CPEP Seminar – Back to Aristotle: Bringing Hydraulics Into Plants

Life requires movement – an observation that has been attributed to Aristotle (4th century BC). Curiously, optimality principles pertaining to movement such as Fermat’s principle of least travel time, the principle of least action, or flows take the path of least resistance have all been originally proposed for physical systems devout of life. Despite the connection between movement and life, the use of optimality theories in plant hydraulics has and continues to be under-utilized.