Researchers from University of California Riverside’s Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering are studying ocean animals with an eye on future human applications (see (Link) for the original story).

Research group leader Professor David Kisailus said: “My hope is that we can truly learn from these organisms how to design, optimise, and synthesise engineering materials that display properties that we as engineers can only dream of.” This sounds plausible and even rather seductive, fitting in as it does with a whole slew of contemporary ideas that elevate notions of what is ‘natural’, ‘organic’ etc.

This backdrop, rather than the particular notion of studying ocean animals, makes me reticent to take such projects at face value. The problem of elevating the ‘natural’ (and so much of ‘nature’, not least the idea of ‘nature’ itself, bears a distinct human stamp) in this manner is that one could envisage a future where human engineers have their potential curtailed by having to fit into some kind of pre-ordained ‘natural’ pattern.

And we are talking about fundamentally different processes here. For example, the red abalone, a marine snail, may be an excellent architect in constructing its shell. On the other hand, a human architect may be awful at his or her job but still has the advantage over the red abalone in being able to conceptualise a projected building in imaginary terms before construction begins.

So I’m actually more with Professor Kisailus when he talks of utilising nature “as a platform for our inspiration”. True, I am less inspired at the thought of the red abalone aiding in the construction of lightweight armour to help soldiers become more proficient in the pursuit of future wars, but then that’s just me. However, the idea of nature as a font of inspiration is much more appealing than the idea of nature as a source of design templates.

Dave Wilson is away on his holidays. He’ll be back at the forge next week.
This comment was originally published in the Engineeringtalk Newsletter

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