An amazing story

It is 2001 and Joanna Aizenberg has just published a stunning story on Brittlestars—we have two eyes, they are all eyes:

a skeleton with crystals that function as a visual system, apparently furnishing the information that lets the animal see its surroundings and escape harm.

Quoted in the New York Times she says:

This study shows how great materials can be formed by nature, far beyond current technology

It can be easy from a modern-day perspective to skip over quite how profound that is. An animal, part of nature, is an entire seeing entity. Its body comprises micro eyes all over its skeleton. Without a human-like brain, the brittlestar puts all of that sight information together, multiple sight signals supllying information it uses to evade predators, at the very least.

It’s astonishing that this organic creature can manipulate inorganic matter with such precision – and yet it’s got no brain, Roy Sambles, Nature

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Our storytelling mind tends to relate this to human ‘progress’. What technology marvels could be created and enhanced by drawing on the brittlestar’s brilliance:

The brittlestar architecture is giving ideas to scientists who want to build tiny lenses for things like optical computing, says the Times.

Some media goes further:

Until now, engineers have only dreamed of such perfect microlenses, which could be invaluable in optical networking and microchip production. Aizenberg is inspired. “This is very clever engineering,” she says. “We may be able to mimic it, borrowing from nature a design that has already been working for thousands of years. Discover Magazine

Our modern-day story—privileging money and growth first—may be blinding us to wonder, amazement and deeper insight appreciating these extraordinary beings.

Brittlestars are living, breathing, mutating liminal diffraction gratings­ they live at the edge of being diffraction gratings. Negotiating complex sets of changing relations concerning bodily boundaries, brittlestars are evolutionarily attuned … have evolved in intra-action with their environment in just such a way that their microlenses are optimized to maximize visual acuity… [noticing] differences [that] matter… differentiation without individuation.

says Karen Barad, an inspiration for this story, in Meeting the Universe Halfway.

It’s time for our next story! One where we include financial and technology achievements (the modern-day mindset) with wonder and more.