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37The Biomimicry Revolution: Learning from Nature how to Inhabit the EarthColumbia University Press. 2023.Modernity is founded on the belief that the world we build is a human invention, not a part of nature. The ecological consequences of this idea have been catastrophic. We have laid waste to natural ecosystems, replacing them with fundamentally unsustainable human designs. With time running out to address the environmental crises we have caused, our best path forward is to turn to nature for guidance. In this book, Henry Dicks explores the philosophical significance of a revolutionary approach to…Read more
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18Applying Biomimicry to Cities: The Forest as Model for Urban Planning and DesignIn Michael Nagenborg, Taylor Stone, Margoth González Woge & Pieter E. Vermaas (eds.), Technology and the City: Towards a Philosophy of Urban Technologies, Springer Verlag. pp. 271-288. 2021.The idea of applying biomimicry to cities is attracting increasing attention as a way of achieving sustainability. Undoubtedly the most frequently evoked natural model in this context is the forest, though it has not yet been investigated with any great scientific rigour. To overcome this lacuna, we provide: first, a justification of the model of the forest via what we call the arguments from “fittingness”, “scale”, and “complexity”; second, an exploration of various key innovations made possibl…Read more
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25The Biomimicry Revolution in Environmental EpistemologyEthics and the Environment 24 (2): 43. 2019.Abstract:Environmental epistemology is at present a rather marginal branch of environmental philosophy. The aim of the present article is to propose a major new approach to environmental epistemology, which I propose to call “biomimetic epistemology,” the guiding principle of which is “nature as mentor,” and which, in keeping with this principle, takes as its subject matter both the idea and the phenomenon of learning from nature. Beginning with a brief sketch of biomimetic epistemology covering…Read more
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37Being Like Gaia: Biomimicry and Ecological EthicsEnvironmental Values 28 (5): 601-620. 2019.This article analyses the philosophical status and ground of biomimicry's most distinctive principle: nature as measure. Starting with the argument that this principle is ethically normative, I go on to compare the ecological ethic it embodies with Aldo Leopold's land ethic. In so doing, I argue that the ultimate measure against which the ethical rightness of our actions should be judged is the way of being of Gaia, which is to let be her present inhabitants. I then explore the idea that taking …Read more
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34A New Way of Valuing NatureEnvironmental Ethics 39 (3): 281-299. 2017.According to the renowned biomimicry specialist, Janine Benyus, biomimicry offers a new way of valuing nature based on the principle of learning from nature. Comparing and contrasting this new way of valuing nature with the dominant conception of nature as valuable for the ecosystem services it provides, an articulation of the respective theoretical frameworks of ecosystem services and biomimicry can be proposed. This articulation depends on the insight that each of the four basic categories of…Read more
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18From Anthropomimetic to Biomimetic CitiesArchitecture Philosophy 3 (1). 2018.In recent years biomimicry has emerged as a powerful response to the problem of sustainability and today exerts an important influence on both architecture and urbanism. The implications of this trend for the humanities have, however, been largely overlooked. Taking a historical approach, the first key argument of this article is that throughout Western history the dominant model for the polis, qua both city and State, has been the human being and that it was also this basic mo…Read more
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37The Poetics of BiomimicryEnvironmental Philosophy 14 (2): 191-219. 2017.The Ancient Greeks understood both art and technology (techne) as imitation (mimesis) of Nature (physis). This article argues that the rapidly growing ecological innovation strategy known as biomimicry makes it possible for technology to leave behind the modern goal of “mastering and possessing” Nature and instead to rediscover the initial vocation it shared with art: imitating Nature. This in turn suggests a general strategy for philosophical inquiry into the biomimetic principle of “Nature as …Read more
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3Fifty Years of the Tavistock ClinicRoutledge. 2014.Originally published in 1970 this title commemorates the men and ideas that started, inspired and established a pioneer institution in British psychiatry. Based on the impetus of Freudian and related innovations after the First World War, the Tavistock Clinic offered treatment, training and research facilities in the field of neurosis, child guidance and later on group relations. Dr Dicks, who had been associated for nearly forty years with the work and personalities that helped to develop the T…Read more
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5Fifty Years of the Tavistock ClinicRoutledge. 2014.Originally published in 1970 this title commemorates the men and ideas that started, inspired and established a pioneer institution in British psychiatry. Based on the impetus of Freudian and related innovations after the First World War, the Tavistock Clinic offered treatment, training and research facilities in the field of neurosis, child guidance and later on group relations. Dr Dicks, who had been associated for nearly forty years with the work and personalities that helped to develop the T…Read more
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52Environmental Ethics and Biomimetic Ethics: Nature as Object of Ethics and Nature as Source of EthicsJournal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 30 (2): 255-274. 2017.While the contemporary biomimicry movement is associated primarily with the idea of taking Nature as model for technological innovation, it also contains a normative or ethical principle—Nature as measure—that may be treated in relative isolation from the better known principle of Nature as model. Drawing on discussions of the principle of Nature as measure put forward by Benyus and Jackson, while at the same time situating these discussions in relation to contemporary debates in the philosophy …Read more
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2006The Philosophy of BiomimicryPhilosophy and Technology 29 (3): 223-243. 2016.The philosophy of biomimicry, I argue, consists of four main areas of inquiry. The first, which has already been explored by Freya Mathews, concerns the “deep” question of what Nature ultimately is. The second, third, and fourth areas correspond to the three basic principles of biomimicry as laid out by Janine Benyus. “Nature as model” is the poetic principle of biomimicry, for it tells us how it is that things are to be “brought forth”. “Nature as measure” is the ethical principle of biomimicry…Read more
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560The Self-Poetizing EarthEnvironmental Philosophy 8 (1): 41-61. 2011.Although Heidegger thinks cybernetics is the “supreme danger,” he also thinks that it harbours within itself poiēsis, the “saving power.” This article providesa justification of this position through an analysis of its relation to Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela’s Santiago theory of cognition and James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’ Gaia theory. More specifically, it argues that Maturana and Varela’s criticism of cybernetics and their concomitant theory of “autopoiesis” constitutes the philo…Read more
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657Aldo Leopold and the Ecological ImaginaryEnvironmental Philosophy 11 (2): 175-209. 2014.Aldo Leopold accorded great significance to the images he used to describe both the land and humankind’s relation to it. Focusing on three key images of Leopold’s “ecological imaginary”—the balance, the pyramid, and the round river—this article argues that the most profound of these is the round river. Contrasting this image with James Lovelock’s portrayal of the earth as Gaia, it further argues that Leopold’s round river can be interpreted as a contemporary, ecological reworking of the primordi…Read more