Biomimicry: Something Even Creationists Can Love  

Forbes has an article on biomimicry, which is slowly going mainstream - Why Evolution Doesn't Matter.

Eiji Nakatsu loves watching birds, especially the way a kingfisher executes a splashless dive. In another lifetime he might have been an ornithologist, but in this one, he's a bullet train engineer in Japan. One look at the Shinkansen he designed and you understand how these two things go together: The trains have long, flattened beaks at their front that seamlessly cut through the air at speeds up to 360 miles per hour

It's one example of biomimicry, the practice of modeling mechanical or technological systems after biological ones. Like architects who use self-cooling, helical termite nests as guides for energy-efficient buildings, or scientists who study the decentralized movements of fish and apply it to swarm-intelligence modeling in robotics, Nakatsu tapped into millions of years of applied research when he stuck a beak that shape on a Shinkansen train.

This emerging field redirects thinking about evolutionary biology toward a technology-driven, applications-based approach--one that emphasizes future function over historical development.

To be sure, how the kingfisher's bill reached its current state matters. But if we first concern ourselves with what this perfected adaptation teaches us about other fields, we enhance our understanding of biology as well as engineering, fluid dynamics and energy efficiency--instead of making a self-contained discovery.

More important, a focus on biomimicry transcends the tired arguments between creationists and evolutionists. If God created the world, then applications-based research draws on his perfect design; if random mutations are to thank, then the engines of natural selection have sanded out inefficiencies over time. In either case, what matters is the innovation and discovery that follow.

It's a bit like the pragmatist's argument on atheism. Mother Teresa's belief in God compelled her to do good works, and Bertrand Russell's belief in God's absence pushed him to do the same. In practice, they have no point of disagreement.

That's not to say Charles Darwin is or isn't right, only that when you examine a discovery made as a result of studying nature, it's impossible to tell whether it arose as the result of belief in random mutation or intelligent design. In those moments, and for those advancements, the argument over evolution becomes completely unimportant.

It's unromantic, American even, to think about the pursuit of truth and science as a purely practical proposition. But to some, taxonomical and metaphysical questions are secondary to the creation of future value that directly affects the world we live in.

Look at energy emissions, one of the planet's greatest perils. Companies like Carbozyme are modeling carbon sequestration technology for factories based on the way human lungs remove carbon dioxide from our blood. Engineers at WhalePower, an energy company, study the physics of how whale flippers cut through fast-moving water to generate force and guide direction, knowledge they then apply to build more efficient wind turbines.

In our endeavors to improve our use of energy and better understand our world, what matters is finding perfected systems from which to model greener, more imaginative technological solutions--not how those species became that way.

Biology is testable and scientific; intelligent design is intentionally unfalsifiable. One side cannot prove or disprove the other theory to its opponents' satisfaction, rendering continued quarreling impractical and wasteful.