Anthropology of Nature: Week 9 - 20131026

This blog entry is part of a project for the class Anthropology of Nature. 

http://www.greendrinksmalta.org/2011/04/
environmental-philosophy-april-green.html

This week we read about environmental spiritualism, and I watched a presentation on biomimicry, or, mimicking the traits selected for by natural selection in solving mankind's technological problems. In my mind, they were related, linked, and I want to try to explain why.

I see myself as a scientist, and I tend to see things in a way that some feel is gritty or reductionist or even unpretty. Yet, having an understanding of Life at this other level (say, the molecular level) means only that I see the interaction of molecules as you see the tumbling of two birds in the sky. It's as beautiful to me as the latter is to you. So when Professor Benyus talks about the biochemistry of the creation of Mother of Pearl in a mollusk, the semi-technical language sounds to me as a creation poem might sound to another.



She has beautiful description of the chemistry that creates a seashell. "They didn't know that what a seashell is, it's templated by proteins, and then ions from the seawater crystallize in place to create a
shell." The template is genetic code, a seemingly infinite unbroken cord of codons, words, that read out a sentence building these massive stories as proteins, which interact to form Life. The ions being pulled in by electric charges, as lightning is drawn to tall tree. The molecules crystallizing into beautiful iridescent pearl between the soft body of the mollusk and the world. It's beautiful. Science is spiritual to me. Science IS the environment, the study of it, the tracking and charting of it, the mimicry of it, the defense from it, and in some cases the control over it or power to change it. But we can never change it more than it lets us. We still work within a set of rules, bound as laws of the Universe...Conservation of Energy, Conservation of Mass, Conservation of Mass; science is as bound to them as any other parishioner is bound to his dogma.

I think that Benyus' idea of biomimicry plots humanity on a course to retain their intellect and engineering while bringing them closer to the Earth they seem to eager to distance themselves from. We have hand sanitizer, antibacterial-embedded plastics, anti-microbial filters, etc etc. We screen our windows and recycle our air and take vitamin D supplements (or drink Vitamin D fortified milk) because we shun the cancer-causing sun. We have allowed technology.. the plastic world... to make real Life the Devil. People hardly know where their food comes from, their clothes, their consumer goods. There are so many different kinds of plastic and so many different kinds of plant/animal products, that we judge a fabric by it's ability to be put in the dryer. Clothes made from Life, name all the fabrics you can. GO.

Cotton (plant!)Silk (animal product!)
Leather (dead animal!)
Fur (dead animal, basically leather).
Wool (animal product).
Hemp (plant product, for hippies!)
Burlap (remember reading about this? Scratchy. Plant product!)
Linen (you know the name, it's a plant product!)
Rayon (what? you thought it was a oil product? Negative! Cellulose!)
There are Earth friendly options to get so much of what we need done, and science helps us get there. I only wish that more people saw the balance of science and environment as one in favor of sustainability and mimicry. Then again, I bet Religion A wishes more of Religion B thought like them, too.