Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 47
 Overall a terrible book November 2, 2009
N. Rasmussen (Arcata, CA USA)
I was not a happy camper after reading this book. I would say that her writing style is not to my taste, as she uses way too many metaphors and goes on and on about the quirky personalities of the scientists that she is interviewing.
Now, when it comes to fields in which I know something about, she does a TERRIBLE job. The is as whole part about quantum consciousness where a particular scientist that is not very well respected in his field (was in the movie What the bleep - worst movie ever) and if she were to interview just about anyone in the field of quantum physics, the whole chapter would have to get thrown out. But did this happen...no. She seems to latch onto research that she likes, and just disregards the rest.
Not a good author, not a good book, NOT a good representation of biomimicry!
I wish Janine Benyus could give me the week back that it took me to read this book so I could do something more productive!
 Great scientific insight using easy to understand concepts September 27, 2009
Geraldine (California)
What a great book with excellent insight into our world. I can't believe it was written so long ago('97), yet we seems to have made little or no progress since. She is able to convey detailed scientific information in a way a non-science person can understand. The only downside is her book is so enlightening it can be frustrating to see how stupid we've been....repeatedly.
 A must read for all high school chemistry and biology students September 12, 2009
Kat J (Charlotte, NC)
It has been many years since I took biology and chemistry so at times I found myself challenged to keep up. For the uneducated it is an impossible read as it assumes you have at least a basic understanding of both. The premise of the whole book is fascinating and I wish there was a overview at the beginning of each chapter and then the details for those who can appreciate them. Chapters of this book would be wonderful for high school and college science classes as it sparks the imagination about more natural solutions to our approach to creating all the products we have come to expect in our society. We destroy while we create. Does not seem to make us the masters of the universe we imagine ourselves to be. If you can conquer without bloodshed, are you not superior than those that conquer but leave to waste all they have gained? This is really the point of the book and an inspiring read. I would have given it 5 stars if it was more accessible to all - maybe the general public can not understand the science, but they can start to demand that products be made more in tune with nature if they knew this was possible.
Interesting and promising concept, Highly detailed read May 22, 2009
A. McKenna
Fantastic description and explanation of biomimicry. Provides example after example (written in story form) of individuals across the globe working to make the practice of biomimicry reality. Text is not rigorously technical but having some scientific background will help in understanding the concepts. Sometimes drags on but overall is quite interesting.
Is Bio-inspiration the Next Big Thing? April 11, 2009
VinB (USA)
This book is based on the premise that Nature has been experimenting for 3.8 billion years while we have been at it for far lesser, and, as a result, Nature has figured out much better ways of doing pretty much everything than us. It is logical, then, for us to study how nature does things and then try to mimic that.
The book is chock full of detailed and readable supporting evidence in many areas and a lot of this evidence is extremely fascinating in its own right. It covers everything from agriculture, energy, manufacturing, computation, business etc.
In particular, she talks about how most of our manufacturing processes involve high heat, pressure, nasty chemicals, and generate pollution / environmental degradation. Nature, on the other hand, manufactures everything at ambient temperature / pressure, using life-friendly chemicals and generating recyclable waste products. Not only that, but many of the things Nature manufactures have capabilities well beyond anything we manufacture ourselves.
Just one example out of many in the book: She talks about being inside a lab that is developing silicon-based solar cells using the traditional heat-beat-treat approach, while, just outside the window, Nature is self-assembling far more efficient and life-friendly solar cells (leaves) without using any such heavy-handed techniques.
The description she gives of how neurons function is far more detailed and easy to understand as compared to anything I have read anywhere else. In particular, I found these things called Microtubules that permeate all neurons, and the possibility of quantum effects affecting their behavior just extremely fascinating.
One thing to note is that the author is probably more of a reporter rather than an expert in many of the fields she discusses. Think of this book as more of an introduction / overview, rather than authoritative discussion of those fields.
Some opinions / discussion:
- We are barely scratching the surface in terms of understanding how biology works. There is just too much that we don't yet know and, as a result, I am not sure how close we are to truly mimicking anything. This is why, I prefer to think in terms of "bio-inspiration" rather than "bio-mimicry".
- Also, Nature has a big advantage that we don't have: time. Many of these biological processes take a long time. We will probably always want to speed things up, and, in the process, deviate somewhat from Nature.
- We also have human desires (e.g. security, fairness etc.) which Nature may not particularly care about, and we will need to account for those somehow.
- Some areas that aren't covered much in the book, but could benefit from the bio-inspired approach are management, economics, and govt. policy. In general, one can see that we use the same "heat-beat-treat" approach to some extent in all of these things and, as a result, create weak / inefficient structures / processes that generate toxic waste. We could benefit by following Nature's approach of creating the desired framework, suspending it in a solvent, and then letting the appropriate molecules attach themselves to the appropriate places on their own.
- While these basic ideas have been around for a while, I have lately seen them discussed a lot more in many other contexts. That, combined with the fact that rapid progress is being made in unraveling the mysteries of biology and the current realization that we need a new way of thinking, makes me believe that Bio-inspiration is likely to become the Next Big Thing.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 47
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