Today's so-called experts seem to love huge solutions that involve huge budgets, legions of workers – and huge egos in a hierarchy. While Hoover Dam and the Apollo project both produced amazing results, with spinoff technologies that have vastly benefited mankind, the concept of biomimetics shows there is another way that typically takes less energy, less maintenance and often delivers equal or superior results.

An initial response to the question in the title might be: how many leaves on a tree?

Statesmen of Marcus Tullius Cicero's stature are rare in any age, yet the difficulty today's digital citizens have with mature discernment [1, 2, 3] makes the tyranny of monolithic solutions more risky than before the age of the worldwide web.

Mentioned back in P(III)2: making others live as we do is one of tyrants' most recognizable hallmarks. When faced with a choice, tyrants will choose to feed their ego, while those who have matured out of the juvenile self-absorbed stage, will choose servanthood, or making the campsite better than they found it.

As an example, if a person using an insulin pump can take only a proverbial thimbleful at a time, rather than the long-acting kind, they have much more granular control over their metabolism and thus are better able to respond to their environment.

In like manner, biomimetics could completely disrupt the solar energy industry, with the concept of thousands upon thousands of infintesimally small Krebs Cycle engines that combine to deliver output that can grow Sequoias.

Why do we tailor?

Some of the world's best tailors are in London, Milan, Hong Kong and tiny, invisible villages all over this big blue marble. Tailoring is a great motif for addressing complexity man­age­ment, our extended theme for Perspectives editorial calendar in 2016.

Image: Phrontis [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Two ways to say the same thing:

Simple: When culture en­coun­ters physics, physics wins.

The tiny thimble re­in­forces the virtue of hu­mil­ity as well as making plain the prac­ti­cal re­al­ity that every little bit counts.

Embroidered: Those favoring monolithic solutions, which require so-called experts, who administer wisdom from afar, have an amazing correlation with those who deliver junk science driving a nation's misery index.

Why tailors make a good lens for bringing complexity management into focus:

• » Tailors deal with people as individuals: "You're looking rather prosperous, Sir"


• » Tailors plan for the long term (providing ample fabric in seam allowances)


• » Tailors work in the practical math of the real world (1, 2)

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