Fil, I included 'novelty' to identify 'me too' designs that claim to be biomimetic but could easily have been developed by a competent engineer without knowledge of biology. It is true that the reverse can occur: once a solution is revealed, it becomes easy to claim that 'anyone could have come up with that answer'. I would accept the somewhat weak situation where the biomimetic inspiration lay in pointing out a problem or solution pathway that had not previously been recognised.
Given the ongoing furor about patents, demonstrating novelty is difficult. I think the onus is on the designer to demonstrate that they have done their homework, researched prior art and shown that they have come up with a new solution.
>>> Fil's response of August 16
Two quick follow-ups, just FYI.
1. Norbert's 3 characteristics align nicely with a 3-part 'definition' of 'creative (designed) things;' where novelty & usefulness transfer directly to the creativity lit that I've seen, and 'practical' corresponds to the attribute of 'cohesion.' So one could argue that Norbert's criteria name designs that are 'creative' - or, that a "good" biomimetic design must be a creative design. I'm not saying that this is good or bad; I'm just noting the similarity.
2. Novelty is relative to be tractable. To determine absolutely that a solution is novel, one must compare it to every other existent solution. Not a good use of one's time/resources. Also, whether something is novel will depend on the level of abstraction used in the comparisons. Then there's context: universal novelty versus novelty in just some particular domain. Which leads to even further graduation, because one can nest contexts very deeply; presumably the broader the context, the more novel a design is.
/fas
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