“Innovation inspired by nature” is the subtitle of Janine Benyus’s Biomimicry (William Morrow, 1997), a topic bound to fascinate Tim Smit, chief executive of the Eden Project in Cornwall. He finds in Benyus’s book a timely call to the scientific community to break down barriers between disciplines.
He’s rereading George Orwell’s 1984 (Penguin, 1982) on the advice of his 17-year-old son. The novel “blew my socks off all over again”, he says, as a reminder of how vigilant we need to be not to succumb to the blandishments of the establishment if the price is that we lose our courage to speak out for fear of losing its warm embrace.…
