It may be a troubled conscience that is pushing us toward home, say the biomimics, but the critical mass of new information in the natural sciences is providing an equally important pull. Our fragmentary knowledge of biology is doubling every five years, growing like a pointillist painting to a recognizable whole. Equally unprecedented is the intensity of our gaze: new scopes and satellites allow us to witness nature's patterns from the intercellular to the interstellar. We can probe a buttercup with the eyes of a mite, ride the electron shuttle of photosynthesis, feel the shiver of a neuron in thought, or watch in color as a star is born. We can see, more clearly than ever before, how nature works her miracles.
Janine Benyus, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature
