Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature FROM THE PUBLISHER
Biomimicry is the quest for innovation inspired by nature. Biomimics are scientists and inventors who study nature's greatest achievements - spider silk and tallgrass, seashells and brain cells, photosynthesis and forests - and adapt them for human use. Their findings are revolutionizing how we invent, compute, heal ourselves, harness energy, repair the environment, conduct business, and feed the world. In Biomimicry, science writer Janine M. Benyus names and explains this phenomenon that has been unfolding in all the science disciplines. She takes us into the lab and out into the field with the maverick thinkers who are stirring vats of proteins to unleash their signaling power in computers...analyzing how spiders manufacture a waterproof fiber five times stronger than steel...watching electrons zip and pop in a leaf cell, converting simple sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second...discovering miracle drugs by noting what chimps eat when they're sick...studying the hardy prairie as a low-maintenance model for agriculture...and much more.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
The natural world, says Benyus (Beastly Behaviors), has an enormous amount to teach us, if only we would "tune in"as some scientists are beginning to dobefore it's too late. Touring the laboratories of a wide array of researchers, she reports on the emerging race to mimic natural processes (hence "biomimicry") in the business-driven quest for better products, environmentally sound technologies and miracle drugs. The scientists speak with palpable excitement, explaining the principles behind a utopian future of unlimited possibilities: energy harnessed by simple, non-toxic molecules modeled on the principles of photosynthesis, so efficient they put the best solar cells to shame; an organic computer, thousands of times faster and more powerful than the most advanced Pentium, that emulates the principles embodied in DNA; farms with abundant yields requiring virtually no pesticides, fertilizers or "energy inputs," mimicking a natural ecosystem-and more. Benyus's shotgun approach can be disorienting, but the possible breakthroughs, the technologies behind them and the scientists themselves are invariably fascinating. And Benyus's observations are engaging as well, bringing to her tech-oriented subject a non-didactic moral framework and an invigorating sense of wonder: "By deliberately looking for creatures that awe us, we may just stumble upon a whole new chemistrythe spoils of survival." (June)
Library Journal
Innovations, whether in farming, composite science, or computing, are a product of human creativity. Science writer Benyus (Beastly Behaviors, LJ 9/1/92) uses these subjects and others to demonstrate how nature's solutions to situations have been the creative jumping-off points for individuals seeking solutions, developing, or simply revitalizing processes or products. The first seven chapters are a prelude to the final chapter, which tackles industrial ecology. Here, Benyus proposes "ten lessons" that an ecologically astute company, culture, or economy could practice to promote a healthier existence for us all. There is no grandstanding, just readable language and a simple awe at human creativity and the uses to which it can be put. For popular science collections.Michael D. Cramer, North Carolina Dept. of Environmental Health and Natural Resources Lib., Raleigh
Kirkus Reviews
"Doing it nature's way" is the theme of this wide-eyed-with-wonder exposition of what's going on in a variety of fields—from farming to computer science—as scientists try to emulate natural processes.
The wonder is abundant as Benyus waxes rhapsodic about the potential for a greening of the globe that could feed the millions, clean the environment, and cure our ills. The name of the game is biomimicry, here defined as a "survival tactic whereby humans try to imitate life's designs and processes, e.g., running a business like a redwood forest." Indeed, that is the theme of one of the last chapters in which the model for conducting business is the mature "Type III" stage of ecological succession embodied by the redwood forest. Nature's operating principles here include using waste as a resource, diversifying and cooperating to fully use the habitat, using energy and materials efficiently and sparingly, not fouling the nest, etc. Translating this into business terms, Benyus describes a number of experiments in process, such as an industrial park in Denmark where waste steam from the power plant is used to power two adjacent companies, heat 3,500 homes, and deliver warm water to fish farms. Elsewhere Benyus's survey ranges over attempts to revolutionize farming away from monocrop and toward prairie-like multicultures; zoopharmacognosy, or observing what sick animals do to cure themselves; synthesizing spider thread or the glue marine mussels use to attach to surfaces under water; and fathoming the mysteries of photosynthesis. In each case this Montana-based nature writer has interviewed the principal players and provided rich details—particularly in areas like mussel glue or photosynthesis, where emulating nature is no easy trick. To some extent they provide correctives to the Gaia-like homage to nature that pervades.
Much of interest here, but spare us the cheerleading.
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