I can easily sit on this fence. As a practicing design engineer who is
excited
by the interest in biology I see many opportunities to expand the conceptual
space of designers. I harbor no illusions that there are "perfect"
designs which
we can use to solve all of our ills and "save the world". Yet each tool
we give
a designer increases her range of possibilities and potentially leads to
optimizations
which she won't see by looking at the designed systems which surround us.
For one: as a product designer the cell as a functional entity appears
to offer huge
opportunities. Looking closely at boundary alone could lead to a whole
range of product developments which are more efficient and closer coupled
to the user.
Curt McNamara
[log in to unmask] wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I've been away for a couple of days, talking at an engineering
> department,
> something that's always fun. Since my name has been raised, I think I
> should
> comment - mainly about Julian's impression that I'm a trifle
> disparaging. Mea
> culpa, but I plead inadvertency.
>
> Mainly, I was (as still am) trying to sound a note of intellectual
> honesty,
> maybe historical verisimilitude (to be pretentious). I think
> biomimetics can
> yield all kinds of good things. But... We should not create a
> mythological
> past to support a view of the field's promise. We should not let anyone
> imaging that coincidence between natural and human technologies
> represents
> anything but the weakest evidence of successful biomimetics in the
> past. We
> should recognize and keep our distance from a kind of nature-worshipping
> engineer-bashing. And, most of all, we should not overpromise,
> claiming that
> the biomimetic solution will always be better than the non-biomimetic
> solution
> to a problem.
>
> I can't recall ever saying or writing anything that specifically
> disparaged the
> promise of biomimetics, although I can certainly see how that could
> easily be
> read into it. Also, I've always been loath to extrapolate into the
> future, so
> I get queasy making pronouncements about the way we ought to go. And
> I'd seen
> too much vaporous stuff to risk adding to it.
>
> Steven Vogel
>
> Quoting Julian Vincent <[log in to unmask]>:
>
>> Are we biomimeticists to be classed as functional biologists? It may
>> be that if we are asking biology to support engineering concepts, and
>> we are trying out biological functions in an alien environment
>> (engineering) we are really doing a different sort of biology - a
>> sort of xenobiology - rather than a different sort of engineering.
>> Have a look at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/311/5765/1306
>>
>> Julian
>>
>> --
>> Julian FV Vincent [log in to unmask]
>> Professor of Biomimetics office 01225 386596
>> Centre for Biomimetic & Natural Technologies mobile 07941 933901
>> Dept of Mechanical Engineering fax 01225 386928
>> The University
>> BATH BA2 7AY
>>
>> http://www.bath.ac.uk/Departments/Eng/biomimetics/
>>
>> I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
>>
>
> .
>
|