Quotes

The Ancients

It was commonplace amongst the Ancient Greeks to view techne (art, technology) as imitation of nature. The position is associated especially with Aristotle, but was also upheld, albeit in quite different ways, by Plato and Democritus.

“the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons” 

Aristotle, The Poetics

“human skill either completes what nature is incapable of completing or imitates nature”

Aristotle, Physics

“For it is not the case that nature imitates art (techne), but art nature , and it exists to help and compensate for nature’s deficiencies.”

Aristotle, Protrepticus

“We are pupils of the animals in the most important things: the spider in spinning and mending, the swallow in building, and the songsters, swan and nightingale, in singing, by way of imitation.”

Democritus, DK 68 B154

“For almost two thousand years, it seemed as if the conclusive and final answer to the question, “What can the human being, using his power and skill, do in the world and with the world?” had been given by Aristotle when he proposed that “art” was the imitation of nature, thereby defining the concept with which the Greeks encompassed all the actual operative abilities of man within reality – the concept of techne.”

Hans Blumenberg, “The Imitation of Nature”

The Moderns

Modern thinkers and philosophers typically upheld the Ancient view of techne as imitation of nature, though, in keeping with the humanist orientation of post-medieval thought, very often the object of imitation was ‘man’, on the grounds that he is the ‘most excellent’ thing in nature.

“(I)t seems reasonable, since art copies nature, and men can make various automata which move without thought, that nature should produce its own automata, much more splendid than artificial ones. These natural automata are the animals.”

Descartes, Letter to Henry More, 5 February 1649

“NATURE (the art whereby God hath made and governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within, why may we not say that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the Artificer? Art goes yet further, imitating that rational and most excellent work of Nature, man. For by art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMONWEALTH, or STATE (in Latin, CIVITAS), which is but an artificial man, though of greater stature and strength than the natural, for whose protection and defence it was intended.”

Hobbes, Leviathan

19th and 20th Century Anti-Mimesis

The 19th and early 20th centuries saw the first sustained attack on the idea of ‘art’ as imitation of nature. This began with German idealism (Kant and especially Hegel) and was applied specifically to technology by many of the first “philosophers of technology”, who saw the rejection of the Ancient view of techne as foundational for modern technology. It is not a coincidence, I think, that this view coincided with the Industrial Revolution and the concomitant destruction of nature.

“by mere imitation, art cannot stand in competition with nature, and, if it tries, it looks like worm trying to crawl after an elephant.”

Hegel, Aesthetics

“the course of natural phenomena being replete with everything which when committed by human beings is most worthy of abhorrence, any one who endeavoured in his actions to imitate the natural course of things would be universally seen and acknowledged to be the wickedest of men.”

John Stuart Mill, “On Nature”

“the ordering of the laws of nature in invention is completely different from the natural ordering. Human flight differs completely from the flight of birds; it succeeded only when moving wings were abandoned. The sewing machine sews differently than man does; the mill grinds differently than teeth do; transportation takes place by means of wheels, not through leverage of legs. Thus many works of technology are built not by approximating nature but according to an order alien to nature. Where nature enters as inventor, producing ever new forms in the realm of organic life, it again follows an order completely inappropriate for technology.”

Friedrich Dessauer, Philosophy of Technology

“What separates the instruments of fully developed technology from primitive tools is that they have, so to speak, detached and dissociated themselves from the model that nature is able immediately to offer them. What these instruments have to say and accomplish – their independent sense and autonomous functioning – completely comes to light only because of this “dissociating.” As to the basic principle that rules over the entire development of modern mechanical engineering, it has been pointed out that the general situation of machines is such that they no longer seek to imitate the work of the hand or nature but instead seek to carry out tasks with their own authentic means, which are often completely different from natural means. Technology first attained its own ability to speak for itself by means of this principle and its ever sharper implementation. It now erects a new order that is grounded not on contact with nature but rather, not infrequently, in conscious opposition to it.”

Ernst Cassirer, “Form and Technology”

“Nature [in 19th century anti-naturalism] had not only lost its role as authoritative example, had not only been reduced to the status of an object whose meaning was exhausted by its theoretical and practical mastery; it became, moreover, something like the opposing term to technical and artistic will.”

Hans Blumenberg, “The Imitation of Nature”

“For the inventor, nature can be more and more of a substrate whose given constitution stands in the way of the realization of its constructive use, rather than promoting it. Only through the reduction of nature to its raw potential as matter and energy is a sphere of pure construction and synthesis possible. This results in a state of affairs that seems paradoxical at first glance: An era of the highest regard for science is at the same time an age of the decreasing significance of the object of scientific study.”

Hans Blumenberg, “The Imitation of Nature”

Contemporary Philosophy of Biomimicry

Biomimicry has yet really to make much of an impression on contemporary philosophy, and most people working in biomimicry likewise remain largely unaware of its philosophical relevance and importance. Here are some quotations – from both biomimicry experts and academic philosophers – that indicate the importance of bridging the gap:

“Unlike the Industrial Revolution, the Biomimicry Revolution introduces an era based not on what we can extract from nature, but on what we can learn from her.”

Janine Benyus, Biomimicry

“This time, we come not to learn about nature so that we might circumvent or control her, but to learn from nature, so that we might fit in, at last and for good, on the Earth from which we sprang.”

Janine Benyus, Biomimicry

“This belief that we can never do better than nature’s ways may be the only source of humility for the secular mind.”

Wes Jackson, Consulting the Genius of Place

“Biomimicry is indeed a revolutionary concept. However, it is still relatively philosophically underdeveloped, descriptive, and ad hoc in its approach and accordingly piecemeal in its results.”

Freya Mathews, “Towards a Deeper Philosophy of Biomimicry”

“However, there is a fatal ambiguity at the heart of biomimicry. This ambiguity lodges in the notion of ‘mimicry’ itself. For mimicry might be read in either of two ways. On the one hand it might imply a system that entirely replaces the elements or components of natural systems with engineered or fabricated ones that are nevertheless arranged in accordance with the design principles that shape and inform ecological systems. […] On the other hand, however, mimicry might be read as pointing toward a schema that imitates original nature in the sense that it works towards the ecological re-integration of humanity back into the larger community of life, following the synergistic patterns set by other species. This would represent a sustainable outcome not only in the sense of sustaining human civilization but in the sense of sustaining all of earth-life.”

Freya Mathews, “Biomimicry and the Problem of Praxis”

“In reality, we take inspiration from our understanding of nature, which in itself is inspired from the dominant technological paradigms of our time.”

Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, “A Cultural Perspective on Biomimetics”

“Learning the exquisite details of photosynthesis and mimicking it may well be the best solution for our energy needs of the future. If achievements such as these become commonplace, we will probably reconstruct the history of science and technology very differently than we do today: James Watt’s achievement in inventing the steam engine will be dwarfed by those of the biomimics of the future.”

Sahotra Sarkar, Biodiversity and Environmental Philosophy