiness.
Khalil Gibran
rastajenk said...
" "Jurupa Valley, a city of 100,000" that somehow I have never heard of."
It's in western Riverside County, between Eastvale/Norco and Riverside proper.
The again, with Joe Biden's cognitive decline, can he, should he, still be called Joe Biden?
Aha!
Joe is not the same Joe of yesteryears, and to make matters even more philosophically delicate, unlike the ship of Greek Mythos, nothing is being added to Joe, more like a little bit of Joe dies monthly? weekly? daily?
“No man shits in the same street twice.” - Gavin Newsom
JSM
"Mason G said...
......
Even if you do that, there's the desert tortoises (protected, of course) to be aware of, too."
Read this, it gets worse, but unintentionally humorous.
The discovery of a squashed garter snake in the same marshy area west of the airport in spring 2000 caused BART to stop construction on the airport extension for 18 days and ended up costing the transit district $1.07 million in construction delays.
Is USSC today the same as USSC yesters ago?
And as I, with some puzzlement, learned recently that objects, like stones, can be besmirched just like people, theories of proper names cover people, places and things just the same.
So, bringing up Joe is not totally out of some animosity or partisan gamesmanship... though I would rather things play out the way they are playing out. just saying.
"I would be interested in seeing this space at some point just because of that tree."
It's pretty unremarkable. My brother and his wife live about a half mile away, I've walked with my dog there. At the time, I didn't know about the tree and there was nothing to indicate there was anything out of the ordinary there.
"It has survived ... rapid climate warming...." Due, no doubt, to the hot air emanating from the pie holes of California climate cultists.
What Achilles said.
Plants have indeterminate growth meaning that they can go on adding shoots to stems and shoots to those shoots and so on indefinitely. So if the tree is putting out new shoots which are becoming the largest stem and then from that stem, new shoots which are becomng the largest stem and so on then I would say it is the same plant. But if a new stem grows from a seed then I would see it as a new plant.
Regarding Theseus' ship: Alternative 1: Every single plank, nail, line, peg, etc. has been replaced in kind; no original material is left. But the design and function of the ship has been exactly maintained.
Alternative 2: NOT a single plank, nail, line, peg, etc. has been replaced; ALL original material is still in place. But an outboard motor has been added on the stern.
Which one is the "original" ship?
I say, Alternative 1. But what do I know? Ask Theseus. What do you think he's say?
He won't answer you, because he's raised the sail of Alternative 1, told the oarsmen to put their backs into it, and sailed away. (But if you taught him how to use an outboard motor, he might go off in Alternative 2. But he still wouldn't answer you. Theseus was neither a philosopher nor a blogger/commenter.)
this raises some Serious Questions:
* If you chop down this tree, with the lumberjacks ax.. and then chop it down Again 100 years later with the same ax ( different blade, different handle).. Will the wood smoke smell as sweet?
Also,
Why does noone ask
to see tree original as lumberjack's ax?
finally is it morally WRONG to attempt to rhyme ask and ax?
There was a serious movement a while back for New Jersey to name "Born to Run" as the state song. The proponents really thought that: "It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap, we gotta get out while we're young...." was a great way to represent New Jersey.
It's not really a philosophical question. It is simple biology. It is the same tree.
The aspen groves rely on fire to kill the competition.
U.S. FOREST SERVICE
Role of Fire
Fire is a natural feature in much of the aspen ecosystem of western North America. It is responsible for the abundance of aspen in the West...
https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/beauty/aspen/ecology.shtml
I'd suggest taking cuttings, rooting them, and planting them all over the place. In 10,000 years, some enterprising geneticist studying variation in oak trees will be really confused at all the clones growing from Washington State to Florida.
Deep State Reformer said...
"If a tomato is grown from seeds from its previous generation is it still the same organism? Really?"
So I really am my own Grandpa, then.
Better to return California to the sheet of ice it was 10,000 years ago.
The Cultural Tutor had a thread about this just the other day- that I found interesting enough to post on Facebook so I could find the thread with no problem.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1807828546754101396.html
I really find the story he quotes from Douglas Adams visiting a temple in Kyoto that's the same temple it's always been, the original temple. That has been burned down/destroyed many times and rebuilt. But- it's still considered the same original temple by the Japanese because it's still a temple fulfilling it's function as temple. Rebuilding it doesn't change that...
MadTownGuy said...
rastajenk said...
" "Jurupa Valley, a city of 100,000" that somehow I have never heard of."
It's in western Riverside County, between Eastvale/Norco and Riverside proper.
In boot camp my best buddy bragged about being from the 4th largest city in SD with a population of- 25,000 at the time. (Google says more- but that's what he told me then...) You could throw a city of 25,000 into NY or NJ where I grew up- and lose it. The town I went to JHS in was 25,000 at the time, and then and now, is a village with a village form of government. It's population today according to internet search is only 26,000. It was pretty much built out when I grew up with no vacant building lots, so there's that. A city of 100,000 today? You could throw it into NY or NJ and lose it...
But a easy to find quote from the internet: This table lists the 336 incorporated places in the United States, excluding the U.S. territories, with a population of at least 100,000 as of July 1, 2023, … I'm sure there's someone familiar with all 336. I'm not.
"This table lists the 336 incorporated places in the United States, excluding the U.S. territories, with a population of at least 100,000 as of July 1, 2023"
When the oak was discovered, there was no such city as Jurupa Valley. The city is rather new and was incorporated about 10 years ago.
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