Generalized Biomimesis

Cavalli, Chang, Milne & Morgan's name for the default paradigm of human technics: not just copying a particular organism (biodesign) but treating "nature" as design's telos and moral guarantor. Rooted in the Girardian/Tardean thesis that humans are innately mimetic, it makes nature a mediating model (Daedalus and Leonardo copying birds) rather than a blueprint, and carries an ethical surplus — the naturalistic fallacy turned into a design ethic, visible in the late-1990s fusion of biomimicry with sustainability. Nature here is a Castoriadian "imaginary signification," defined negatively as everything not artificial. The authors grant its real engineering successes and ask only whether it should remain the exclusive prototype for design.