Few joys in my childhood memory rival the picking of blackberries under the scorching Greek sun. The rising dust, the dry and hot wind, the curious scurrying insects, and most of all, the sturdy thorns of the blackberry bush could not rival the soft consistency of the berries in my hand, and their sweet, if slightly sour flavor. Being able to feast on our loot with my sibling in the late afternoon, surrounded by the smell of pines, rosemary, and sea salt, made each scratch we got from blackberrying more than worth it, a proud war wound.
I did not take many of my childhood habits into my adulthood. However, to take my bike, some huge glass jars, maybe a small step ladder, and to wander alone the nearby parks and forests in search of blackberries is still my favorite way to spend a weekend day in July. Not only that: I am slowly expanding my foraging skills. Last October, I went through the tedious task of picking elderberries and made small marmalade jars and an excellent liquor that served me well as Christmas gifts for family and friends. And in early May, after an intense (however positive) meeting with my PhD supervisors, I decided to take advantage of a sunny day to wander fields and pick dandelions. These resilient flowers can be made into dandelion wine that Ray Bradbury, in a novel of the same name, praised as a distillation of the joys of the summer. And I can attest that nothing like the petals of the dandelion, freshly picked from its bitter stem, can come any closer to smelling like the sun.
While I greatly enjoy foraging, and while I am quite excited about the PhD I recently started, I did not quite expect the early stages of a PhD and my venture into foraging to have much in common.
I think most of us philosophy researchers have experienced what it is to build a state of the art for a project: slow scrolling of PhilPapers, Google Scholar, and WorldCat, hoping to find the spot where the right authors, papers, and concepts sprout verdantly; tediously arranging keywords like looking from every possible angle through a thicket; and jumping across cross-referenced publications, or the dive into the work of a single author or institute, like the careful handling of rich berry clusters, themselves entangled in branches, seeking the ripe berries from the immature ones. And of course, finding the one paper that is obviously the most relevant to you that is neither open access nor made available by your institution, the one berry that is just too high and ends up out of reach.
And finally, there is downloading all this apparently relevant literature, the filling up of a basket with ripened-looking fruit. Yet still, the picking itself is often not as straightforward as you might think. A juicy-looking berry might feel somewhat firm to the touch and, unreflexively driven by desire (and a sprinkle of greed), you collect it, only to find out that one side of the berry is still clearly unripe. Or you can anticipate the sweet flavor of a berry looking so ripe it might just burst, only to grab it and have it actually burst between your fingers; good luck with washing that off. Or touching a berry you stretched so hard to grasp, only to be welcomed by the skittering of insect legs or slimy guano; good luck with washing that off.
You finally found a paper that seems relevant to your research. What year was it published? If it is not a seminal or foundational piece in your field, will its publication date affect the credibility of your piece if you can’t find anything more recent? Or: you came up with a novel concept to address a gap in the literature and which would make your work identifiable within the field, but you just found a paper that uses the same words for a different concept. Should you distinguish your own concept from theirs? Will discussing theirs be more or less confusing? Or, yet again, you are using a philosophical framework to address a novel problem—say, the ethical issues of a new technology—and you just found another paper that addresses the same problem. But it does so with a completely different philosophical framework you may have never heard of before, like Jungian psychoanalysis. Should you cite it? If it is one of the very few papers dealing with your case study, how long should you discuss it? And how familiar should you be with that framework to not be dismissive?
And finally: the satisfying, quiet sound of berries falling freely into the basket. However, it does not matter how big my basket is or how many jars I bring with me to pick berries: the downloads folder on my laptop is practically bottomless and can contain hundreds of relevant papers, chapters, books. But while to me, there can be no such thing as too many blackberries, my downloads folder just gives me a sense of dread that only the most overused of Nietzsche’s quotes can express.
Now, let us get to cooking! In truth, some berries, like blackberries picked in June or early July, are best consumed as soon as they are picked, as they are; and even dandelions and red clovers, insofar as you know they are clean, can be eaten as soon as they are picked. And, as someone who enjoys odd reads outside of my work, I also believe that we can enjoy a good philosophy book or even a paper as a simple experience. Not only that, for a proper project, you need to taste and come to understand the papers you have picked, how the different subgenres and subspecies of your berries differ in what might be, to the untrained tongue, the slightest details. Beyond that, however, the circle of science, much like the circle of life, entails that any thing you consume to fulfill your hunger be transformed into something new, for new lives to sprout and new mouths to feed. Every new thought you developed from reading metamorphoses into a new idea for others to encounter, read, and maybe even cite (!). So, how long-term is your project? I have used blackberries, elderberries, or red currant to make quick sauces for fish or meat, and, as long as you know the basics of cooking, they are quite easy. Similarly, commentary papers or book reviews, all things considered, can be quick affairs to write, as long as you know what you want to say and how to structure it properly.
Marmalades and chutneys, however, require a bit more care and attention. If you are aiming for long-term conservation, you need to carefully and thoroughly sanitize jars and caps, ensure the marmalade is thoroughly cooked, and proceed to create a vacuum within the jar to avoid bacterial or fungal contamination (i.e., hours of work resulting in food poisoning). There is also much more to think about when it comes to the jar’s very content: the marmalade, jam, mustard, or chutney of your choice. The more special and personalized your ingredients, the less similar recipes you will find, and the more you will have to take risks and improvise. And, depending on what the fruit of your labor will accompany—bread, meat, cheese, and what kind of cheese?—the more careful you’ll have to be with choosing ingredients. To me, to write a specific paper, a novel contribution to your field, is not too different from creating a novel marmalade or chutney. Not only must one have an understanding of scientific hygiene, general structure, and a grasp of the basics for what makes a legitimate argument. But one also needs the taste and inventiveness to make a novel, interesting one, the care to know your philosophical flavor palette, what goes together and what doesn’t, and what makes your creative choice a better one than the ones that have been made before.
And a book, a dissertation? There is quite a bit of thought that goes into making liquor with the fruit of your foraging, a mixture of timeliness and patience. Some liqueurs may be quite straightforward, all things considered. A simple spirit will require you to leave your foraged goods soaking in alcohol, preferably as long as possible, and to mix it with the right amount of water and sugar: not too much, or your spirit will spoil too quickly; not too little, or your spirit will leave your body after a single glass. Of course, just as with your papers, you may want a greater grasp of folk chemistry to create an original, yet still balanced drink. But with making your own mead or wine? The more I have myself looked into making dandelion wine, the deeper the rabbit hole goes, and you can find recipes on obscure blogs and Reddit threads that fail to agree on ingredients, let alone procedures. And when it comes to the basic equipment: what wine yeast should you use to enhance but not invade your brew’s flavor? Do you have a way to allow for air, throughout long-term fermentation, to leave your mixture but to not come in? How many liters is your carboy? Do you know what a carboy is? (I sure didn’t.) The kind of patience, luck, curiosity and flexible, specialized equipment you need for making wine is like a set of skills necessary for writing a PhD dissertation. The more you’ll talk with your peers about it, the more you’ll realize there is not clear recipe for a successful PhD; much like recipes for dandelion wine, the information you’ll find on what you are supposed to do is fragmented and very much up for debate. You’ll need to make sure that you have adequate environment for your wine to ferment properly, and you’ll need to make sure that your time and social relations are balanced to not let the PhD explode on your face once you check your bottle. And once your dissertation is finally be done, while your friends and closest colleagues will recognize how much work you’ve put into it and how much it means to you, the ultimate judgment about your work lies with the finest wine tasters in your field.
I just started making dandelion wine, and I have started my position less than a year ago. I doubt my dissertation, unlike Bradbury’s dandelion wine, will capture the borderline untranslatable feeling that “tasting the sun” would be. As a matter of fact, of all the forms of perception philosophy (and especially philosophy of mind) has investigated, taste is by far the most underexplored. Maybe, compared to sight and hearing, the specialized vocabulary to describe the mildest differences in flavor is not as popularly diffused, except among cooks, chefs, and food critics. This is not much different than the specifics of most scientific practices, in a way. I only hope that my wine will be enjoyed and inspire more people to enjoy life and that my work will find new pathways to explore, to help address emerging political and ethical challenges, and maybe inspire new brews.
Giacomo Figà-Talamanca has an MA in philosophy of mind and is an independent researcher in the applied ethics of AI and emerging technologies. His research is currently focused on how AI-based and digital technologies can exacerbate their users’ vulnerabilities and potentially create new ones. He is also interested in mechanisms of social interaction and pragmatics on digital platforms such as social media sites.
