The Biomimicry Revolution - by Henry Dicks (Hardcover)

About the Book

Henry Dicks explores the philosophical significance of biomimicry, the application and adaptation of strategies found in nature to the development of artificial products and systems. He argues that biomimicry can serve as the basis for a new environmental philosophy that radically alters how we understand and relate to the natural world.

Book Synopsis

Winner, 2024 Symposium Book Award, Canadian Society for Continental Philosophy

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 sustainable innovation: biomimicry. The term describes the application and adaptation of strategies found in nature to the development of artificial products and systems, such as passive cooling techniques modeled on termite mounds or solar cells modeled on leaves. Dicks argues that biomimicry, typically seen as just a design strategy, can also serve as the basis for a new environmental philosophy that radically alters how we understand and relate to the natural world. By showing how we can imitate, emulate, and learn from nature, biomimicry points us toward a genuinely sustainable way of inhabiting the earth.

Rooted in philosophy, The Biomimicry Revolution has profound implications spanning the natural sciences, design, architecture, sustainability studies, science and technology studies, and the environmental humanities. It presents a sweeping reconception of what philosophy can be and offers a powerful new vision of terrestrial existence.

Review Quotes

Dicks has written a valuable book that offers much food for thought in understanding what bio-inspired disciplines are and how we can shape the future of the planet.-- "Metascience"

In many instances, Dicks demonstrates a remarkable ability to navigate unexplored conceptual terrains, which have not been thoroughly examined, guided primarily by his biomimetic principles.-- "Journal of Ecohumanism"

The book, rooted in the continental tradition of philosophy, takes a fairly liberal approach to semantics and association, but is written in a very clear manner, and is well structured and relatively easy to follow.-- "Quarterly Review of Biology"

[The Biomimicry Revolution] provides not only an understanding of the theory and practice of biomimicry, but also a detailed and in-depth analysis of philosophy, classification, and problematization. These features enable the reader to understand that biomimicry is a coherent new entity and philosophy. This book can be used as a quality addition to the literature on a comprehensive philosophical analysis of biomimicry.-- "Regional Science Policy & Practice"

This is an exciting and intellectually invigorating study into the underlying philosophy of biomimicry. Building upon the three principles central to biomimicry--nature as model, nature as measure, nature as mentor--Dicks creates a new philosophical framework structured by technics, ethics, and epistemology. What follows is a lively and groundbreaking ontological inquiry into 'the nature of nature' and what we can learn from nature about sustainably inhabiting the earth.--Adrian Parr, author of Earthlings: Imaginative Encounters with the Natural World

About the Author

Henry Dicks is an environmental philosopher and philosopher of technology. He holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford and lectures in environmental philosophy and ethics at University Jean Moulin Lyon 3 and Shanghai University and in the philosophy of biomimicry at the Institut Supérieur de Design de Saint-Malo.