Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature
by Janine M. Benyus

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Book Reviews of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature

Book Review: Nature Chrome in Tool and Law
Summary: 4 Stars

Which begs a brutal question. How will we get back to nature? Benyus evokes an ecological "canon" she says can be used as a template for our technology. A natural system should run on sunlight (but do cats?), it should use only the energy it needs (but even our cells store energy), it should fit form to function (do penguins?), it should recycle everything (but no single organism does), it should bank on diversity (but after fire, nuclear explosion and other crises certain organisms grow wildly, priming the area for followers), it should curb excess from within (ok, but excess creates the luxury which leads to new innovation), and it should be beautiful (why not?). This is a noble list. What needs to be clarified, however, is the larger evolutionary perspective. The ecological "canon" of emulatable processes displayed by nonhuman nature cannot be conflated with nature per se. We are about to embark on an oft-travelled ecological adjustment made by many organisms which, finding a formerly unused resource, grow wildly and then are forced to deal with the literal spoils of their victory. The energy from the sun which runs through all life is ultimately a Pandoran excess that cannot be closed up and kept tidy. The global environment, like Rome in its senescence, will always be open to organisms evolving new ways to plunder it. Like other pioneer species except on a larger, global scale, we must now temper our populousness and foment the diversity of biological maturity (leading to sensescence) not because of any intrinsic evil but because of the dangers, mostly to ourselves, caused by our own fabulously innovative growth. Billions of years ago, when cyanobacteria tapped into water as a source of hydrogen, the free oxygen they produced as waste was no evolutionary breath of fresh air. Rather, the reactive gas burnt the tissues of all organisms that had not evolved to tolerate or use it, especially the creators who found themselves in the gas's midst. Our puritanical hyperbole needs a Swift to kick it. "Power," as Nietzsche, who disparaged the use of mechanical over natural metaphors, observed over a century ago, "makes stupid." Our ability to tap into Earth's resources to power our own growth has brought us to something even more annoying than the brink of population or standard-of-living collapse: our own stupidity. Books like Benyus's-which should be required reading at corporations, I would imagine-reminds us that in the long run moderation pays.

Summary of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature

This profound and accessible book details how science is studying nature?s best ideas to solve our toughest 21st-century problems.

If chaos theory transformed our view of the universe, biomimicry is transforming our life on Earth. Biomimicry is innovation inspired by nature ? taking advantage of evolution?s 3.8 billion years of R&D since the first bacteria. Biomimics study nature?s best ideas: photosynthesis, brain power, and shells ? and adapt them for human use. They are revolutionising how we invent, compute, heal ourselves, harness energy, repair the environment, and feed the world.

Science writer and lecturer Janine Benyus names and explains this phenomenon. She takes us into the lab and out in the field with cutting-edge researchers as they stir vats of proteins to unleash their computing power; analyse how electrons zipping around a leaf cell convert sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they?re sick; study the hardy prairie as a model for low-maintenance agriculture; and more.

Business & Investing Books

• Subjects > Business & Investing
• Science & Math > Biological Sciences > Biology
• Ecology
• Technology