Plant Psychology: The World of Meaning introduces the first mathematically explicit framework for understanding how plants construct signals, form meaning, and select behavior. At its core is the Four Layer Model — Signal → Perception → Interpretation → Behavior — a computational architecture describing how plants translate photons, chemicals, mechanical forces, temperature drift, microbial cues, and circadian rhythms into structured meaning and adaptive action. The text formalizes each layer through the Unified Behavioral Equation, showing how signals become meaning and how meaning becomes behavior. It maps how receptors assign affinity, how internal state compounds meaning, how species‑specific profiles shape interpretation, and how behavior feeds back into internal state to reshape future meaning. Across conceptual foundations, formal mathematics, and worked case studies, the book demonstrates that plant behavior emerges from interpretation rather than stimulus. Readers learn to understand meaning as a probability distribution, to reconstruct interpretation from observed behavior, and to work with the full computational loop that governs plant action. Lightly introduced are the two deeper laws underlying the four layers: Layer 1 — Meaning Physics How signals become meaning. Layer 2 — Behavioral Physics How meaning becomes action. Together they form a closed dynamical system: This loop is not metaphorical — it is the computational structure of life. From this structure emerge two generative laws: The Law of Meaning Construction The mathematical process that produces the interpretive distribution . The Law of Behavioral Dynamics The dynamical law that produces the behavior distribution and updates internal state. Together, these laws form the foundation of what can be called The Physics of Meaning — a self‑consistent system in which: This work establishes Plant Psychology as a coherent, testable, and operational behavioral science — one that views plants not as passive organisms reacting to conditions, but as interpretive beings living in a world of meaning.
Connor Zaichkowski (Tue,) studied this question.