Ingenious Principles Of Nature

This volume focuses on practical applications of the principles that can be transferred from nature to our design space. It is thereby supported by the regulation and control systems as described by the science of cybernetics.

How can the book's title be paraphrased in one succinct sentence? By Arthur Schopenhauer's handed-down statement: "Any stupid boy can crush a beetle, but not all the professors in the world can make one." Animals and plants of interconnected nature have learned over billions of years, through perfect adaptive adjustment to their environment, to achieve peak performance for their survival, whose effective and sustainable principles are unparalleled in our technology-infused environment. This immeasurably rich natural treasure trove of materials, tools, techniques, processes and organizations can help to steer the misguided development strategies of us humans, which in addition to extraordinary technical advances also produce extraordinary catastrophic consequential problems, into forward-looking paths capable of living and surviving. In view of the accumulation of damaged nature by us humans, both of whose existence is inextricably linked, new sustainable development strategies are inevitable. These can only be done with and not against nature. It will be a necessary struggle for survival against the "masters of humanity", against their pernicious, political and economic treatment of nature. which affects us all. From the contents - The inexhaustible wealth of evolutionary adaptive solutions - 22 evolutionary principles from fauna and flora - Operational principles of nature - Beyond the exhaustive wealth of technospheric maximum solutions - Bio-technospheric transformations - 30 workable resolutions - Konrad Lorenz "Eight Deadly Sins of Civilized Mankind" - Noam Chomsky's battle against the "masters of humanity" About the author As an engineering scientist and bionic scientist, Dr.-Ing. E. W. Udo Küppers devotes his interest preferably to the complex border area between nature and technology. Associated with this are systemic thinking and acting, highly mindful organizational processes, accompanied by practical impact network methods. Besides activities in his working group »Küppers-Systemdenken« (since 2000) he taught at different universities with the core module Interdisciplinary Competence until 2021. This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.

Ingenuity in the Making explores the myriad ways in which ingenuity shaped the experience and conceptualization of materials and their manipulation in early modern Europe. Contributions range widely across the arts and sciences, examining objects and texts, professions and performances, concepts and practices. The book considers subjects such as spirited matter, the conceits of nature, and crafty devices, investigating the ways in which ingenuity acted in and upon the material world through skill and technique. Contributors ask how ingenuity informed the “maker’s knowledge” tradition, where the perilous borderline between the genius of invention and disingenuous fraud was drawn, charting the ambitions of material ingenuity in a rapidly globalizing world.

George Hall - teacher, historian, engineer, and computer analyst - uniquely draws upon the competing perspectives of traditional science, the exciting new science of chaos, and the burgeoning and important tenets of complexity theory, catastrophe theory, and fuzzy logic to look for a common theme. All of these perspectives, he finds, are fundamentally united by a common theme: the crucial patterns of elements and their dynamic change over time. Order - be it the growth of a fetus or the rumbling shift of continents - evolves because these patterns are themselves the blueprint and the "programs" by which nature shapes our awe-inspiring universe. Hall takes this elegant concept and carries it from the simplest phenomena to the most complex, including the evolution of the species. He then extends these concepts beyond the physical sciences, into the fascinating provinces of philosophy, computer programming, psychology, economics, political science, international relations, law, and ethics. In doing so, he tackles the challenging question of human behavior. Since we humans have initiative and can sometimes change the natural course of events, how can we find a system to understand our own actions and the workings of society at large? This captivating book explains the mechanics of change and provides a provocative concept that accounts for the growth and decline of all systems, be it the universe at large, the miracle of life on earth, or our own thought processes as we contemplate and unlock the mysteries around us. This evocative perspective on nature offers food for thought to general readers and scientists alike by illuminating the ingenious patterns that influence the course of humanity and the universe.

This rare book has been digitally re-edited from a facsimile reprint of the original. Much care and attention has been spent bringing the book back to it's original glory. The scanning process always introduces errors but as far as we know we have managed to find the majority and fix them in this edition. If you are an Andrew Jackson Davis fan, or you are new to the author, then this is his masterpiece. This work was produced whilst he was under hypnosis and the gems therein comes direct from the Fountain of Knowledge. Davis was a young uneducated man at the time of producing this book and it's contents and style are far beyond anything he could have produced. He was a remarkable man, as you will find out from the Introduction.

In this provocative book, Douglas Candland shows that as we begin to understand the way animals and non-speaking humans "think," we hold up a mirror of sorts to our own mental world, and gain profound insights into human nature. Weaving together diaries, contemporary newspaper accounts, and his own enlightening commentary, Candland brings to life a series of extraordinary stories. He begins with a look at past efforts to civilize feral children. We meet Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron, now famous as the subject of a Truffaut film; Kaspar Hauser, raised in a cell, civilized, and then assassinated; and the Wolf Girls of India, found early this century huddled among wolf pups in a forest den (they were originally believed to be ghosts by superstitious villagers, who nearly shot them as they were being captured). In each case, it was hoped that the study of these children would help clarify the age-old nature/nurture debate, but, as Candland shows, so much of the information "revealed" was really only a projection of beliefs previously held by the investigating scientists. Candland then turns to "clever animals." We learn how the investigation of "Clever Hans," the German horse who could calculate square roots, proved to be a first step in the direction of behaviorism (researchers found that Hans was being tipped off by the subtle and unwitting body language of his owner and other observers, who would bend almost imperceptibly at the waist with every hoof beat, and stand erect when the correct count was reached). And Candland discusses the many attempts to communicate with our closest neighbor, the apes. We read of Richard Lynch Garner's 1892 experiment living with chimpanzees in Gabon (he taught one to say the French word "feu"), and of Gua, raised by W.N. and L.A. Kellogg alongside their own son Donald, and of the latest successes of teaching sign language to such precocious apes as Sarah, Sherman, Austin, and Koko. Throughout, Candland illuminates the boldest and most intriguing efforts yet to extend our world to that of our fellow creatures. And he shows that, in the end, our effort to "make contact" is a reflection of the way in which we as a species create and order our universe. Humans have long shown a wish to connect with the silent minds around them. In assembling and interpreting the compelling tales in this book, Candland offers us a new understanding not only of the animal kingdom, but of the very nature of humanity, and our place in the great chain of being.