CfP: The Philosophy of Biomimicry
Special track at the 20th conference of the Society
for Philosophy and Technology
June 14-17, 2017 – Darmstadt, Germany
Track Chairs: Vincent Blok (Wageningen University), Henry Dicks (University Jean Moulin Lyon 3)
TO CONTRIBUTE...
350-word abstracts for individual papers should be submitted by Dec 5 at https://easychair.org/
Faced with the
growing ecological crisis, Janine Benyus (1997) has argued that we can draw on
the “3.8 billion years of research and development” already carried out by
Nature in order to inhabit the earth sustainably, an approach known as
biomimicry. This approach promises “soft chemistry” (Bensaude-Vincent 2002)
working in water and at ambient temperatures, solar energy generation based on natural
photosynthesis, the transition to circular economies in which everything is
recycled, and much else besides. While biomimicry has been hailed as the
“mantra of Silicon Valley” (Despommier 2011), a “revolutionary concept” capable
of underpinning a “second industrial revolution” (Mathews 2011), only a
relatively small number of philosophers of technology have thus far paid
attention to it (cf. Bensaude-Vincent 2002, 2011; Mathews 2011; Blok & Gremmen
2016; Dicks 2016a). Mainstream philosophy of technology, by contrast, has
generally preferred to concentrate on more controversial and ethically sensitive
issues, such as synthetic biology, transhumanism, military technologies,
artificial intelligence, and big data. The result is that biomimicry remains “philosophically under-developed, descriptive and ad
hoc in its approach and accordingly piecemeal in its results” (Mathews 2011).
In addition, since biomimicry has not been adequately theorized, it is also not
entirely clear how it differs from and overlaps with other longstanding
approaches to nature-inspired innovation, namely biomimetics, bionics, and
bio-inspiration. The situation thus calls for a more systematic engagement with
biomimicry on the part of philosophers of technology.
One promising path for going beyond the current “piecemeal results”
produced by biomimicry is to explore its “grammar”, understood as the structural
rules and principles that govern the production of complex sustainable systems
based on natural models. After all, it is one thing to develop industrial fibres modelled on spider’s
silk, high-speed trains modelled on the bill of the kingfisher, solar cells
inspired by tree leaves, and so on and so forth, but quite another to fit these
innovations together to form complex systems. In the context of the SPT conference, the overarching theme of which is “The
Grammar of Things”, the following questions are thus of particular interest:
·
The grammar of
biomimicry. In order to be sustainable
biomimetic innovation will need to go beyond the imitation of isolated natural
models, in order to consider the structural rules and principles that govern
their articulation into complex sustainable systems. To adapt an expression of
Braungart and McDonough (2009), it is not enough just to imagine “buildings
like trees”, for one must also imagine “cities like forests”. But can the
workings of ecosystems provide the basic “logic” or “grammar” that would allow
us to articulate biomimetic technologies with one another? And what would be
the role and the place of humans in the emergence and continued existence of complex
artificial systems modeled on Nature (e.g., biomimetic cities, biomimetic
economies)?
·
Nature as
engineer. Engineers working in
biomimicry and related fields have placed great hopes in including Nature’s
“technologies” in the problem-solving tool TRIZ, thus giving rise to “Bio-TRIZ”,
which would contain all known “engineering solutions” deployed by life on earth
(Vincent 2002, 2006; Bogatyrev & Bogatyrev 2009). But while Bio-TRIZ may
help “regularize” the transfer of function between natural and artificial
technologies, can it help us connect all these technologies together? And are
there not philosophical problems involved in reducing Nature to little more
than a database of isolated “engineering solutions”? Do we not need to see
Nature as Nature, rather than as technology (Dicks 2016, Blok 2016)?
·
The concept of
mimesis. Scientists and
philosophers frequently invoke and discuss various poetic and linguistic
concepts – mimesis, interpretation,
translation, inspiration, analogy, metaphor, etc. – when discussing the
transfer between natural model and technological imitation. Can we productively
transpose philosophical analyses of these and other relevant concepts from the
spheres of linguistics and poetics to the interface between the natural sciences
and technology? And how might these concepts inform the “grammar” of
biomimicry?
·
The diversity
of mimesis. Bensaude-Vincent
(2011) has argued that the current rise of biomimicry is accompanied by the
counter movement of “technomimicry”, whereby living beings or systems are
engineered in order to behave more like technological systems, as is the case
in synthetic biology. And Dicks (2016a, 2016b) has argued that prior to the
emergence of biomimicry, which sees Nature as “model, measure, and mentor”
(Benyus 1997), humanists saw Man as “model, measure, and mentor”, a position he
describes as “anthropomimicry”. But how do all these different forms of mimicry
relate to each other – historically, conceptually, ethically... – and can
biomimicry be seen as a new paradigm for technological innovation or is it just
one type of mimicry amongst others?
Given the emerging importance of biomimicry but also the relative
lack of critical attention currently paid to the concept, this conference track
aims above all to deepen our understanding of the philosophical underpinnings
of biomimicry, understood as nature-based technology. We therefore encourage
submission of papers that tackle a broad range of questions, including (but not
limited to) the aforementioned areas of special interest. For more information
about the content and focus of the track, please contact the track chairs, Vincent
Blok (vincent.blok@wur.nl) and Henry
Dicks (henryjdicks@gmail.com).
References
Benyus, J. (1997). Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.
New York: Harper Perennial.
Bensaude-Vincent, B. et al. (2002). Chemists and the School of nature. New Journal of Chemistry 29: 1-5
Bensaude-Vincent, B. (2011). A Cultural Perspective on
Biomimetics. In Marko Cavrak (Ed.), Advances
in Biomimetics, InTech, DOI: 10.5772/10546. Available from:
Blok, V., Gremmen, B.
(2016). Ecological Innovation: Biomimicry as a New Way of Thinking and Acting
Ecologically. Journal of Agricultural and
Environmental Ethics, 29 (2): 203-217.
Blok, V., (2016). Biomimicry and the materiality of
ecological technology and innovation: Toward a natural model of nature. Environmental Philosophy (forthcoming)
Braungart, M. and
McDonough, W. (2009). Cradle to Cradle:
Re-Making the Way we Make Things. London: Vintage.
Despommier, D. (2011).
The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in
the 21st Century. New York: Picador.
Dicks, H. (2016a). The Philosophy of Biomimicry, Philosophy and Technology 29 (3): 223-243.
Dicks, H. (2016b). From Anthropomimetic to Biomimetic Cities: The Place of
the Human in Cities like Forests. Paper at the 3rd Conference of the International Society for the Philosophy
of Architecture, Bamberg, Germany, 19-23 July 2016. Available at: https://université-lyon3.
Kennedy, E., et al.
(2015). Biomimicry: A Path to Sustainable Innovation. Design Issues 31 (3): 66-73.
Mathews, F. (2011). Towards a deeper
philosophy of biomimicry. Organization
& Environment, 24(4): 364-387.
Pawlyn, M. (2011). Biomimicry in Architecture, London:
RIBA.
Rawlings, A. et al.
(2012). Innovation through Imitation: Biomimetic, Bioinspired and Biokleptic
Research. Soft Matter 8 (25):
2675-2679.
Vincent, J. et al.
(2002). Systematic Technology Transfer from Biology to Engineering. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
360 (1791): 159-73.
Vincent, J. et al. (2006). Biomimetics:
its practice and theory. J. R. Soc.
Interface, 3 (9):
471-482
Timetable
·
December 5th 2016: Deadline for the submission of
abstracts
·
March 1, 2017: Expected notification of acceptance
·
June 14-17, 2017: Conference dates