Nature's unfathomably complex web of living and non-living entities may produce many innovative capacities. But by rendering this complexity as a series of aliquot parts, each of which holds an innovative wisdom to be potentially unlocked, tapped, commercialised (or, as is often the case with biomimetic research, militarised), a very specific conception of nature emerges.
This is an enclosed nature where the whole, generally industrious world bears potentially useful intellectual property that must be harnessed. Accordingly, the biomimetic imaginary reconceptualizes nonhuman life as terra economica, a repository of potential - and potentially limitless- capacity to become capital.