Rating: 
Summary: Evocative and Charming
Review: I immensely enjoyed this book. Maybe it was because it seems to have accomplished what it set out to do. I do not believe the goal was to convert us all into diehard Biomimics; no, instead it merely opens our eyes to those wonders of the world which might normally go unseen. The strength of a spider's delicate weave, the incredible energy collecting mechanisms of a leaf, the 'better than Kevlar' resistance of abalone shell. I was only vaguely aware of these properties prior to reading this book. Now I know enough to carry a good conversation, yet thankfully not enough to draw schematics. As in nature, the key is balance, and Janine Benyus accomplishes this brilliantly with her book.
I'm always relieved when the author eases us out of and into the science with a bit of an anecdote. Don't get me wrong, this book is very educational, but I couldn't help but be charmed by the charismatic flair that characterizes her writing. She seems a person who never fails to marvel at the beauty found just around the corner. From this, she shares with us not only her fascination of the world, but of the extraordinary people who study it. I judge a book by the way it is able to shape and inform my approach to life. 'Biomimicry' has moved me in such a way that it is hard not to simply stop, take a breath, look around, and laugh whole heartedly at the sheer briliance of it.
Rating: 
Summary: disappointed
Review: I ordered this book with great expectations based upon the excellent reviews that it had obtained. Personally I could not finish the book. I had wished for something that would speak of the philosophy of biomimicry. Instead I found a rapidfire, dotcom style, gee whiz book that runs without much depth (though much wide eyed wonder) and seems to spend an excessive amount of time on the personalities behind the science. When you read a thoughtful book on a new subject by an author who has a commnad over it, you can feel it after a few pages. This book, to me, did not deliver that feeling.
Rating:
Summary: disappointed
Review: I ordered this book with great expectations based upon the excellent reviews that it had obtained. Personally I could not finish the book. I had wished for something that would speak of the philosophy of biomimicry. Instead I found a rapidfire, dotcom style, gee whiz book that runs without much depth (though much wide eyed wonder) and seems to spend an excessive amount of time on the personalities behind the science. When you read a thoughtful book on a new subject by an author who has a commnad over it, you can feel it after a few pages. This book, to me, did not deliver that feeling.
Rating: 
Summary: Nature Chrome in Tool and Law
Review: In Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, the sophisticated *almost* pro-growth angle of Benyus shows the great potential profitability of copying some of nature's time-tested, nonpolluting, room-temperature manufacturing and computing technologies. The colors of Benyus, a splendid Stevensville, Montana writer with an eclectic grasp of quick-moving science, contain far more shades of green than chrome. Rhetorically at least, the ultimate attraction of technologies such as three-plus-billion-year-old photosynthesis that scientists are now trying to "biomimic" is that the techniques nature has evolved are more sophisticated and efficient, less disruptive and destructive than the Promethean pyrotechnics that have made humanity the new kid on the evolutionary block. Like someone who has made a fortune trading fast-growing speculative stocks but must now provide for her retirement by switching to safer, lower yielding bonds, ecologic suggests that the fossil fuel economies that have gotten us thus far will soon be bankrupt and that, if we don't switch to safer modes of sustenance, we will take a major hit, perhaps even extinction. Benyus is dead on: There *is* an artful science embedded in living nature that makes the realm of regular celestial motions, once believed to be perfect and divine, look robotically stupid by comparison. But science, whose great early advances came in uncovering the relatively predictable activities of inanimate objects, has lately found success in examining more complex and chaotic structures the shiniest example of which, of course, is life. Social critic Walter Benjamin pointed out that sometimes the extreme case rather than the average is exemplary. Likewise, theoretical biologist Robert Rosen suggests that biology may be the more generally instructive science of which physics is a local application And inventive Benyus shows once and for all the utter technological superiority of would-be "lower" life forms--the underwater superglue made by mussels, spider dragline silk which ounce-for-ounce is five times stronger than steel and five-times more shatterproof than bulletproof Kevlar, medicinal herb-collecting bears and chimps. Imagine an undiscovered planet in our solar system consisting of intensely advanced life forms that had perfected waste management, parallel shape-based molecular computing, and nanotechnological materials processing billions of years ago. Such a planet exists. It is our own. Benyus had the genius to recognize nature's own genius and make scientists' attempts to copy it the theme of a popular book. Brava. Amusingly, however, when she talks about "the living, breathing examples of sustainability" held up by biomimics as natural models we humans should now emulate, she uses a technological metaphor: at this crucial juncture in our evolution as a species, natural technology is "lighting the runway home." This can be read as an unconscious nod to the petroleum-based collossus involved at many levels in the printing and distribution of the book, and the standing irony that any truly powerful program to subvert the present "unsustainable" ecological impact of humans is likely to employ the very technology (such as petroleum-fed global transportation) it criticizes.Which begs a brutal question. How will we get back to nature? Benyus evokes an ecological "canon" she says can be used as a template for our technology. A natural system should run on sunlight (but do cats?), it should use only the energy it needs (but even our cells store energy), it should fit form to function (do penguins?), it should recycle everything (but no single organism does), it should bank on diversity (but after fire, nuclear explosion and other crises certain organisms grow wildly, priming the area for followers), it should curb excess from within (ok, but excess creates the luxury which leads to new innovation), and it should be beautiful (why not?). This is a noble list. What needs to be clarified, however, is the larger evolutionary perspective. The ecological "canon" of emulatable processes displayed by nonhuman nature cannot be conflated with nature per se. We are about to embark on an oft-travelled ecological adjustment made by many organisms which, finding a formerly unused resource, grow wildly and then are forced to deal with the literal spoils of their victory. The energy from the sun which runs through all life is ultimately a Pandoran excess that cannot be closed up and kept tidy. The global environment, like Rome in its senescence, will always be open to organisms evolving new ways to plunder it. Like other pioneer species except on a larger, global scale, we must now temper our populousness and foment the diversity of biological maturity (leading to sensescence) not because of any intrinsic evil but because of the dangers, mostly to ourselves, caused by our own fabulously innovative growth. Billions of years ago, when cyanobacteria tapped into water as a source of hydrogen, the free oxygen they produced as waste was no evolutionary breath of fresh air. Rather, the reactive gas burnt the tissues of all organisms that had not evolved to tolerate or use it, especially the creators who found themselves in the gas's midst. Our puritanical hyperbole needs a Swift to kick it. "Power," as Nietzsche, who disparaged the use of mechanical over natural metaphors, observed over a century ago, "makes stupid." Our ability to tap into Earth's resources to power our own growth has brought us to something even more annoying than the brink of population or standard-of-living collapse: our own stupidity. Books like Benyus's-which should be required reading at corporations, I would imagine-reminds us that in the long run moderation pays.
Rating:
Summary: Biomimicry
Review: Lamentamos hacerlo en espanol, pero hemos hecho un gran esfuerzo en leerlo en ingles. Es un libro que nos ha servido mucho para afirmarnos en la lucha por el medio ambiente Argentino.Muy importante por los principios de procesos de transmision de energia sin contaminar. Sus palabras nos parece que pintan nuestra realidad de la agricultura dependiente del petroleo y de los imputs en lugar de mantener y aumentar la productividad natural de nuestro suelo. Agradecemos a Janine Benyus el aliento para poder continuar en una batalla que parece perdida antes de iniciarla Sorry do not write in English GRR Grupo de Reflexion Rural
Rating: 
Summary: Biomimicry
Review: Ms. Benyus's book was for the most part enjoyable to read giving many perspectives of this new emerging science. The book was well written and many of her arguments were compelling. One element was terribly troubling, however, her constant reference to evolution as the source of all things natural. Evolution is the biggest farce of modern science and has been proven invalid in so many ways that to use it as the argument of origins diminishes the value of her work. As I read her book, I kept thinking at each reference to evolution that if she had just left that unsaid or that reference to evolution out, none of the force of her conviction would have been lost. Instead I kept reeling from the evolutionary references. It is too bad that she did not stick to true science.
Rating:
Summary: Biomimicry
Review: Ms. Benyus's book was for the most part enjoyable to read giving many perspectives of this new emerging science. The book was well written and many of her arguments were compelling. One element was terribly troubling, however, her constant reference to evolution as the source of all things natural. Evolution is the biggest farce of modern science and has been proven invalid in so many ways that to use it as the argument of origins diminishes the value of her work. As I read her book, I kept thinking at each reference to evolution that if she had just left that unsaid or that reference to evolution out, none of the force of her conviction would have been lost. Instead I kept reeling from the evolutionary references. It is too bad that she did not stick to true science.
Rating:
Summary: Evangelical - in the best sense.
Review: My curiosity about the book was piqued primarily because I believed I would learn about the latest and most inoovative methods of engineering that emulate natural engineering. Indeed, that curiosity was satisfied, but, holy cow, did I get a whole lot more. The book unfurls an entirely new and exhilarating paradigm for human enterprise, both scientific and economic. It is written personally and with warmth and excitement. It has centrally changed my view of human endeavor - and, I believe, it is prophetic. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating topic, dissappointing book
Review: Solar cells modeled after green plants, fibers stronger than steel, chemical factories without pollution, ceramics as hard as abalone shell. Nature has invented many things that outperform engineering feasts, and this is book about nature's innovations. Biomimicry is a hard book to classify: it is partly a popular science book (ca. 50%) but also a manifesto for sustainable development, a collection of miniportraits of scientists, and wild speculation of future engineering applications. All of this is embedded in the Benyus' personal odyssey of figuring out what biomimetics is all about. Lack of clear focus makes this book a difficult read: in the middle materials science exposee Benyus has decided to describe rock climbing hobbies of some prominent materials scientists.
Rating:
Summary: This book will make you excited.
Review: The details are complex but well explained, making for a very exciting and satisfying read. Biomimicry is elegantly written (not just a collection of separate chapters), with a soft personal side to the story. The science will make you want to run out and invest some money! Chapter on photosynthesis is life-changing!
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