Why Biology Will Always Surpass Biomimetics
Humans can learn from nature
but can never successfully duplicate nature
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
Two major reasons to accept the creation worldview are these: (1) the ingenious design of living things, and (2) their astonishing complexity.
Max Donelan, professor in Simon Fraser University’s Department of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology, relayed some examples of nature’s superiority. He mentioned the incomparable ability of certain animals to travel on Earth’s rough surfaces:
A wildebeest can migrate for thousands of kilometers over rough terrain, a mountain goat can climb up a literal cliff, finding footholds that don’t even seem to be there, and cockroaches can lose a leg and not slow down … . We have no robots capable of anything like this endurance, agility and robustness.[1]
Similar claims about design have been written elsewhere.[2] There is a long history of how mankind’s insights into the workings of the natural world have been a critical source of information contributing to the advance of human technology.[3] Among the many books that recount the insights humans have learned from researching the living world, there is one appropriately titled Man the Engineer—Nature’s Copycat. [4] We can learn much from the biological world but cannot create life now, nor will we be able to in the future. Even if we could assemble all the parts they will not “turn on” and run (see 5 Feb 2010 commentary). The one true and living God is the only source of life.
Comparing Hard Robots to Soft Life
By engineering standards, animals excel at integration and control of biological components, says an article titled, “Why can’t robots outrun animals”[5] But the article, featuring a team from Simon Fraser University, argues that animals “performed surprisingly poorly compared to fabricated parts.”[6] Why? They were comparing two very different types of materials: hard and soft. Most fabricated parts are hard (steel, copper, plastic, glass and wires). They can perform well for short periods, but lack many of the advantages of soft living tissue and body organs in plants and animals. Soft body parts allow movement as a compact set, such as allowing a man’s trunk to flex to swim, run, and climb. By contrast, the framework and most components of robots are hard, allowing movement only at specifically designed joints.
Furthermore, biological components, such as muscles and nerves, develop from sets of cells in the embryo according to a genetic program. Once an incipient muscle develops, the length and size continues to increase until the organism is an adult. Furthermore, the muscle is constantly being repaired, both as part of the continued maintenance requirements of all living forms, and also as part of the required repair due to damage, such as caused by injury. And only living things can reproduce themselves.
The materials that mimic muscle and nerves in robots, by contrast, include motors, pulleys, wires, and pneumatic drives, that do not develop or grow. They are built as “adult” forms and must function properly at the time they are installed. In a robot, pneumatic drives use compressed gas or liquids, such as air and oil, to transfer forces to various joints, telescoping sections, and effectors. The pneumatic drive consists of a power supply, one or more motors, a set of pistons and valves, and a feedback loop. All the parts must be integrated to function correctly when assembled; they cannot grow from robot embryos. They must also be maintained regularly from outside, by human beings with the necessary know-how. Relatively simple inbuilt systems do exist to perform some maintenance, but these systems are not nearly as comprehensive as observable in living organisms. Animals can almost completely rebuild organs, even when damaged as adults, the liver being an example. It can be argued that robots can achieve many movements that humans cannot, such as (if designed to do so), rapidly turning a “hand” throughout 360 degrees – a task impossible for humans. As Henderson comments,
with only minor exceptions, the engineering subsystems outperform the biological equivalents – and sometimes radically…. [but] what’s very, very clear is that, if you compare animals to robots at the whole system level, in terms of movement, animals are amazing.[7]
The Goal of Imitating Biological Design
One goal of comparing man-made machines with life is to learn how to improve our devices. Well-designed robots offer countless potential uses, including moving materials around in highly radioactive zones in atomic energy power plants, inactivating the many thousands of land mines placed by Russia in Ukraine, and replacing the $20-per-hour workers at California restaurants to help owners survive the state’s new minimum-wage laws.
Simon Fraser University researchers seek to direct future development in robot technology. The emphasis is not on building better hardware, but in understanding how to better integrate and control existing hardware. Professor Donelan explains: “As engineering learns integration principles from biology, running robots will become as efficient, agile, and robust as their biological counterparts.”[8] This has not happened yet, clearly. But Donelan thinks that the development of novel materials, devices, and structures—inspired by design in the biological world—will lead to progress. Most likely, it will. But it will never equal the abilities of humans that the engineers claim they are endeavoring to replace. Not even close!
Another classic book about bioinspired designs— The Gecko’s Foot: Bio-inspiration: Engineering New Materials from Nature—showcases desert beetles, jellyfish, spider silk, diatoms, and more. As the book title notes, the gecko’s foot, and a whole other set of other examples, provide endless kinds of inspiration from nature.[9] These lists make it clear that life is so well designed that we are far behind it. Biologist and co-author of the Simon Fraser University research, Stanislav Gorb of Kiel University in Germany, remarked: “The most exciting thing for me about this biological system is that everything is perfectly optimized on every scale, from the macro to the micro to the molecular.”[10]
Futile Attempt at Evolutionary Explanations for Created Designs
These many accolades for animals and plants provide obvious evidence for intelligent design.[11] Yet the ethos in science forces engineers to concoct evolutionary explanations for them.[12] Can the superior design found in nature logically be credited to evolutionary randomness? Evolutionists reject the obvious fact that the engineers are copying designs that are worthy imitating. Creationists start with a supremely intelligent Creator God. What causal forces do evolutionists draw from? Astoundingly, they credit genetic damage called mutations and natural selection evolution! Surely this is like shooting bullets blindly at computers to make them better. Undirected, aimless processes do not improve with time.
Citing deep time evolution, Henderson writes that engineering developments using bio-inspired engineering
will move faster, because evolution is undirected. … Whereas we can very much correct how we design robots and learn something in one robot and download it into every other robot, biology doesn’t have that option. So there are ways that we can move much more quickly when we engineer robots than we can through evolution – but evolution has a massive head start.[13]
But are millions of years any help? Henderson continues,
More optimistically for the field of robotics, the researchers noted that, if you compare the relatively short time that robotics has had to develop its technology with the countless generations of animals that have evolved over many millions of years, the progress has actually been remarkably quick.[14]
Other writers appeal to the same explanation, namely that evolution has created the “basic components and building principles [that were] selected by evolution” over deep time.[15] Wikipedia says that Bioinspiration “is based on observing and understanding the functions from the products of biological evolution.”[16] Mutations honed by natural selection, the argument goes, produce results that appear to be designed – thus serving as inspiration for scientists and engineers. Such arguments beg the question that blind, undirected processes are capable of engineering for progress.
Summary
Humans can learn a great deal from the natural world, but can never equal, God’s creations when considered as complete systems. When they attribute the marvels of engineered design that they believe emerged by genetic damage over millions of years, they lose credibility by going well beyond what can be verified and what is reasonable. Before Darwin, scientists routinely attributed biological design to an all-wise Creator. See our biographies of great scientists for many examples.
References
[1] Henderson, W. “Why can’t robots outrun animals?”
https://www.sfu.ca/sfunews/stories/2024/04/why-can-t-robots-outrun-animals-/, 2024.
[2] Allen, R. Bulletproof Feathers: How Science Uses Nature’s Secrets to Design Cutting-Edge Technology. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 2010.
[3] Martin, R.E. “Nature invented them first.” Popular Science 123(4):14-21, 1933.
[4] Munch, T. Man the Engineer—Nature’s Copycat. Westminster Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1974.
[5] Henderson, 2024.
[6] Henderson, 2024.
[7] Henderson, 2024.
[8] Henderson, 2024.
[9] Forbes, P. The Gecko’s Foot: Bio-inspiration: Engineering New Materials from Nature. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, 2006.
[10] National Institute of Standards and Technology, “Gecko feet are coated in an ultra-thin layer of lipids that help them stay sticky.” Phys.Org. https://phys.org/news/2022-07-gecko-feet-coated-ultra-thin-layer.html, 6 July 2022.
[11] Bergman, J. “Affirmations of God’s existence from design in nature.” https://answersingenesis.org/is-god-real/affirmations-of-gods-existence-from-design-in-nature/, 2012.
[12] French, M.J. Invention and Evolution: Design in Nature and Engineering. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1988.
[13] Henderson, 2024.
[14] Henderson, 2024.
[15] Sanchez, C., et al. “Biomimetism and bioinspiration as tools for the design of innovative materials and systems.” Nature Materials 4(4):277-288, doi: 10.1038/nmat1339, April 2005.
[16] “Bioinspiration.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioinspiration.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.