Moving away from the "logical mechanics" worlds

1. Moving away from the "logical mechanics" worlds.

by Alex Lemille

We have recently come to comprehend critical "relationships" – I would call them – as humans: the first one is that the answer to our chronological patterns may be found in the way natural systems evolve, the second one, is that we need to move away from believing in and seeing the world-as-a-machine.

The human related economic system sits within the overarching biological system and not the contrary!

We are part of an extraordinary complex world of natural processes that do not follow a linear or an exact science, at least, not one we are capable of understanding today. As professor Thomas Homer-Dixon, Ph.D., at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada says: "We need to shift from seeing the world as composed largely of simple machines to seeing it as composed mainly of complex systems".

We are at the inception of trying to apprehend a lot more of these extraordinary structures through biomimicry: the imitation of models, systems, and elements that constitute our planet for the purpose of solving complex human problems. And guess what? We are getting numerous answers and surprisingly innovative solutions! "Learning about the natural world is one thing, learning from the natural world is something else" as Janine Benyus, founder of the Biomimicry Institute, puts it, through our advanced sciences "we’ve looked at the ‘software side’ but not at the ‘hardware side’" i.e. of how we have created machines and goods we live with. By looking and mimicking our living world we have started to learn on how to do better products, for instance, finding more reliable building material thanks to minerals shaped by seashells, or mimicking lotuses to use rain water cleaning systems for our buildings, or even, appreciate how the Namibian Beatle quenches its thirst by dragging water out of the fog. Pulling water this way could become a key technology for our water consumption in the years to come, especially in a water-scarce country like ours.

The second thing we have recently learnt is that world does not function like a well-oiled machine as Newton concluded in the 17th century. In "The Clockwork Universe" book the world was seen as a giant mechanism operating with an exact automated regularity. It took seventy years to accept Newton’s idea by the then authorities. Yet centuries later we still believe the dogma of a predictable, understandable and controllable world in which we live in. Maybe at the exception that we - more than ever - start to realise that very little is known and, irreversible actions that were taken during our industrial era now need a quick fix – or I should say an ‘ordered complex’ and slow localised fix, by the name of the multiple system types we are part of…