The Indian scientist Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose was both physicist and plant physiologist.  In his early life he invented a new type of coherer - an early form of radio signal detector - which enabled him to transmit radio waves over distance a full year before Marconi.  He spent much of the rest of his life exploring minute responses to external stimuli applied to plants.  He demonstrated that plant tissues under different kinds of stimulation produce electric responses similar to those produced by animal tissues. His extraordinary experimental results were achieved by using a range of ultra sensitive measuring instruments - also his own invention. He was the first Indian scientist to be elected to The Royal Society - in London, 1920.

His plant sensitivity findings can be explained in a number of ways. Some scientists prefer to use conventional materialist explanations in terms of the flow and transmission of chemical and bio-chemical substances. And, as V.A. Shepherd has pointed out, Bose "had argued all along the importance of electrical signalling in plants, and the world has now come around to this view."   Others, mainly in the East, see Bose's findings as providing support for ancient Hindu vedantic theories of consciousness - even in plants. Bose himself was comfortable with both approaches to the explanation and understanding of his findings.  

This project uses J C  Bose's life and work as a inspirational base from which to explore these different kinds of explanation, and their implications.

We do recommend that you read the new approved biography of J C Bose prepared by D P Sen Gupta, M H Engineer and V A Shepherd, particularly its section by Gupta which corrects a number of earlier misconceptions and errors about Bose's life.  It is perhaps the nearest thing to an 'approved' biography since Patrick Geddes seminal work in 1920.

Following a suggestion made early last year by the Director of the Bose Institute I have put additional resources and effort into expanding the sections on Consciousness, in particular the new, sometimes weird and wonderful, ideas by quantum physicists.  These certainly provide a challenge to followers of Popper who insists on theories being intrinsically testable, (or more correctly: falsifiable), and provide some fun as well.
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bose@areplantsconscious.com

If you have an interest in 
J C Bose, or in any of the topics involved in this project, 
then please send me an email. 
Many thanks for suggestions and ideas already received. 
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Book and interactive CD
completion date: some time in 2010
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Brian Champness is a retired academic psychologist and researcher. He was  born under the Raj in what was then called Calcutta, on Lower Circular Road, now called Acharya JC Bose Road.  After six student years at Exeter University, followed by three as a Research Fellow at University College London, he taught full time at Plymouth University (formerly Polytechnic), occasionally at the University of Sussex, and joyfully at New York University, USA, as a Visiting Professor from '80 to'85. For the next 20 years he consulted and researched for a variety of public and private organisations, travelling frequently and widely across Europe,  the Far East and his beloved India. He has now postponed organising Chamber Music concerts in order to concentrate on the life and times of one of India's great scientists, and to look at how his work has been developed and explained.