Watching how lotus leaves remain free from contaminants without using soaps or detergents so that we can develop self-cleaning materials from it? Observing how a spider manufactures its web that can teach us how to make fibres without toxins?
If you feel that these questions sound funny, you are not alone. I was one of those who would treat the questions as crazy till recently. A small article that I read in a recent issue of Time magazine influenced me a lot. It is about a new discipline named biomimicry.
Biomimicry tells us that nature is endowed with collective wisdom of what is good for survival and what is not. Nature is a tutorial because 3.8 billion years of evolution (yes boy, evolution, and not intelligent design handed out by an intelligent designer) has bestowed that wisdom on nature. This wisdom is key to our survival strategy. We can imitate nature’s ideas and designs to solve human problems.
We may get a design or a blueprint of a technology or an idea from watching how mussels are glued to rocks with an under-water adhesive. Or how gecko adheres to our walls and roofs without any glue. That is wonderful. You are seeking ideas and designs from nature and not extracting things from it.
Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, has been among the heroes of environment honoured by Time. She also founded Biomimicry Institute.
If you feel that these questions sound funny, you are not alone. I was one of those who would treat the questions as crazy till recently. A small article that I read in a recent issue of Time magazine influenced me a lot. It is about a new discipline named biomimicry.
Biomimicry tells us that nature is endowed with collective wisdom of what is good for survival and what is not. Nature is a tutorial because 3.8 billion years of evolution (yes boy, evolution, and not intelligent design handed out by an intelligent designer) has bestowed that wisdom on nature. This wisdom is key to our survival strategy. We can imitate nature’s ideas and designs to solve human problems.
We may get a design or a blueprint of a technology or an idea from watching how mussels are glued to rocks with an under-water adhesive. Or how gecko adheres to our walls and roofs without any glue. That is wonderful. You are seeking ideas and designs from nature and not extracting things from it.
Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, has been among the heroes of environment honoured by Time. She also founded Biomimicry Institute.
2 comments:
The idea of getting inspiration from nature to design new technology is very good. This has been very useful for developing new technology in the past. By the way the blogsite is superb
In addition to founding the Biomimicry Institute, Janine Benyus is also the co-founder of the Biomimicry Guild, the Innovation Consultancy for Bio-Inspired Design.
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