Survival Strategies
May 1/2007 Post to Biomimetics Listserver (Julian Vincent)
OK - here's a survival strategy. It's probably not news, but at least we can put numbers to it. Having analysed the variables used to solve problems in biology and in technology, we have decided that in technology, the manipulation of energy can account for up to 70% of the solutions to technical problems, whereas in biology energy never figures more than 5% of the time. It's mostly replaced by information. I've been pondering this for a year or so, and have finally (dum dum) realised that it has to be to do (broadly) with materials processing. In technology we are outside the system. We destroy the information in the material (e.g. by processing, melting etc) then impose a new set of information (flow, moulding, casting) in order to end up with a product. This is making. In biology we are inside the system (at least the thing whose shape is being developed is inside the system) and the general scheme is to USE the information to generate the shapes / functions. This is becoming. I know that these ideas are not new, but I've never before seen them so clearly juxtaposed, and never before seen them with a number attached. So now I'm wondering what materials processing techniques there are in physics/chemistry/engineering which use and preserve the information at the molecular level. In biology this would be the order of amino acids and the secondary, tertiary, quarternary . . . structures which they drive. In engineering it would be LB films, liquid crystals/thixotropy, followed by electrospinning, spinning, RP, etc . . . How much engineering can we do using only molecular rearrangements? Can we go all the way from nm to m without raising the temperature above (say) 100C?? How about that for a challenge to the engineers?
Julian Vincent
Implications
Julian compares the high energy component of human designs with the high information component of natural designs, suggesting that our technologies lie outside of the system by destroying the structure or information inherent in the system (another way of looking at heat, beat and treat). Gribbin argues that dynamic systems use energy to create order (information) out of uniformity and disorder. However, dynamic systems experience 'period-doubling' as energy flows increase, quickly leading to chaotic or turbulent behavior that still contain information but in a form that is not easily usable. In other words, there is a 'sweet spot' between equilibrium/uniformity/disorder and turbulence/chaos. Does that imply an inverted-U relationship between energy and (useful) information? Do natural systems converge on the level of energy where information is greatest, while human systems introduce excessive energy to the point where information is lost or less useful? Is that why we expend so much effort on control, because we have pushed our systems into a chaotic region?
