Abstract
The philosophy of biomimicry, I argue, consists of four main areas of inquiry. The first, which has already been explored by Freya Mathews (2011), concerns the “deep” question of what Nature ultimately is. The second, third, and fourth areas correspond to the three basic principles of biomimicry as laid out by Janine Benyus (1997). “Nature as model” is the poetic principle of biomimicry, for it tells us how it is that things are to be “brought forth” (poiēsis). “Nature as measure” is the ethical principle of biomimicry, for it tells us that Nature places ethical limits or standards on what it is possible for us to accomplish. And “Nature as mentor” is the epistemological principle of biomimicry, for it affirms that Nature is the ultimate source of truth, wisdom, and freedom from error. Within this overall framework, I argue that seeing Nature as physis—understood as “self-production” or “self-placing-into-the-open”—constitutes the requisite ground for the poetic, ethical, and epistemological principles of biomimicry, and that biomimicry thus conceived involves a new philosophical paradigm, which I call “enlightened naturalism”.
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Notes
See Lepora et al. (2013) for an attempt to quantify this “surge of interest” within scientific publications.
Interestingly, it is certainly not out of the question to imitate or draw inspiration from these organisms so as to generate energy and capture valuable materials from hydrothermal vents.
Mathews also attributes the faculty of “willing” to autopoietic entities other than biological individuals, such as rivers, hence her argument that we need to ask such questions as “what does the river want us to desire?” and then to adapt ourselves accordingly (Mathews 2011, 16).
This is not to say that mutatis mutandis, Mathew’s principle of least resistance could not potentially be integrated into the theoretical framework of the present article, most obviously with respect to the final section of the article (Nature as mentor), where I discuss the question of cooperation.
The same is also true of quantum mechanics.
See Fukuyama (1993) for an analysis of the role progress in physics has played in the spread of liberal democracy.
In La Nouvelle Alliance (1986), for example, Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers explicitly argue that thanks in large part to non-equilibrium thermodynamics the physical sciences are in the process of rediscovering physis.
An important example of this is D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s On Growth and Form (1961)—widely regarded as an important precursor to biomimicry—which analyses in considerable detail how such universal physical laws as gravity affect the form of both living beings and artefacts.
In keeping with Maturana and Varela’s view that autopoiesis is the defining characteristic of “life”, it is generally argued that anything else that is autopoietic is also “alive”. If, however, one equates autopoiesis not with life, but rather with Nature in the sense of physis, it is possible to see certain ecological and physical phenomena as autopoietic without considering them “alive”.
This is in keeping both with Foucault’s remark that “knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting” (Foucault 1984, 88), but also with the etymology of the word “science”, a word which originally meant “cutting”.
It is interesting to note that both Benyus and Forbes, the authors of the two most important books to date on biomimicry and bio-inspiration, both have backgrounds in literature or poetry. Benyus has a degree in English literature and Forbes has worked as editor of the Poetry Review and also edited Scanning the Century: The Penguin Book of the Twentieth Century in Poetry. In keeping with this, both authors regularly evoke the “poetry” of Nature.
This claim is significantly complicated by Aristotle’s argument that all change—including the “self-changing” of living beings—can ultimately be traced back to an “unmoved mover” or “unchanging changer” (see Aristotle 2000), and that this primary entity constitutes a “model” imitated by the celestial cycles, which are themselves a “model” imitated by the cycle of the seasons, themselves a model for the circular generation of living beings (see Aubenque 1962, 497–502). One plausible explanation for these complications is Heidegger’s claim that Aristotle’s thought is situated at a historical crossroads between the original Pre-Socratic understanding of Being or Nature as physis qua “self-generation” or “self-placing-into-appearance” and the metaphysical tradition, which originates primarily with Plato (Heidegger 1998).
According to Richard Capobianco, Heidegger himself thought that we should take physis as measure. Indeed, Capobianco even goes so far as to claim that “[t]he core matter for Heidegger—and for those inclined to his thinking—is that physis is the measure, not Dasein.” (Capobianco 2014, 63)
There are certain exceptions to this rule, such as junk or harmful DNA, but these are necessarily exceptions, for once they rise beyond a certain critical threshold they will destroy the autopoietic entity in which they reside. A similar point goes for the linear, extractive technologies of contemporary humans. It is the scale at which they operate which explains their destructiveness.
There is no suggestion in their text that Braungart and McDonough chose the example of the cherry tree because of the role it has played in the history of philosophy. Indeed, the choice would appear to be entirely serendipitous.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the LabEx IMU (Intelligence des Mondes Urbains) of the University of Lyon for funding the post-doctoral fellowship on “biomimetic cities” within which this research was carried out.
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Dicks, H. The Philosophy of Biomimicry. Philos. Technol. 29, 223–243 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-015-0210-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-015-0210-2