Philomimetics: A New Perspective on the Overlap of Biosphere and Technosphere

By Dr Mark Lloyd Dickson

Abstract:
Technological applications of structures observed in nature (biomimesis) have increased dramatically
in the past few decades. Engineers drawn into the study of natural design notice a conceptual issue
arising from biological emphases on etiology. The gap between biosphere and technosphere can be
narrowed via a recognition of the anticipation of human designs that exist (and have existed) within
the living world. The fullness of such anticipated natural design is termed Philomimesis.

Keywords: biomimesis, engineering, biology, philomimesis, bioinspiration, design, optimal,

interdisciplinarity, ingenious, copying, nature, technology

Man has always tried to copy nature. The Wright brothers like many before them were inspired by
bird flight, and became the first pilots in history to fly a powered aircraft. The various designs in the
living world have always impressed inventors, and with advent of the industrial revolution, the
possibility grew ever more attractive for new technological implementations of nature’s ‘solutions’.
This ‘copying’ has been called biomimesis.

In 1948 Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral examined the burs that clung to the fur of his dog after a
hike in the local hills. Based on the biological structure he could observe, he developed a system of
hooks and loops which became available commercially in 1955 as Velcro. The arrival of Velcro
unwittingly gave expression to the dawn of a new mood. One way of observing the beginnings of this
shift is to consider the neologisms that came into use mid-century. New terminology can be a window
for viewing or tracking a rising trend. The word ‘biomimetic’1 has been linked to zoologist and
engineer Otto Schmitt2 who in the 1950’s developed what electronic designers later dubbed the
Schmitt trigger based on the zoologist’s PhD research into nerve signalling in squid.

Perhaps the biggest instigator for a technical turning to nature as a realm of ready prototypes for
copying or inspiration was the United States military. As the cold war intensified, and aware of the
arms race, America’s military generals became anxious to sustain a technological advantage. The navy
turned its attention to biosonar with the Office of Naval Research (ONR) agreeing to fund the work of
Donald Griffin and others into researching animal echolocation. One could almost say that the word
‘bionics’ owes its birth to the US military. Historian of science D.G. Burnett (2012:541) writes: “It is
difficult to capture the hold that bionics appears to have had on a significant number of biologists and
engineers in this period, particularly those linked to military funding.” The ONR also bankrolled the
first of several symposia on bionics, the inaugural one being held at the airbase in Dayton Ohio in 1960
and organised by air-force major Jack Steele who is credited with the first use of the term ‘bionic’
probably around 1958.

1
bioinspiration’ came later in 1992
2
“Historically, the term ‘biomimetics’ was first used by Otto Schmitt during the 1950s, when he made a
distinction between an engineering/physics approach to the biological sciences, which was termed
‘biophysics’, and a biological approach to engineering, which he termed biomimetics. Schmitt is also credited
with establishing the field of biomedical engineering, which now encompasses the important discipline of
biomaterials that retains its strong connections to biomimetics” (LEPORA et al, 2012)

1
A key figure in the Dayton conference was MIT neurophysiologist Warren McCullogh who two years
later was the first to use the term ‘biomimesis’3. Clearly both the US air force and navy needed no
persuading that the biosphere was brimming with ‘technology’ which if understood and applied could
enhance existing designs, and lead to the discovery of new ones, and so by 1963 had invested over
100 million USD in bionic research. The amount of money spent would be inexplicable in the absence
of a strong belief in the ‘copyability’ or ‘inspirational’ ideation available in the living world. Military
funding for biomimetic research continues to this day with the ONR as well as the Defence Advanced
Research Project Agency underwriting the work of units like the Center for Biologically Inspired Design
based at the Georgia Institute of Technology. That first symposium at Dayton sponsored by the navy
and attended by 700 delegates from many diverse fields had as its logo the Greek sigma used for
integral calculus, with one end terminating in a scalpel and the other a soldering iron. It was an
ambition ahead of its time, presaging a future that would only dawn 40 years later. Till then, the world
of biology and the world of technology for most people would remain separated like titans staring at
each other across a chasm. In the civilian academy and among science journalists the idea fixe for
most of the 20th Century was that whilst Nature was helpful for inspiring thoughts on design, she
nevertheless embodied a realm that simply cannot overlap human technology in any foundational
way.

But change was underway. In 1990 Janine Benyus coined the word ‘biomimicry’ (Benyus, 2009). She
realised that the living world was instinct with harnessable design. From her point of view, science
and technology had come of age, and accompanied by a better understanding of ecology, human
designers now enjoyed the requisite level of sophistication for improving designs in the light of the
relevant context of biological analogues. The upshot was that the anthropoteknik could be altered to
become more sustainable as designers mimicked nature and produced technology that posed a
reduced environmental threat. In 1997 Benyus published Biomimicry and wrote (1997:2): “Biomimicry
is the conscious emulation of life’s genius”. In that same year while visiting a local bookshop to check
if her book had arrived on the shelves, the store assistant expressed incredulity that a serious piece
of writing could bring together what he thought were two mutually exclusive realms: “Look lady,” the
man exclaimed, “you’ve got Nature and you’ve got Technology; you’ve got to choose one” (Benyus,
2009). Benyus recalls the sense of the “deep, deep separation between those two ideas in our culture”
(Benyus, 2009).

In the almost two decades that have since elapsed, the economic potential of a greater overlap
between technosphere and biosphere captured the attention of start-ups and industries especially in
the USA. The growth has been meteoric. Economist Lynn Reaser, based with the Fermanian Business
and Economic Institute (FBEI) in San Diego, developed what she called the ‘Da Vinci Index’.
Recognising that the renaissance inventor was inspired by his study of biology, the Da Vinci Index
measures how frequently bioinspiration terms (like biomimesis, biomimicry, bionic etc.) make an
appearance in grant applications, various patents and in scientific journals. The index provides some
idea of how rapidly the field of bio-inspired research and innovation is growing. Reaser’s estimates
published in the 2013 report by FBEI show a 5-fold increase in the Da Vinci Index since 2000, and
predict that by 2030, “bioinspiration could account for $425 billion of U.S. gross domestic product
(GDP) in terms of 2013 dollars” (Gallagher et al, 2013).

It is intriguing to ask why the world should have waited so long for biomimetics to come of age. There
are several reasons, but the most interesting one is also the most unsettling. This has to do with how

3
In McCullogh’s mind, biomimesis referred to “all areas in which one organism copies another” (1962:393).

2
we all view the living world. We assume we are looking the handiwork of ‘Mother Nature’ when we
observe naturally occurring ‘designs' but the ever increasing overlap between the biosphere and the
technosphere in the area of design implies that there is something wrong with our vision.

At much the same time as Biomimicry appeared, Steven Vogel published Cats paws and catapults. An
influential scientific thinker and author, Vogel gave expression to the essential separation between
engineering and biology at much the same time as Benyus was calling on the two disciplines to begin
a new dialogue. For Vogel the two disciplines in principle each speak a different language whereas for
Benyus the communication problem existed due to a certain type of ignorance of the living world. In
1998 Vogel was quite jaundiced about the future of biomimesis and was seemingly unaware of the
huge shift beginning to take place. He was scathing of anyone who suggested that the realm of nature
is brim-full of arrangements that can greatly aid the human architect or engineer.
Design expert Victor Papanek is one such person singled out for harsh criticism. Papanek had written
in 19714: “One handbook that has not yet gone out of style, and predictably never will, is the handbook
of nature. Here, in the totality of biological and biochemical systems, the problems humankind faces
have already been met and solved, and through analogues, met and solved optimally”. Vogel cites
this paragraph and says that such thinking made him cringe. Half a century later it seems clear that
Papanek had in fact been anticipating biomimicry, and partly due to that prescience encountered a
great deal of opposition driven by an entrenched view of nature and natural design.

Vogel’s position arises largely from the commitment to a certain take on ‘naturalistic design’ which
assumes that designs in nature cannot be all that good since nature ‘seeks’ a design that merely works;
she doesn’t want a perfect solution. From this perspective, ‘perfect’ means optimal. Engineers
shouldn’t be able to see too much ‘perfection’ or optimality owing to the fact that living systems in
Vogel’s view only needed to evolve their designs just enough to survive. He writes (1998:9,10):

I want to inject an element of sobriety into our romantic view of living things. The
elegance of natural design seduced a lot of us into becoming biologists. Nature does
what she does very well indeed. But - and here’s the rub - why should she do so in
the best possible way? And, why should she provide a model for what we want to
do? I want to ruffle our tendency to view nature as the gold standard for design,
and as a great source of technological breakthroughs…”

Vogel as the father of biomechanics thus helped incline educated opinion away from thinking that
engineers should spend time analysing nature because the process that biologists are so committed
to places limits5 on the product. In this view engineers could and should be told by biologists
(scientists) that the evolutionary process places strong constraints on what engineers can see.6

4
Papanek, V. 1971. Design for the real world. New York : Random House
5
Vogel also writes (2003:15): “…the designs of nature must be imperfect. At the very least, perfection would
require an infinite number of generations in an unchanging world, and a fixed world requires not only a stable
physical environment but a preposterous scenario in which no competing species underwent evolutionary
change. Furthermore, we’re dealing with an incremental process of trial and error. In such a scheme, major
innovation is no simple matter—features that will ultimately prove useful will rarely persist through stages in
which they do no good.”
6
“Engineering has always had second-class status in the intellectual world. From Leonardo da Vinci to Charles
Babbage to Thomas Edison, the engineering genius has always been acclaimed but nevertheless regarded with
a certain measure of condescension by the mandarin elite of science and the arts” (Dennett, 1996:188).

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In the 21st Century this changed. Engineers have now found themselves considering that if they should
observe optimality and genius7 in nature (and observe it with increasing clarity), then they should
speak up. Chris Calladine, an engineer, writes (1998:66): “When we contemplate some biological
structures, at whatever scale, we see designs that compel description by adjectives such as ‘ingenious’,
‘sophisticated’ or ‘subtle’, and which may act as a stimulus for our own design thinking and activity.”
A new mood was on the rise substantiating Daniel Dennett’s conclusion (1996:187) that: “…the
engineering perspective on biology is not merely occasionally useful, not merely a valuable option,
but is the obligatory organizer of all Darwinian thinking, and the primary source of its power.”
Some biologists too began to realise that the systems they were scrutinising embodied rather clever
mechanisms that required engineering expertise for analysis. Zoologist Frank Fish had the inkling that
the tubercles on the leading edges of humpback whale flippers held out the possibility of a new
discovery. However, demonstrating more adequately the workings of these sinusoidal shaped
structures as well as dreaming up a bioinspired application clearly required the involvement of
engineers. Fish teamed up with Laurens E. Howle, a mechanical engineer and expert in fluid dynamics,
who in turn enlisted the help of engineers working for the US navy (Miklosovic et al, 2004:39). In the
process Fish and Howle discovered that the physics of airflow over a leading edge needed adjustment.
It could now be confirmed that the bumps produced an 8 percent improvement in lift when compared
to the smooth leading-edge flipper found on other cetaceans. Such a discovery has had of course
important ramifications for improved designs in aeronautics and wind turbines.
In another example, zoologist Malcolm Burrows teamed up with engineer Gregory Sutton to
investigate the jumping mechanism in a small planthopper.8 An animal possessing functional
mechanical cogs certainly suggests the merit of engineering scrutiny. After providing close analysis of
the gear operation in the insect, Burrows and Sutton conclude (2013:1256): “The gears in Issus, like
the screw in the femora of beetles, demonstrate that mechanisms previously thought only to be used
in human-made machines have evolved in nature.”

The technosphere’s growing enamorment with the biosphere is rooted in the notion that ‘living
machinery’ demonstrates the very best design pathway. Researcher into marine adhesives Herbert
Waite writes (2010:v): “Like many graduate students before and after me I was mesmerized by a
proposition expressed years earlier by Krogh9 (1929) – namely that ‘for many problems there is an
animal on which it can be most conveniently studied’. This maxim became known as the August Krogh
Principle and remains much discussed to this day, particularly among comparative physiologists.”10
An intriguing idea begins to surface: what if the biosphere in some way mirrors the technosphere not
just occasionally, but throughout the totality of design space? What if biomimetics is the subset of a
much greater and more profound relationship? This certainly would explain why engineers
contemplating natural design today are so ready to look and learn despite the strong voices in the
latter half of the 20th century that have attempted to provide a dissuasion.

7
Engineer Chris Calladine writes (1998:65): “The word ‘ingenious’…has the same root as ‘engineer’: an
engineer is one who finds ingenious solutions to difficult problems (The corresponding words - ingenieux,
ingenieur - are closer in French).”
8
Issus coleoptratus
9
August Krogh received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1920 for his research into blood flow in
capillaries and oxygen use during muscular activity.
10
Mayo clinic anesthesiologist Michael Joyner says that we need to remember Nobel Prize laureate August
Krogh and his principle as cited by Hans Kreb and ask what comparative animal models exist that might
provide insight into a human problem like osteoporosis? As an example Joyner cites the work of Utz et al
(2009) titled ‘Bone strength is maintained after 8 months of inactivity in hibernating golden-mantled ground
squirrels, Spermophilus lateralis’ [Web:] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG8lszogw_E [Date of access: 1
Dec. 2018].

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The unsettling reason mentioned earlier for the impediment to the biomimetic impulse resurfaces at
this point. Perhaps our view of Nature has been inadequate. This state of affairs has arisen because
of a very old assumption that what we see must always be qualified by what we think we know.
Biomimetic researcher and engineer Jessica Currie writes (2010:21,22): “Having a preconceived idea
about whether or not a specific biological phenomenon is useful could conceivably lead to the
premature dismissal of potentially useful phenomena.” As expressed by someone in another
context11: “We think what we are seeing is objectively true, but actually we are constantly curating
our experience to fit in with what we already know.” Up till the dawn of the 21st Century (and even
up till the present for some) we have thought we know that the results of evolution must always be
incomplete. The theory demands that evolution never halts, and that organisms continue to develop
and change as time goes by. If we choose an organism to examine, we are only looking at a snapshot
that belongs to a vast series, or so we imagine. Therefore, when a biologist looks at an animal, she
doesn’t allow herself to see a static completed pattern or ‘design’, but instead a provisional ‘end
product’ of a whole line of evolutionary precursors leading up to the creature we now see, and which
itself will give way to yet another form as time goes by. In this way there is no such thing as perfected
or optimal design.
As Vogel said: there is no gold standard. Biologists Fish and Beneski concur (2014:308) and write:

It is necessary to understand evolution with its inherent limitations to all possible

designs. The technology that nature has evolved is not always ahead of the
technology of human ingenuity (Vogel 1998). Only by understanding evolution and
how organisms have adapted to their present and past environments can one avoid
the pitfalls of overstatement regarding biomimicry.

Fish and Beneski (2014:269) have also said that people in general mistakenly think that natural
systems will be optimal, and explain that the reason for this is because those same people don’t really
understand evolution. Anyone who nods in agreement to the repeated claim in the literature that
perfect or optimal biological solutions have been arrived at in the laboratory of life over millions of
years will be surprised to hear from Fish and Beneski that this kind of thinking betrays a deep
misunderstanding of evolution (2014:288). These biologists argue that since evolution is not a
conscious process it is simply not possible for it to reach what is optimal or perfect. They prefer the
term ‘out-perform’ instead of ‘optimal’ and they use the former to explain the situation where a
natural system could be more advanced than the engineered system.

However, engineers increasingly give voice to their impression that they can indeed see optimal design
in nature. The gold standard seems to be there after all. Along with physiologists, engineers who study
living systems are pushing back against the old hegemony and now insist they no longer need to
qualify the world of observation with constant recourse to a particular theory of incremental change
over deep time. Engineers who analyse living things have no need for the Crickerian12 mantra:
“Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved”.
To all intents and purposes, designers in the 21st Century propose that they should treat the living
world as though the ‘watchmaker’ were closer to what Paley thought he was: clear sighted, and not
quite as blind as Dawkins has described. Even leading physiologists like Denis Noble are beginning to
accord the watchmaker with sight again (Noble & Noble, 2017).

11
Watt Smith cites Lisa Feldman Barrett (2018:55)
12
Francis Crick, co-discover of the helical structure of the DNA molecule in 1953 and for which he was he was
jointly awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology authored this quote (1998:138).

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But what about bad design (dysteleology) in nature? Is it not the case that the textbook examples of
maladaptation provide a strong counter to the arguments so far? Surely suboptimality points in the
direction of a blind designer? The inverted retina is a classic as Dawkins (1986:93) points out:

Any engineer would naturally assume that the photocells would point towards the
light, with their wires leading backwards towards the brain. He would laugh at any
suggestion that the photocells might point away from the light, with their wires
departing on the side nearest the light. Yet this is exactly what happens in all
vertebrate retinas. Each photocell is, in effect, wired in backwards, with its wire
sticking out on the side nearest the light. The wire has to travel over the surface of
the retina, to a point where it dives through a hole in the retina (the so-called 'blind
spot') to join the optic nerve. This means that the light, instead of being granted an
unrestricted passage to the photocells, has to pass through a forest of connecting
wires, presumably suffering at least some attenuation and distortion (actually
probably not much but, still, it is the principle of the thing that would offend any
tidy-minded engineer!)

Dawkins had no idea in the 1980’s that further study of the eye would eventually reveal truly
marvellous engineering. Vertebrate eye researchers Franze et al (2007:8291) write:

… the optical properties and geometry of Müller cells are consistent with those of
optical fibres so that they serve as low-scattering conduits for light through the
retina…the end-feet of Müller cells cover the entire inner retinal surface and have a
low refractive index, allowing a highly efficient entry of light from the vitreous into
the Müller…at the same time, the increasing refractive index together with their
funnel shape at nearly constant light-guiding capability make them ingeniously
designed light collectors… Müller cells in the retina assume the role of optical fibers
and reliably transfer light with low scattering from the retinal surface to the
photoreceptor cell layer.

As time goes by, tidy-minded engineers are becoming increasingly impressed with the engineering
design of the eye, along with its ingenious use of fibre optic cabling. No wonder we see so well! A
clever human designer who had the job of designing the eye and who had access to fibre-optics might
well choose the inverted retina given that such a system solves all sorts of engineering problems!

In commenting on the intention of his book Cats Paws and catapults Vogel writes (1998:19): “So is this
a book about copying nature? Emphatically not. As we'll see, on surprisingly few occasions has
copying proved useful.” This has been a natural reflex for biologists. When researcher Sharon
Gerbode says13 that “few people have studied biological mechanisms from the point of view of a
physicist or an engineer” she in essence laments a situation where previously people in the academy
thought that the world of living things should be studied and delineated only by biologists.

13
[Web:] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120830141223.htm [Date of access: 1 Dec. 2018].
The article is titled “Uncoiling the cucumber's enigma: Biological mechanism for coiling, and unusual type of
spring discovered”. Gerbode goes on to say: “We barely had to scratch the surface with this question about
the cucumber - how does it coil? What could be a simpler question? And what we actually found was this new
kind of spring that no one had characterized before." Successes like this increasingly abound and suggest that
nature is extremely conducive to an engineering approach.

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In discussions about biomimesis it is often said that copying nature is nearly impossible to do.
However, the issue is: what is meant by ‘copying’? It should be obvious that exact mimicking is pretty
near impossible since that would imply reproducing in the copy the precise chemical and biological
structure of the original. No one really expects that sort of copy. But the transfer of an idea from
biology to technology – well, is that copying? Much of what happens in biomimesis turns out to be
just that. The originators of a new technology may say that they were bioinspired but in reality they
have ‘stolen’ the idea from nature. An author may claim that she was inspired by a certain piece of
literature, but on inspection the examiner may suspect ‘inspired’ is a euphemism for plagiarism.
Although the wording might be different, the ideas clearly come from another source.
In 1995 Hoy, Robert and Miles published their amazing discovery of the novel miniature mechanism
at work in the audition of a tiny parasitic fly.14 The researchers found an ‘intertympanal bridge’ joining
the two pits which house the fly ‘eardrums’. This mechanism proved to be a novel mechanical
amplifier unknown15 to engineers up till that time. Engineer Ronald Miles who had conducted the
original research into the fly acoustical amplifier led a team who in 2013 produced a prototype hearing
aid based on this discovery. When compared to other hearing aids, the one inspired by the fly is
strikingly superior.
People wishing to play down the importance of biomimesis usually emphasise the disconnect: we can’t
copy i.e. we can’t build two tympanal pits, with membranes, and with a tympanal bridge as an exact
bioreplication. Of course this limitation is true, provided one insists on a rigorous exact copy. But the
mechanism instantiated in the Ormia design is so ingenious, that once understood by an engineer it
doesn’t take long to think16 of ways to implement the basic idea using different materials and a human-
designed system. Yet when engineers do this, even though they claim to have been bioinspired, they
have nevertheless copied from nature. Bio-inspiration has occurred, but it is also more than that.
Nature retains the patent. The way in which the problem of locating the source of the sound is solved
(in the case of Ormia) by amplifying the differences between two ‘microphones’ via a mechanical
coupling, this design originated in nature.

Attention has been drawn to the distinction between strong and weak biomimicry proposed by Blok
and Gremmen (Dicks, 2017:198). The latter authors write (2016:207) that the key idea in strong
biomimicry is the notion of ‘copying’ due to nature’s prior possession of all the solutions to human
problems:

The strong concept of biomimicry is represented by Janine Benyus. She

conceptualizes biomimicry in a naturalistic way as imitation of nature’s models in
order to solve human problems. The main objective of biomimicry is to ‘‘echo’’ the
ideas of nature in our own lives: biomimetic scientists ‘‘are exploring nature’s
masterpieces—photosynthesis, self-assembly, natural selection, self-sustaining
ecosystems, eyes and ears and skin and shells, talking neurons, natural medicines,
and more—and then copying these designs and manufacturing processes to solve
our own problems

14
Ormia ochracea
15
The principle of amplifying the differences between two receivers is not new, and was invented by Alan
Blumlein during the beginnings of stereo audio in 1931. “The essence of the mechanical response of Ormia’s
ears has been shown to be a mechanical realization of a simple sum and difference circuit invented by
Blumlein” (Miles et al, 2009:2013). It should be noted that the mechanical instantiation found in Ormia is
entirely new as an engineering concept, and may never have been thought of apart from the study of this fly.
16
Making the ideas work in a device or system may take time of course.

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Blok and Gremmen (2016:207) go on to outline the weak form of biomimicry which emphasises
‘bioinspiration’ as the key idea. However, the way these authors define bioinspiration arguably does
not distinguish it categorically from the strong view.

The upshot is that the ‘copying’ of nature has been going on for a long time, and more recently has
experienced a meteoric rise. The implication is quite startling: engineers who are copying natural
designs are inadvertently providing profound philosophical approval of those very designs.
Philosophically speaking, this constitutes a ‘back effect’ of the uncovering of a natural gold standard.
Biomimesis, it turns out, is saying something on an ever increasing scale that is quite extraordinary
about nature herself.

An interesting exercise in understanding the ‘back effect’ is to list all the ‘solutions’ or anticipations of
the anthropoteknik undertaken by nature. The result is a seemingly endless repository of optimal
designs covering every single aspect of engineering. Living systems abound in the actual examples or
functional analogues which Dawkins (2004:450) cites as “echo-ranging (bats – this is sonar),
electrolocation (platypus), the dam (beaver), the parabolic reflector (limpet), the infrared heat-
seeking sensor (some snakes), the hypodermic syringe (wasps, snakes and scorpions), the harpoon
(cnidarians) and jet propulsion (squids).” This list can be extended to include: automatic focus lens,
wheel, axle, gears, clutch, brake, ratchet, Archimedean screw, nut and bolt, springs, pulley, shock
absorber, gasket, trigger, ballistic missile, gun, machine gun, explosive, bomb, pulsed jet, drill, pump,
chemical catalysts, electric motor, radiator (and heat exchange), parachute, wings, winglets, propeller,
helicopter, outboard motor, rudder, ballast tank, compass, gyroscope, strain gauge, paper, telephone,
microphone, amplifier, stereo, fibre optics, fibre optic plates (FOP), trichromatic resolution, electric
battery, barbs, iron-plated armour, taser, radar (sonar mentioned earlier), megaphone,
countermeasures, optical tracking, conveyor belt, light polarizers, segmented mirror, antireflective
coating, antibiotics, gardening, farming, thermostat, architectural climate control, clock, calendar,
face recognition, codes, Turing machines (which are computers), error checking and correction – the
list goes on and on.

Previously it was possible to downplay or even dismiss such a list by pointing out that it could easily
be the product of a way-of-seeing, the unfortunate result of what happens when nature is lensed
through anthropic glasses. “Metaphorical description” has sufficed in the past to put such supposed
naiveté in its place and assert that whilst it may suit engineers to term for example the electric eel’s
prey-disabling system as a ‘taser’, all of us know that at bottom this is merely the use of metaphor.
This response however appears increasingly weak in the face of the kind of success biomimesis enjoys.
It seems unreasonable today to discountenance the objective design functionality present in the
biosphere that truly corresponds to or underlies the engineering innovation within the technosphere.
How could mere metaphor provide engineering warrant for biomimesis?

The adduced repository could be termed a ‘‘fullness of design’, by which is meant a set of elements
that approach completeness: a full exploration of the design space, especially if summed over the
history of the living world. Many structures of course have gone extinct thereby limiting current
observation and analysis. However, biomimetic insight gleaned from fossilized remains suggest a
former biosphere more richly endowed with design.17 This fullness of design past and present is

17 Australian evolutionary biologist and author Andrew Parker has analysed bygone design: “On the eye of a 45-million-
year-old fly trapped in amber he saw in a museum in Warsaw, Poland, he noticed microscopic corrugations that reduced
light reflection which are now being built into solar panels.” To Parker the collection of animals in the museum of Natural

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connected to something that is here denominated by the term Philomimesis. Philomimesis describes
a view that argues that all human technological designs have been anticipated within the natural
realm, at least in principle. In this way one could equate the technosphere with the biosphere via the
term ‘philomimesis’ which means ‘love to copy’. Whereas biomimesis describes the activity of
deliberate ‘copying’ of a feature or design principle from a living system, philomimesis speaks of a
situation where the entirety of human design in the final analysis will reveal nothing ontologically
novel in a design space already fully explored in nature. Whatever is produced by the human mind by
way of engineering design will in fact have a philomimetic counterpart in the totalised realm18 of
natural design.
Philomimesis could be extended to include mathematical formulation as well, and may be another
way of describing Eugene Wigner’s famous 1960 paper `The unreasonable effectiveness of
mathematics in the natural sciences.’ Philomimesis envisages an even bigger idea than what Daniel
Dennett had in mind when he mused: “there is just one Design Space, after all, in which the offspring
of both our bodies and our minds are united under one commodious set of R-and-D processes”
(Dennett, 1996:189). If technosphere and biosphere are mapped in this way, one could say that we
are presented with a situation where, so to speak, mind meets ‘mind’. That is not to say that all
inventing is conscious copying. Instead, simply put, it is that after human minds have invented, it will
be subsequently discovered that nature invented it first – at least in principle. Educated thinkers and
scientists have often felt that their discoveries are something that have already existed in the world
but which the investigator has merely uncovered. Nobel Prize physicist Chandrasekhar (1987:ix)
writes: “In some strange way, any new fact or insight that I may have found has not seemed to me as
a discovery of mine, but rather as something that had always been there and that I had chanced to
pick up.”

I said earlier that Philomimesis argues for the idea that ‘all human technological designs have been
anticipated within the natural realm, at least in principle’. The phrase ‘in principle’ might seem
problematic at first. If living systems are said to closely resemble their technological counterparts, it
can be asked: how closely?
Take the case of the weevil Trigonopterus oblongus. The insect has a nut and bolt system for attaching
each leg to its body. The similarities between natural design and engineered design impressed
researchers Van der Kamp et al. Their paper (2011) begins with this comparison: “In many animals,
movement relies on joints between skeletal features, analogous to joints between moving parts of
mechanical machines. Some, such as ball-and-socket joints, are readily found in both living organism
and mechanical engineering, whereas others are restricted to one of these realms.” They go on to say
(2011:52): “the apical19 portions of the coxae20 closely resemble engineered screw nuts”. Attention is
also drawn to the fact that there is a stabilising hole in the inside of the coxa which transforms the
rotating trochanter21 into what could be seen as an axle. The engineering understanding, I argue, for
this bit of innovation is arguably to prevent jamming or relieve undue stress on the screw thread. All

History is “a treasure-trove of brilliant design…every species, even those that have gone extinct, is a success story,
optimized by millions of years of natural selection” (Mueller, 2008:62).
18 One could say that Philomimesis is a counterpart to Friedrich Dessauer’s (1881-1963) view of technological invention as

arising from the discovery of “preestablished ideal solutions to technical problems” present in a realm completely separate
to nature and via which humans give expression in continuity with a quasi-divine creatio continua (Mitcham, 1994:32). Carl
Mitcham calls Dessauer “the father of the philosophy of technology as a recognized academic discipline” (1986:5).
Philomimesis however contradicts Dessauer’s assumption that human inventions are entirely new and alien to the designs
found in the world of living things.
19 Apical means ‘top’
20 Coxae are the ‘nuts’ on the weevil body into which are threaded the legs.
21 A trochanter is a leg

9
of this is the language of engineering. The thought-world of engineers and engineering permeates the
paper.
One can ask: how closely does the weevil nut and bolt system resemble human technology? Engineers
would say that the resemblance is uncanny.22 But what about the axle effect? To a biologist the weevil
leg at its tip has a sharpened point which goes through a hole in each coxa. To an engineer, the weevil
leg once fully turned into its coxa requires a stabilising anchor hole so as to reduce the turning moment
being exerted on the screw thread. This latter arrangement is an axle23 in principle even if it doesn’t
look like an axle at first blush to biologists. When it comes to analysing living systems, engineers and
biologist do not see the same things.

There are benefits to the notion of Philomimesis. The first is that it draws the technosphere and
biosphere much more closely together. Bathed in philomimetic light, human technology can be seen
not as alien but instead as deeply linked to the world of living things. Over time, humans have
produced what Nature has anticipated for ages. In profound ways, human designers are only copiers.
Some of our designs reveal a copying that is deliberate and obviously ‘inspired’ by what we see in
biosystems, but most of our designs did not arise through conscious emulation. Yet despite the latter
we find that nature has gone ahead of us and explored all of ‘human’ designs prior to their emergence
as artifacts. The natural world it seems is a storehouse of patents. A new picture of human
inventiveness becomes nascent, one that finds profound ‘like-mindedness’24 to natural design, as well
as a seemingly inexplicable deep affinity. Lyn Reaser’s Da Vinci index may have ontic overtones.
The second benefit is that philomimetic biomimesis offers enormous spin-offs and rewards for study
and analysis. All sorts of ‘technologies’ exist in the fullness of natural design that if ‘discovered’ would
enhance knowledge and human industry. Young minds that make a study of biomimesis or biomimicry
will find the Krogh principle to be pretty robust and able to repay the effort expended.
The third benefit to accepting the notion of philomimesis is the accompanying stimulation of new
dialogue between biology and engineering. In regard to evolutionary theory, the notion of
philomimesis suggests that not all animal systems are able to undergo iterative evolution ad infinitum.
Many natural designs show an engineering optimisation that cannot be improved upon. Perhaps this
partly explains the morphological stasis of so many animals over time, even deep time. In regard to
analysis of living systems, biologists should therefore embrace the need to learn something about
engineers and engineering. This would mean that interdisciplinarity becomes a desideratum for
tertiary training.
The fourth benefit centres on the philosophical import of interdisciplinarity. Human knowledge
cannot remain in silos of independent disciplines. Almost every month someone in the world uncovers
a new facet of the living the world that reveals new and unbelievable ‘technology’. Nobel laureate

22 The news of a natural nut and bolt system was greeted with amazement by science journalists: “Think nuts and bolts are
exclusive to mechanics and engineers? Think again. The Trigonopterus oblongus weevil has been has been using the
mechanism in its hips for 100 million years.” Another wrote: “Until now, the screw-and-nut system was thought to be a
human innovation.” Another: “Many kinds of human engineering have biological equivalents - the most famous is
probably the ball and socket joint, which is found in car steering columns and human arms alike. The newest and weirdest
example is insects with screw-and-nut legs”
23 There are other examples of axles in biology. At a macro level the free moving crystalline style is found in the stomach of

some mollusks and can rotate up to 500 rpm. At a molecular level there are examples of axles in certain molecular motors.
24 Biomimeticists Vincent et al have argued (2006:471) that engineering solutions have only a 12% overlap with biological

solutions. This seems very low. Perhaps the 12% overlap is telling us not so much about how biology does things differently
to engineers (thereby emphasising a fundamental difference), but rather about how TRIZ, a Russian inventive system, has
important lacks (thereby emphasising human limitations when not being inspired by biosphere). If TRIZ has deficiencies,
these will be attributable in part to the deficiencies in the patents, and therefore to the engineering solutions that they
embody. If in fact biology were in some way a repository of ideal designs then TRIZ could be updated and adjusted against
that.

10
May-Britt Moser’s discovery of the brain’s grid cells which create a spatial geometry for navigation
reminiscent of GPS elicited her exclamation: “no, this isn't possible. This isn't biology – it's crazy!” Such
exclamations are part and parcel of the world of the polymath. We are witnessing the rise of a new
breed of interdisciplinarian.

Surely what scientific discovery needs today is a new stereoscopy combining two perspectives
(biological and engineering) into one, thereby producing a new vision: a clearer view of what is in fact
a biotechnosphere, one that underpins the phenomenon of Philomimesis.

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