The Sand Dollar and the Slide Rule: Drawing Blueprints from Nature

This book is worth every penny. In an era when we're lucky to glean one or two inspiring ideas from a book of nonfiction, Delta Willis has packed this one with dozens-- possibility space, tensegrity, morphodynamics... And the details: did you know that a fly has a three-speed gear shift for its wings? Or that the branches of an oak tree are frequently longer than the tree's height? Nature's designs are not always ideal, but they have uncanny ways of dealing with the conditions of this planet, using a great economy of means. The author introduces us in a very personal way to the researchers, inventors, and engineers who've tried to understand and/or use nature's schemes, and continue to do so. At the center of the book is the patriarch of "growth and form," D'Arcy Thompson, whose legacy is perhaps still not fully realized. His predecessors (Leonardo da Vinci, Fibonacci...) and successors (Fuller, Seilacher...) are juxtaposed more on the basis of pertinence than conventional plodding chronology. The author shows a natural playfulness, weaving her own experiences into the explanations, and allowing her personages to speak for themselves. Dolf Seilacher's words occasionally shows signs of nature experimenting on the spot. In the spirit of her controlling metaphor, the sand dollar, Willis gives immediate delight like the flower design etched on a sand dollar's back, and deftly reveals the underlying intrigue such as the sand dollar's intricate food grooves, tube feet, and system of sand ballast under the thin etched dome. Faced with this abundant evidence of genius in nature's designs, I found myself asking what exactly this genius could be. As Stephen Jay Gould has said, these are "paths that a sensible God would never tread." But while physical laws describe a trend to disorder (entropy), life plays with designs and moves toward greater order, as if consciousness were not an exclusive property of the brain. This book is full of "possibility space" and it's a good read.

Delta Willis has mastered the art of making scientific concepts easy to understand. Her celebration of our natural universe and enthusiasm for the scientists who inspire her is infectious. A joy of discovery, steeped in a sense of the absurd, makes her writing both knowledgeable and niave -- and devilishly fun. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.