Humankind is a privileged animal species for many reasons. A remarkable one is its
ability to conceive and manufacture objects. Human industry is indeed leading the
various winning strategies (along with language and culture) that has permitted this
primate to extraordinarily increase its life expectancy and proliferation rate. (It is indeed
so successful, that it now threatens the whole planet.) The design of this industry kicks
off in the brain, a computing machine particularly good at storing, recognizing and
associating patterns. Even in a time when human beings tend to populate non-natural,
man-made environments, the many forms, colorings, textures and behaviors of nature
continuously excite our senses and blend in our thoughts, even more deeply during
childhood. Then, it would be exaggerated to say that Biomimetics is a brand new
strategy. As long as human creation is based on previously acquired knowledge and
experiences, it is not surprising that engineering, the arts, and any form of expression, is
influenced by nature’s way to some extent.
The design of human industry has evolved from very simple tools, to complex
engineering devices. Nature has always provided us with a rich catalog of excellent
materials and inspiring designs. Now, equipped with new machinery and techniques, we
look again at Nature. We aim at mimicking not only its best products, but also its design
principles.
Organic life, as we know it, is indeed a vast pool of diversity. Living matter inhabits
almost every corner of the terrestrial ecosphere. From warm open-air ecosystems to the
extreme conditions of hot salt ponds, living cells have found ways to metabolize the
sources of energy, and get organized in complex organisms of specialized tissues and organs that adapt themselves to the environment, and can modify the environment to
their own needs as well. Life on Earth has evolved such a diverse portfolio of species
that the number of designs, mechanisms and strategies that can actually be abstracted is
astonishing. As August Krogh put it: "For a large number of problems there will be
some animal of choice, on which it can be most conveniently studied".
The scientific method starts with a meticulous observation of natural phenomena, and
humans are particularly good at that game. In principle, the aim of science is to
understand the physical world, but an observer’s mind can behave either as an engineer
or as a scientist. The minute examination of the many living forms that surround us has
led to the understanding of new organizational principles, some of which can be
imported in our production processes. In practice, bio-inspiration can arise at very
different levels of observation: be it social organization, the shape of an organism, the
structure and functioning of organs, tissular composition, cellular form and behavior, or
the detailed structure of molecules. Our direct experience of the wide portfolio of
species found in nature, and their particular organs, have clearly favored that the initial
models would come from the organism and organ levels. But the development of new
techniques (on one hand to observe the micro- and nanostructure of living beings, and
on the other to simulate the complex behavior of social communities) have significantly
extended the domain of interest.
Buscar en Dimension