Henry Dicks is an environmental thinker who specializes within the philosophical facets of biomimicry and studying from nature. His latest work, The Biomimicry Revolution: Learning from Nature How to Inhabit the Earth, explores the philosophical significance of biomimicry, the imitation, emulation, and technique of studying from nature. On this Lately Printed Guide Highlight, Dicks discusses the epistemological questions biomimicry raises, the idea’s historic roots, and its modern implications.
What’s your work about?
It’s about two issues: biomimicry and philosophy. Biomimicry is the thought of imitating, emulating, and studying from nature. Agroecology, for instance, is the try to develop extra sustainable agrosystems by studying from the workings of pure ecosystems. Likewise, synthetic intelligence typically takes human or animal intelligence as mannequin. ChatGPT, for instance, is a synthetic neural community impressed by the construction and performance of the human mind. I argue that the world is within the early levels of a profound shift in direction of a brand new means paradigm for innovation, the central precept of which is studying from nature.
The work can also be about philosophy—the love of knowledge. And my start line is the concept it’s primarily in nature that knowledge could also be discovered. Curiously, nevertheless, the hyperlinks between biomimicry and philosophy have been little explored. So, whereas the guide that launched the biomimicry motion—Janine Benyus’s Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (1997)—begins by placing ahead three foundational rules which can be extremely philosophical in nature (Nature as mannequin, Nature as measure, and Nature as mentor), stylistically it is vitally a lot a piece of common science and has nothing express to say about philosophy. The result’s a paradoxical scenario during which biomimicry is advancing a brand new philosophy primarily based on the thought of in search of knowledge in nature, however with out immediately partaking with philosophy. My guide seeks to rectify this by bringing biomimicry and philosophy into dialogue.
In what methods precisely does biomimicry revolutionize technological innovation?
For over two thousand years, it was broadly believed that techne was imitation of nature. This concept was rejected by Hegel within the early nineteenth century after which by the primary philosophers of know-how within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nature, of their view, furnished us solely with vitality and uncooked supplies, with the concepts for know-how all coming from the human thoughts. Biomimicry breaks radically with this conception of know-how, seeing nature as a substitute as offering fashions and sources of inspiration for technological innovation. Take chemistry, for instance. Standard chemistry adopts a “warmth, beat, and deal with” strategy; it makes use of excessive temperatures, violent pressures, and poisonous chemical substances to power uncooked supplies extracted from nature to do our bidding. Nature’s strategy is kind of totally different; it operates at ambient temperatures and pressures, with out recourse to poisonous chemical substances, utilizing water as a solvent. So, whereas the strongest human-designed materials, Kevlar, is made by boiling petroleum in sulfuric acid at 1400 levels Fahrenheit, and is then drawn out underneath monumental pressures, spider’s silk—in some respects a a lot stronger fiber—is produced with out recourse to any of those excessive processes, from nothing however useless flies. Taking inspiration from spiders, mollusks, diatoms, crops, and the like, chemists are already producing sustainable supplies by following nature’s low-energy, life-friendly methods.
How do you relate your work to different well-known philosophies?
I situate biomimicry primarily with respect to environmental philosophy, arguing that biomimicry cannot solely broaden the scope of environmental philosophy but in addition revolutionize its content material. For a begin, it makes potential a robust new environmental philosophy of know-how, primarily based on a renewal of the traditional concept—current notably in Democritus and Aristotle—of know-how as imitation of nature. It additionally introduces a profound shift in environmental ethics. Transferring away from the standard give attention to defending or “letting nature be,” it calls on us to undertake a brand new ethic of emulating or “being like nature.” And lastly, it makes potential a brand new strategy to environmental epistemology, the important thing perception of which is that data (and knowledge) could also be acquired from nature.
Which of your insights or conclusions do you discover most fun?
Most likely the thought of studying from nature, the central focus of what I name “biomimetic epistemology.” Standard epistemology acknowledges 5 predominant sources of information: the senses, cause, introspection, reminiscence, and testimony. The frequent denominator right here is the concept data is generated by human beings, initially via our sensory and cognitive schools, although it could even be acquired via the testimony of different people. The concept data could come up first in nature and solely later be acquired by people is nearly unprecedented in mainstream discussions of epistemology. And but, it undoubtedly raises all kinds of fascinating philosophical questions. How is data generated in nature? What various kinds of data does nature generate? If data is generated in nature, does that imply that nature possesses thoughts? How can we study from nature and the way does that studying differ from the methods we study from different people?
In fact, there’ll inevitably be criticisms of the very enterprise of biomimetic epistemology, such because the objection that nature generates solely info not data, not to mention knowledge, or that the entire concept of taking “nature as mentor” is however a metaphor. However no matter one would possibly take into consideration these criticisms, the thought of nature as a supply of information is on the very least worthy of debate, and at most a game-changer not only for epistemology, however probably additionally for the way forward for life on earth.
How is your work related to the modern world?
Biomimicry presents an inspiring imaginative and prescient of a world that has been made sustainable by basing human-made merchandise and methods on pure fashions. Think about a world during which agriculture, business, and even cities all work like pure ecosystems, working on photo voltaic vitality, recycling every part, producing no air pollution, and offering habitats for different species. There’s real poetry on this imaginative and prescient. “Think about a constructing like a tree, a metropolis like a forest,” write Braungart and McDonough. And but, maybe as a result of philosophy and the humanities have probably not engaged with biomimicry, it has but to be taken critically. I’m continually reminded right here of one thing that Aldo Leopold, the daddy of environmental ethics, stated within the late Forties about conservation. The “proof” that conservation has but to alter the “foundations of conduct,” he stated, is that “philosophy and faith haven’t but heard of it. In our try to make conservation simple, we now have made it trivial.” The identical is true at the moment of biomimicry. The try to make it common and accessible has led it to be seen as only a novelty design methodology, unworthy of profound reflection. If the modern world is to understand biomimicry’s inspiring imaginative and prescient, as I imagine it should, then it wants to have interaction with the type of foundational philosophizing that my work makes an attempt.
How is your work related to historic concepts?
Benyus opposes the Biomimicry Revolution to the Industrial Revolution. However in seeing the Biomimicry Revolution not simply as a technological revolution, but in addition as an ontological, moral, and epistemological revolution, the principal historic opposition I set up is with the Enlightenment. On Kant’s view, Enlightenment entails having the braveness and determination to have the ability to do with out the “steering of one other” and as a substitute to take the trail of autonomy. The result’s an epistemology primarily based on cause and the senses, an ethics primarily based on pure cause, and a view of know-how—developed in a while by philosophers like Friedric Dessauer—as invention by rational design. The ecological penalties of all this are proving catastrophic. In in search of to develop our personal methods of doing issues, utilizing solely our senses and cause as a information, we now have ignored and laid waste to the knowledge current in nature. I conclude my guide by calling for a “New Enlightenment”—one during which enlightenment is to be achieved not via the conceited and reckless try to do every part on our personal, however reasonably via having the humility to show to nature as information.
What impact do you hope your work can have?
From time to time an concept emerges outdoors of philosophy and the humanities that grabs their consideration. The idea of the Anthropocene is an apparent instance. I might love my work to do the identical for biomimicry. It’s an concept whose time has come!
Maryellen Stohlman-Vanderveen is the APA Weblog’s Range and Inclusion Editor and Analysis Editor. She graduated from the London College of Economics with an MSc in Philosophy and Public Coverage in 2023 and at the moment works as a Advertising and marketing Assistant for a wine start-up in London. Her philosophical analysis pursuits embody conceptual engineering, normative ethics, the philosophy of know-how, and questions associated to dwelling life.
