David Peat

180 From Certainty to Uncertaintyhow to ride a bicycle are not stored in particular groups of cells, butappear to be distributed over the brain. After a head injury a person’sabilities may be somewhat compromised; on the other hand specificmemories are not lost because they are not stored in one single region.Likewise, while language may be lost following a stroke, the ability tospeak often returns because the brain’s inherent redundancy meansthat other regions will always take over that particular task.Another example of dangers in losing redundancy is provided bythe tragedy of the Irish potato famine of 1845–1849. As already mentioned,traditional farming methods involve planting a number ofcrops and a variety of seeds for each crop. However, by the nineteenthcentury, much of Ireland’s population had come to rely on the potatoas its main source of food. What’s more, only one or two high-yieldingvarieties were being grown. The result was that when the fungusPhytophthora infestans hit, most of the crop was wiped out. In just afew years, over a million people died as a result of this disaster.Today, engineers and policy makers are learning important lessonsabout nature’s built-in redundancy and robustness. During World WarII Britain’s seat of government was located in a bunker under Whitehall,London. At the height of the subsequent cold war, however, the UnitedStates realized that a distributed system of government was needed,one that would be resilient to specific damage. For this reason, straighthighways were built that could be turned into emergency landing strips,and information was distributed through computer systems located allover the country. (It was in this way that the Internet was born.) Likewise,the control systems of aircraft and nuclear power stations haveconsiderable built-in redundancy, through the provision of fail-safeand back-up systems.EnergySome experts predict that in 50 years the earth’s resources of oil andnatural gas will run out, or at least become so depleted that they will betoo expensive to extract. It is as if we are now selling the family jewelsat a cut rate so that we can run our cars, switch on our air conditioners,