Biomimetics: Learning Design from the Created World

Biomimetics is the study of intricate mechanisms and machinery in nature which inspire new designs in engineering. This talk will deal with a number of examples of biomimetics where an engineering concept has been inspired by an example in the created world. Of particular interest are those involving explosions such as the Scottish broom and its dispersion of seeds, and examples of fire, such as the knobcone pine which will only release its seed when there is a forest fire, and the bombardier beetle which sends out a repeated blast of hot caustic fluid with steam and water at 500Hz in any direction it wishes. This latter has been the inspiration for making a new type of fuel injector and pharmaceutical spray. All are examples of irreducible complexity which strongly suggest creation as the logical explanation. Without the whole system functioning together, each individual component is of very limited use, if any use at all! The principle actually applies right down to the molecular level where for instance the walking kinesin molecule in the living cell speaks of extremely sophisticated engineering. 

The argument from Rom 1:20 to evidence of a Designer is very much evident in our modern day as much as when Faraday also quoted it in his famous lectures in Victorian Britain concerning his discovery of electromagnetism. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”