I recently read a book called Biomimicry by Janine Benyus. A book, whose underlying concept appealed to the very core of my being, for it outlined how little we know of the world around us, and how much more there is to learn from Nature’s processes.
How do we become harmonious citizens of a planet that houses, apart from 7 billion of us, billions of plant and animal forms? It is a question that floats into my mind every so often. How beautifully a bee arranges its hive, how marvelously a dandelion reproduces, how trees take in water, how they produce energy. All of these things make me wonder and marvel at Nature the Tinkerer.
I am afraid I made rather a pest of myself with friends and family. I cornered parents-in-law while they were taking a rest and spoke to them of Do-Nothing farming, I got a children’s book on the subject and read tantalizing bits of information out to the children. I bored friends with it. I could see the scramble-and-run-before-it-is-too-late look on everyone’s faces when I stopped to admire the squirrel prudently checking whether the fruits are ripe before digging in.
‘Why is it wet winter or hot summer, some grasslands thrive?’, I’d ask, only to find that tasks of monumental importance spring up requiring immediate attention for my audience.
Did that stop me? No. If anything, I am going to go and do on the blog what I have been physically doing to those around me.
The book is arranged into the following sections:
Echoing Nature
Why Biomimicry now?
How will we feed ourselves?
Farming to fit the land: Growing food like a prairie
How will we harness energy?
Light into life: Gathering energy like a leaf
How will we make things?
Fitting form to function: Weaving fibers like a spider
How will we heal ourselves?
Experts in our midst: Finding cures like a chimp
How will we store what we learn?
Dances with Molecules: Computing like a cell
How will we conduct business?
Closing the loops in commerce: Running a business like a redwood forest
Where will we go from here?
May wonders never cease: Toward a biomimetic future
Higher education in Science has arranged itself along silo-ed areas of expertise. Biologists rarely study Computer Science. Mechanical Engineers rarely take up Zoology.
The author writes of her interactions with various scientists who have successfully transcended narrow areas of study to walk the line between disciplines to see where we can benefit from nature.
1) The materials science engineer who combines fibre optics and biology to study the beauty and resilience of spider silk
2) The agriculturist who, over decades, has perfected the technique of do-nothing farming, conscientiously chipping away at unnecessary practices while studying natural prairies and grasslands to see how plants grow in the wilderness, thereby coming up with the highest yield of natural grain per acre.
3) The anthropologist who studies chimps and how they cure themselves to see how we can identify cures for common problems.
Quote:
In exploring life’s know-how, we are reaching back to some very old roots, satisfying an urge to affiliate with life that is embossed on our genes. For the 99% of time we’ve been on Earth, we were hunter and gatherers, our lives dependent on knowing the fine, small details of our world. Deep inside, we have a leaning to be reconnected with the nature that shaped our imagination, our language, our song and dance, our sense of the divine.
This about sums up our position on Earth.
“In reality we haven’t escaped the gravity of life at all. We are still beholden to ecological laws, the same as any other life form.”
Now is the time for us to take our place as one species among billions in the ecological vote bank, and make wise choices.
P.S: Please see the TED talk on Biomimicry
Nourish-n-Cherish 