The cult of performance leads our society to highlight the values ​​of success and permanent optimization in all areas. Slowness, redundancy and randomness are then perceived negatively. Olivier Hamant – researcher at the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE) – attempts in this book to rehabilitate them by drawing on his knowledge of living processes. What do the life sciences teach us? While there are many remarkably effective biological mechanisms, recent progress above all highlights the fundamental role of errors, slowness and inconsistencies in the construction and robustness of the natural world. Would living things then be suboptimal? How can a biologically inspired sub-optimality constitute a counter-model to the credo of performance and control in the Anthropocene? Faced with pessimistic observations and environmental alarms, the author proposes courses of action to avoid catastrophe and outlines solutions for a viable future reconciled with nature.

 

Reference

The Third Way of Life

Olivier Hamant

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-2738157294