Deep Biomimicry
Art, Love, and Nature: A stab at a personal philosophy
Its easy to write about things you see wrong or to criticize modernity. Most of my writing generally is motivated by flaws I see, real or imagined, but very little is actually written about what should be or some way to improve the things I find fault with. From a writing point of view, it’s a real steep slope from idealism to manifesto, which is why I avoid writing about what path I think should be pursued. But I do believe I have, if not a map to prosperity, a compass in the general direction we as a civilization need to go. It starts with something called biomimicry.
Biomimicry is simply mimicking systems or structures found in nature to solve a problem. It is a specific design pattern in engineering, old but not widely considered. The usual example is velcro. An electrical engineer named George de Mestral once went on walk through some nearby forest with his dog and came home to find burrs stuck to his dog’s fur. De Mestral realized that one could create a mechanical adhesive by mimicking the hooks of the burr and the loops of the fur, which is how velcro came about.
Striking
microscopic image of velcro [source]
Notice, biomimicry doesn’t mean directly mimicking the structure or system you find in nature, but to use the principles and mechanisms proven in nature to develop a new technology. Trying to directly mimic natural phenomenon can sometimes be more of a detriment than an advantage. There were thousands of failed aircraft attempting to mimic birds, most famously a design by Leonardo da Vinci, but in the end the Wright Brothers’ design had stationary wings and relied more on propellers for propulsion than dynamic wings.
Conversely, excellent examples of biomimicry tend to not outwardly look like direct analogues of their inspiration. Artificial photosynthesis, though in principle working like a leaf, looks nothing like a plant form. Sonar looks nothing like a dolphin or a bat. But both of these operate off of a principle or mechanism observed in nature.
An overused example is definitely the golden spiral. There is something called the Fibonacci sequence which is generated by taking two previous terms to generate the next terms. The first few are 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…and so on. If you take the ratio of two of these terms, they tend towards an irrational number estimated at 1.618… that is called the golden ratio. This ratio and the Fibonacci numbers have an odd tendency to appear in all sorts of places in nature, from sunflower seeds to pine cones.
The golden ratio is a very pretty and marketable math fact about nature and tends to go the rounds a lot in pop culture, much to many mathematicians chagrin. Some of this is scientists just being stiffs and hating anything fun, but a lot of it is because most pop culture explanations miss exactly why the golden ratio is so prevalent in nature. It’s because it’s very useful in packing things together or trying to optimize something in a finite space. When you understand this, applying the golden ratio is no longer about pretty spirals or perfectly proportioned rectangles in architecture. Golden search optimization and golden ratio solar panel arrangements don’t just look pretty but are actually useful for solving a problem.
It can be
overdone though [source]
So far we’ve seen some examples of applying biomimicry to create a product or a specific engineering solution. But let’s go one step further. Could you create an entire biomimetic system? Are there working principles in nature we could use to design political or economic systems?
Is it possible to create a philosophy on the working principles of nature?
Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude-but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. So let’s get concrete…
— David Foster Wallace
At this point, it’s going to get uncomfortable for me because I am about to show the true shallowness of my thought. But I should begin by saying that I am a religious person and I do believe in a higher power. It’s absolutely fine if you do not, I bear you no ill will nor do I pass any judgement, but I hope you can read on with that same courtesy extended to me.
Imitation is supposedly the most sincere form of flattery, and if I’ve successfully impressed upon you that biomimicry is a step beyond imitation, then what is biomimicry the most sincere form of? I would say (again, just bear with me) biomimicry is the most sincere form of love or worship.
I don’t mean romantic love. I think that’s mostly bullshit. Most of what we colloquially think of as love is just some bullshit myth we feed ourselves to believe our lives have any significance (it doesn’t have any significance). But to deny the existence of a close bond flies in the face of observable reality. Of course people care for reach other, it’s just it probably won’t be some stranger you meet for the first time. A quick test, for me, is to see how sustainable any of those relationships are and the degree they are corruptible. Most relationships fail unless there is constant effort put in, and often they can be easily manipulated or corrupted.
The deepest form of love that I think actually qualifies is between parent and child. While such relationships are far from perfect and can be corrupted by drugs or media, they are quite resilient in the face of life’s everyday troubles. But the other reason I accept a parent-child relationship as a meaningful example of love is because it reveals a truth about love. Namely, that love is deeply entwined with creation.
Parents create the child with a belief or commitment to love their creation. It’s the same with art, or music, or engineering. Ask an artist why they made a painting or a musician why they wrote a song. They will likely say “Because I wanted to,” but why did they want to? Often, the artist or musician or engineer may not be able to articulate it, but it was because they fell in love with the idea before they actually set out to create it.
Some
examples of biomimicry
The joke is that true creation is impossible. An artist paints with colors they did not create. A musician uses instruments they did not craft, notes they did not bring into being. Even parents only pass along genes in a succession of genes, not of their unique creation. Most of what we call “creating” is actually just “arranging.”
This is where the religion kicks in. Imagine if there was a first creator, some being that had the power and capacity to not just paint with colors, but create colors themselves and even beyond that the idea of colors. The notion of wave that can interpreted visually. Some being that could create the idea of a “wave.” Absolutely basic, take-for-granted aspects of reality we never think twice about. Why would this being take the trouble to create anything?
Why does a musician write a song?
If true creation is outside of our power, our only option is imitation. In this way, biomimicry is a form of worship, to be cognizant of nature, our place in it and think deeply about how it works but to also create in its image. I hope you can see that you do not have to believe in my God specifically, but that it helps to believe in some higher power to reach this conclusion.
It seems pointless to point out such soft and airy-fairy underpinnings for an already useful and pragmatic philosophy. Why muddy the waters for an already hippie-ish ideology with thoughts about art and love? Couldn’t we just stick to the hard engineering of biomimicry and reap those benefits?
The issue to me is that to pursue biomimicry, if I have indeed convinced you that it is worth pursuing, in this current context would do no good. Biomimicry seeks to address reality, which I would believe is that everything we do is part of nature and that we should live in accordance with the laws that govern nature. But our current context stands opposed to that, by which I mean mass civilization.
When I say civilization, I mean in some academic sense. There are many definitions as to what exactly counts as civilization, but common characteristics include:
- written language
- monumental architecture
- agriculture
- technological advancement
- social stratification/job specialization
- government
- cities and urban centers
- art and culture
Many of these things are relatively innocuous. A written language, art, and culture are not by themselves unique to civilizations and are often found in “tribal” or “primitive” cultures. But the things that are different and unique to civilizations — agriculture, technological advancement, government — are often in opposition or an attempt to dominate over nature rather than work with nature. Agriculture and cities and technology often attempt to outpace or extract or control the environment. They are designed for the explicit benefit of humanity and humanity only.
This is not to say that technology or agriculture are bad things, nor am I trying to promote the appeal to nature fallacy. As an engineer, I am a very strong proponent for technology and spend my day-to-day trying to make some advancement. But to design without some consideration for sustainability is absurd. And we should recognize that our systems and institutions were just as much designed as a car. Mostly likely our political and economic and philosophic systems took no consideration of what exists in nature or perhaps more arrogantly don’t believe nature has anything to offer on this front.
A proposed
example of bioregionalist divisions [source]
But what would biomimicry look like, politically or economically? An example would be bioregionalism, a movement that believes political boundaries should be redrawn to match the ecosystems closest to it and that cultural regions coagulate around ecosystem. As an example, maybe Pennsylvania would be split into three regions, one closest to the Great Lakes, one encompassing Appalachia, and a coastal portion. This is particularly striking to me because, if you know any Pennsylvanians, they may tell you about how different each of these regions are. The Appalachian region for example, is sometimes called “Pennsyl-tucky” due to its cultural difference with the coastal ends, which goes to show that even now there is some acknowledgement of these bioregions. Bioregionalism would also mean major reforms to our electoral college, to gerrymandered and red-lined districts, and to labor markets.
Another, maybe more extensive vision for biomimicry can be found in the work of Wes Jackson of the Land Institute. Jackson, as a child, was touring a prairie farm and wondered to himself why farmers can’t grow annual grains like wheat grass and instead grow perennial grains that deplete the soil. Spending years cross breeding many grains, Jackson has developed Kernza, a perennial grain that can be harvested year after year without depleting the soil. Kernza grows to look like a field of wild prairie grass. The Kernza seeds have seen some early success with Patagonia provisions and some brewers have even made a Kernza ale. This is a striking example because wheat is already a natural element, but is used in a manner that opposes nature. Kernza, on the other hand, achieves human goals but operates sustainably within the laws of nature.
Kernza
field [source]
If you look around you will probably see many places where human advancement was indebted to bio-inspiration. All I am saying is to look deeper.