permaculture

[Neil Bertrando <neilbertrando@gmail.com>]

Thanks for the life science additions to my reading list.

I have been amazed by any book by Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan team
writing.  'Slanted Truths' is one of my favorites.

Re: 'Endless Forms Most Beautiful',  This is a fascinating book about
evolutionary development.  It's been a while since I read it, but there were
two points in it that stood out from a Permaculture perspective.

One is the tendency of living organisms towards modular assembly (for
example the bones in a hand and fingers being similar within and between
animals, but extended to different lengths and shapes depending on the
animal) and the second is the ability to innovate form and function due to
duplication of a part of an organism (for example the evolution of claws on
an extra leg or arm, or wings from gills (i think)).

Both of these have applied design pattern roles which Permaculture already
embraces in its principles of stacking functions/planned redundancy and
least change for the greatest effect.  By using this system we are designing
to accelerate evolution or at least allow opportunity.

>From my experience modular design often works very well too.  I.e. chicken
tractors that fit veggie beds, compost piles setting up a mandala bed, and
standard design templates such as those provided by Darren at
https://picasaweb.google.com/permaculture.biz/DesignTreatments#

By applying the Permaculture system and pattern understanding, we are often
already doing this, and I find it inspiring to see evidence of how we can
practice and improve biomimicry in our human ecosystems.

blessings to all in your works,
Neil

On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 7:43 AM, georg parlow <g.parlow@gmx.at> wrote:

> > BTW, "What is LIfe?" is a short book
>
> the book by the same name from Lynn Margulis is also a very
> reccomendable read.
>
>
> Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
>
> Georg Parlow
> ************
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