And who is smart enough to know?

15 May 2025

My favorite dictionary defines sentient this way: having feeling.

And sapient this way: showing wisdom or the ability to reason.

Sentient is often used to include the idea of sapient, which can cause confusion, as in this month’s free story.

AI Assist compares the two words: “Sentience refers to the capacity to feel and experience sensations and emotions, while sapience is the ability to think, reason, and understand complex ideas. Essentially, sentience is about feeling, and sapience is about thinking and wisdom.”

Ever since The Secret Life of Plants in the 1970’s (still available in paperback on Amazon at $12.99) there has been popular talk about the sentience of plants. If you talk to your plants or play them music and they grow better, you may be convinced that they are sentient.

Many people maintain that their pets are both sentient and sapient. As one of my grandfathers once said, “Animals know a lot more than people give them credit for.”

The plants and animals, meanwhile, are not telling all they know, which shows some sapience, I think.