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."

Comments

Other fields...

[Tynin]

Other fields like ID/creationism have been evolving their arguments over time?

Re:Other fields...

[HBoar]

Hmmm, I wonder what parameters give a mutation of ID/creationism an advantage.... A higher degree of logical circularity maybe?

Re:Other fields...

[Jakeva]

Hmmm, I wonder what parameters give a mutation of ID/creationism an advantage.... A higher degree of logical circularity maybe?

If creationists are right, then God created circular logic............. ohmygod! I just proved nothing!

Nature is haphazard and random

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Although Nature is random and haphazard in its designs, it still has to follow the laws of physics. So large structures like trees, termite hills, and basalt cliffs are structured to be very strong.

Structures that must hold their form like honeycombs and coral reefs have interesting geometric structures.

And things that must be flexible, lightweight, and resistant to breakage like spider webs use multiple methods of increasing tensile strength.

If they didn't, physics would force them to break. So for each iteration of Nature, you get some strong and some weak structures, but due to the constant barrage of forces only the most adaptable survive. If genetically controlled, these traits get passed down to subsequent generations.

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:Nature is haphazard and random

[plover]

Not sure about your example of a basalt cliff... How exactly does a cliff evolve?

Look at his nick: BadAnalogyGuy. What did you expect from him, a car analogy?

Re:Nature is haphazard and random

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Consider the time required to create either of those "solutions" though. The basalt quickly solidifies into its columnar shape while granite may take many multiple times that amount to become monolithic in the same scope.

Are there points of weakness in columnar basalt? Undoubtedly. But the rapid development and reasonable lifespan of these is a pretty good tradeoff.

Re:Nature is haphazard and random

[kimvette]

I'll take a shot at it!

See, it's like this: I see strong structures like basalt columns as volkswagons, which as you know, are arch-shaped and therefore strong. Weak structures on the other hand, such as grasses, are more like smart cars: easily crushed and, well, no where to go from here. I got nothin'. Sorry. Ask BadAnalogyGuy.

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.

---

Materials Science Feed @ Feed Distiller

Biomimetics

[MeatBag PussRocket]

Regardless of ones theological views i've always found the field of biomimetics fascinating. Looking at systems in the world around us to find better ways of doing human things creates novel solutions for oftentimes complex problems. Personally i believe in an intelligent Creator, and to me i cannot help but marvel at the inherent wisdom in these complex systems and the incredible harmony they share. Again for the sake of the hypersensitive evolutionists out there, i'm not trying to change beliefs here, but from my perspective this is an especially interesting subject.

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

[MeatBag PussRocket]

You sir are and moron.

you sir, made my day. ;)

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). 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

[turing_m]

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?

The former doesn't really make sense, especially when it is evident that there are a bunch of immutable laws (physics) that govern the behavior of things and he is both too stupid to design things properly and at the same time too clever to allow his immutable laws, er, not to be. If the latter, perhaps those laws were designed along with the rest of the universe, as an experiment. Evolution would be an emergent property of the initial distribution of matter, the physics of the system, and possibly a random function. Kind of like Blizzard not intentionally designing the evolution of battle tactics in Starcraft, but creating a system where it will happen. (If this sort of creator is in existence, we might expect periodic nerfing of exceptionally successful forms of life, and buffs applied to the losers of life.)

Looking at astronomy porn like those NASA milky way galaxy pics earlier, my mind boggles at the sheer vastness of the scale involved. To think that anything could compute such a thing in simulation would be very difficult to believe. It might be easier if outside the solar system was a light show, somewhat like the Truman Show on a larger scale. But still, the patience of the creator involved would be amazing, as supernovas have been occurring throughout history, and each would have to have been planned. So I suspect that, while technically it could be possible that the universe is a simulation or experiment of a "god", I think it is unlikely. A micromanaging god much moreso.

Re:Biomimetics

[ShakaUVM]

>>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.

Good thing birds and bats evolved from the same lineage, or you'd have a problem with your argument, eh? (You may want to start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_examples_of_convergent_evolution)

Besides, intelligent design is not creationism (though creationists tend to use it as a sort of disguise, hence the confusion). ID simply says that an intelligent wossname helped guide evolution. Depending on how you formulate it, it's either the weak form: a nice thought but not really provable either way (the approach the Vatican takes, FWIW), or the strong form, which says evolution couldn't happen without a guiding hand.

I do find it interesting though that even the strongest evolutionists can't get away from the design mentality. I remember a fierce evolutionist sitting in front of me during a bio lecture, and the professor was lecturing about how things pass through the intestine walls... essentially the whatever would get packed, then unpacked, then packed again. The guy in front of me wrote this down, then wrote "WTF" and circled it, since it didn't make sense to him for the process to work that way. (He later asked the professor why, and there was actually a reasonable explanation for it.)

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:Biomimetics

[JoshuaZ]

Convergent evolution is an example where it isn't the same thing at all. Why would an intelligent designer redesign the same thing for multiple lineages instead of using the same lineage? That's precisely what makes sense under evolution. It doesn't make sense for an intelligent designer to go through all the work again. It makes perfect sense for these to evolve. And note the original context we were discussing about really clever biological materials that aren't reused. This actually provides a perfect example; despite bats converging similarly to birds (albeit with very different muscle and skeletal structures you would expect from evolution), bats still don't get feathers. And nocturnal birds don't get the whole sonic radar system.

Besides, intelligent design is not creationism (though creationists tend to use it as a sort of disguise, hence the confusion). ID simply says that an intelligent wossname helped guide evolution. Depending on how you formulate it, it's either the weak form: a nice thought but not really provable either way (the approach the Vatican takes, FWIW), or the strong form, which says evolution couldn't happen without a guiding hand.

People may use "intelligent design" to mean something other than strict young earth creationism, but the term was made specifically to disguise to get creationism into the American public schools. In 1987, in Edwards v. Aguillard, the US Supreme Court ruled that "creation science" was the same thing as "creationism" which couldn't be taught in public school biology classes because it violated the First Amendment. Then the creationists decided to start talking about intelligent design. Indeed, the very next draft "Of Pandas and Peoples", a creation science textbook that was in the works did a search and replace for every single use of "creationists" or "creation scientists" or "creationism" and replaced them with the correct form of "intelligent design." However, in a truly ironic step, they screwed up in the next draft and actually left a transitional form of "cdesign proponentsists". This strange hybrid of "creation scientists" and "design proponents" was corrected in the next draft. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cdesign_proponentsists#Pandas_and_.22cdesign_proponentsists.22 However, this draft, which remained unpublished, was disclosed during the Kitzmiller v Dover trial where it was decided that intelligent design really was just a cheap disguise for creationism. The decision in the Dover trial is really worth reading. The text can be found at http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf. It includes a lot more very clear evidence that ID was made solely as a term to disguise creationism and get it into our public schools.

Re:Biomimetics

[ShakaUVM]

>>Despite how you try to slant it, ID only exists as a facade that the creationists put up to try and present a "theory" to throw at evolution. It is of little use except as an example of quackery.

While I agree it is probably often used as a facade, it is a testable (and therefore a scientific theory) that someone rigged the dice during evolution. You can make statistical tests for loaded dice - gaming commissions do this sort of testing all the time, in fact.

Of course, it's not really very popular to say as such here on Slashdot, where everyone is supposed to just go along with the atheist-anarchist sheeple and be followers who are so proud of themselves for their individuality.

>>Bold mine. The -only- people who use that phrase are those who, for some reason, have a bone to pick with those who oppose creationism and fight against attempts to introduce ID into schools.

I use the term 'evolutionist' only to describe people who, for some reason, have a bone to pick with Christians who propose God could have had anything at all to do with evolution. Usually because they can't handle the notion if it was true.

Read up on Hoyle and the development of the big bang theory. You might find it illuminating. People like Hoyle rejected the big bang theory out of what you might call an atheistic faith, because he couldn't handle the notion of a finite universe, because it would imply God was real. These 1940s versions of Richard Dawkins attacked the theory as 'closet creationism' and spewed quite a fair amount of vitriol in the process.

There's a close parallel between it and the modern evolutionists. If you want to watch a temper tantrum, propose testing ID as a scientific theory to your average Slashdot Dawkins clone.

Re:Biomimetics

[ShakaUVM]

>>Like for example, causing the temperature of the planet to drop for a period of time to nerf cold-blooded animals?

Yeah, God took out Velociraptors in the 1.2 patch. They were too OP.

Reptile players kind of bitched about it on the forums, but the introduction of flying units in 1.3 gave them a strong advantage that only late game mammal players can counter.

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.

Re:Biomimetics

[JoshuaZ]

I'm familiar with the notion of a fallen world. I didn't address it above for the simple reason that the individual wanted more examples. If we want to discuss that bit of apologetics we can. First of all, the whole notion of a fallen world really only makes much theological sense in Judaism and Christianity not for Islam or the Ba'hai. So we need to narrow the set of discussion a lot if we are going to use that particular argument.

The entire claim has much less theological justification in either Judaism or Christianity than one might think otherwise. In particular, the general pointer made is to the "fall" after Adam and Eve eat from the tree. Yet the Biblical text itself has very little to say about this. Eve is cursed in childbirth and Adam is cursed that the ground will be hard to work. There's no broad "fall" that makes everything worse. There's no claim in the text that the world as a whole has fallen. That's very late claim being read into the text. The verses that talk about waxing old really don't help matters at all. The two verses that do so are in Psalm 102 and in Isaiah 51. (There's another verse in the New Testament in Hebrews but it is a paraphrase of Isaiah. I don't know much Both those verses talk about the world falling apart in the indefinite future in contrast to God's eternal nature. That's not claiming that the world has fallen apart but that eventually all things come to an end but God.

This should be a serious problem for Protestants who emphasize the direct Biblical text. Less of an issue for Catholics, Orthodox and liberal Protestants, but they generally aren't shouting about ID. Jews actually have a slightly better position here theologically in that they can point to the larger body of tradition, the midrash, and note how it has elements that support the notion of a more general Fall or at least that things have gotten a lot worse since Adam (they use a phrase that translates as "the decline of the generations"). However, they are minor elements. Moreover, there are sections of midrash which only make sense if the Earth is flat, others seem to think that the phoenix is a real bird, and still others tell of Alexander the Great fighting the Amazons (not kidding. This is in one of the later sections in Tamid). So the Jews don't really have a great defense of this either. Better than the Christian one, but it takes a lot of picking and choosing from various texts.

Even if one did grant the notion of a fallen world, it really doesn't help with most of these sorts of examples. The notion of a fall as it is generally described is that things are getting worse due to the presence of sin. But the sort of examples we are discussing aren't just things getting worse due to decline or problems. The laryngeal nerve example used elsewhere is a good example. It isn't even inconvenient to humans. It is just freaking weird and unnecessarily complicated. Doesn't seem to be part of the punishment of Adam or anything like that. Contrast this for example with the human tendency to occasionally have babies born with a small, non-functional tale. See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#atavisms_ex2. Some sort of explanation akin to the Fall might actually work here if one posited that Adam and Eve had tales and that we've lost most of the ability to have them. Indeed, that would fit in some interesting ways with the Biblical text about their curse. But most of the major examples don't fit this mold unless you believe that at the Fall the entire world got redesigned more or less from the ground up, and that you had a seriously deceitful redesigner.

It is an odd coincidence that the bad things from the fall exactly mimic what evolution actually explains in detail. The fall is theologically unsound, Biblically unsupported, philosophically untenable, and scientifically useless. It is an ad hoc argument to preserve faith in a view directly counter to reality in the face of overw

Re:Nature has hard more time

[rarel]

The one serious advantage of intelligent entities is that we can look at the solutions used elsewhere and adopt them to our purposes. Nature doesn't have that option.

That's the basis behind Primer:

No one would say that what they were doing was complicated. It wouldn't even be considered new, except for maybe in the geological sense. They took from their surroundings what was needed and made of it something more.

:)

Ask Nature

[axlrosen]

Check out the bio-mimicry database: http://asknature.org/

Here's the really interesting TED talk where the founder introduces it, and describes some examples of nature's engineering at work: http://www.ted.com/talks/janine_benyus_biomimicry_in_action.html

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.