Mimicking Materials and Structures In Nature

eldavojohn writes "From special organic molecules to organic surfaces with special properties to organic concrete, MIT's Technology Review takes a look at inspirations in nature that materials scientists are currently mimicking for human purposes. You may be able to name other fields that have turned to evolution for inspiration as well."

Re:Nature is haphazard and random

[BadAnalogyGuy]

I never said it evolved. I simply said that large structures must have strong structures.

The hexagonal "honeycomb" structure of basalt cliffs gives it resistance to landslides.

Re:Biomimetics

[JoshuaZ]

It doesn't take a "hypersensitive evolutionist" to see that this argument is incredibly weak. If an intelligent designer was constructing clever solutions and using them for life then it seems incredibly strange that solutions don't get used multiple times. A material can be incredibly strong and yet it will show up only in a handful of generally related lineages. Moreover, if one looks at a scale beyond the details of exceptional materials the designer made some really strange decisions. The recurrent laryngeal nerve for example which goes from the brain to the voice box feels a need to loop already down around the heart and back up. This makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective given the essentially segmented form that vertebrates arose from (and hence that mammals were forced to work with). Yes any reasonable engineer would just have this use the direct path. This is even more glaring in other animals: The giraffe for instance has the exact same thing. That means that there are about 15 feet of extra nerve tissue. It seems pretty clear that if there is a creator, the creator was either very stupid or simply hasn't involved itself in the design of life. Which of those do you prefer?

Re:Biomimetics

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, yes the amazing designer. Who for some reason gave whales hips and leg bones, fused inside their bodies. He/she gave flightless birds wings with light weight bones. He/she gave us eyes with the nerves and blood vessels in front of the retina instead of behind, what a designer. At least the dude who invented the octopus got the eye thing right.

So much wisdom and love went into the design of cancer, MS and typhoid, the designer loves us so much he prefers us to painfully die so we can be closer to him. /sarcasm

You sir are and moron.

Re:Biomimetics

[JoshuaZ]

Your argument seems to be "look! Here are things we thought we're useless and now they aren't. Therefore we should conclude that everything falls into that category even if we have no good reason to think so and no hypothetical mechanism for what it is doing usefully." That's great. Because after the laryngeal nerve I've got dozens of other examples. And your point doesn't deal with the primary issue raised which is that the mysterious designer seems oddly unwilling to use his clever solutions. And as long as were positing inherently untestable claims with no basis why not just posit that there was a designer but that the designer is a colossal dick who likes to mess with biologists. So the designer made sure to make things look just like everything had evolved without any intervention. Makes about as much sense. Indeed, that actually makes slightly more sense because the "designer is a dick" hypothesis also explains why so many nasty things like malaria seem to be so wonderfully made.

Re:Biomimetics

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems pretty clear that if there is a creator, the creator was either very stupid or simply hasn't involved itself in the design of life.

I believe what you are referring to is called a "false dichotomy."

Re:Biomimetics

[JoshuaZ]

No. There's a big difference. DNA replication is used by all life because all life has common descent and the code used for DNA is very fundamental to how life functions so tampering with it isn't going to create viable offspring. The type of solutions that don't get reused are precisely the sort of clever biological structures that TFA is talking about. These are exactly what you would not expect to be duplicated if evolution is correct. Moreover, the niche example is again an argument for evolution rather than design. Why would a designer stick functionally identical life forms in the same niches and not use the same species? Why for example fill all the niches in Australia with marsupials while filling those same niches generally with mammals elsewhere? (See for example the Tasmanian wolf as opposed to the wolf or the tiger http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_wolf [wikipedia.org]). Or why in New Zealand are so many ground niches taken by birds that became flightless or in some cases lost their wings outright? See here the kiwi and the kakapo (a fascinating flightless parrot and oh so cute). This makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective. From a design perspective it seems downright deceitful.

Re:Biomimetics

[MeatBag PussRocket]

perhaps heightened isnt the best adjective there. i suppose more appropriate would be "a different value of appreciation" that is, not comparable in terms of value or worth merely in frame of reference.

sort of like art. "you see a priceless french painting, i see a drunk naked girl" you know that whole analogy...

Re:The soylent nature of /. --- is people!

[MeatBag PussRocket]

Ants.

the suggestion made me laugh, it reminded me of a Radio Lab episode where they were discussing patterns of life. they interviewed a researcher of some nature (pun) that examined the behavior of ants and she marveled at how frustrating it was to watch them try to move a leaf or a twig "one would tug it a millimeter this way, the other would tug it that way, still another a different direction and it would go on for weeks" yet out of all that seemingly thoughtless effort a working community managed to sustain itself.

at the best of times, when i'm feeling optimistic, i feel that /. is a colony of ants.

Re:Nature is haphazard and random

[physburn]

I wouldn't catgeorize nature as random or haphazard. Although in quantum mechanics particle movements are intrisically random, as soon as you get to thermodynamically significant ammounts of 'stuff'', physics acts very regularly. Even for non-living things, nature is often produces very regularly and mathematically precise objects from the spiral arms of a galaxy to the pattern of snowflakes.

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Materials Science [feeddistiller.com] Feed @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]

Re:Happy Veteran's Day

[Xanavi]

Most truth I have heard all day. The real pandemic going around is apathy and people lying to themselves to feel better.

Re:Biomimetics

[TeethWhitener]

How is intelligent design testable? I really am curious. Keep in mind that 'testable' is equivalent to 'falsifiable.'

Here's a simple example, simplified: DNA analysis shows that human and chimp DNA is about 99% identical. I hypothesize that DNA is the mechanism by which genes are inherited and evolution happens. By this hypothesis, I should be able to look back in the fossil record and see human and chimp ancestors becoming more and more similar until there is no distinction. My hypothesis is falsifiable: If I look at the fossil record and this is not the case, I'd better think of a different explanation. If, however, it is the case, then I'm safe...for now (cue scary music).

This is how science works--it's an unfortunate misconception that scientists simply look at data, make bold pronouncements which all the gullible sheeple swallow, and go home to sleep with their supermodel girlfriends (okay, maybe not that part). But the reality is that any theory is always on the brink of being proven wrong. And I understand that Kuhn said that scientific revolutions take time/are strongly resisted at first, blah, blah, but the fact remains that eventually the falsifiability of an incorrect theory catches up with it. That's the beauty of it.

I'm no expert in intelligent design, but as far as I can tell, it doesn't offer up any simple cases (like the example above) in which statements entailed by the intelligent design hypothesis succeed where modern evolutionary theory fails.