Kalman's "story" about Blithogermaasbunti's invention of the three-legged tool is not only quite witty,
but also very forceful. Well said and well done! We - and by "we" here I mean we as a community -
do tend to ascribe biological inspiration to inventions even when the evidence is incomplete, sparse,
or altogether absent.
A friend of mine (who is also on this list and perhaps will jump into this discussion) wanted to build
a library of case studies of biomimicry/biomimetics. As he looked at the various inventions often given
as successful examples, such as the nose of Shinkansen 500 bullet train that supposedly was inspired
by the shape of Kingfisher's beak, he found that few withstood close scrutiny. We do often conflate the
use of biological analogies for posthoc explanation of an invention (as in Blithogermaasbunti's case :-)
with their use in the process of design generation.
Even the scientific literature sometimes tends to confound issues, portraying an invention as deliberate
when it appears to have been serendipitous, or describing the process as problem-driven analogy when
it appears to have been solution-based, or describing the product as based on a single analogy when
it appears to have used compound analogies, etc.
Nevertheless, I dont think that a jump to the conclusions that Kalman makes - that the processes of design
and invention can neither be understood nor mechanized, that habits and patterns of creative thinking can
neither be inculcated nor supported - is quite warranted. Might the view that the whole enterprise of
biomimicry/biomimetics is due to people who just want to feel good about working for humanity or with
nature, or worse, due to people who just want to win grants and write papers - be a little too skeptical?
As a counterpoint, see the 2007 paper by Bonser & Vincent on technology trajectories in biomimetics.
Thanks.
Best,
Ashok
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