Graduate School in Nonlinear Science

Sponsored by The Danish Research Agency

MIDIT                              OFD                          CATS
Modelling, Nonlinear Dynamics      Optics and Fluid Dynamics    Chaos and Turbulence Studies
and Irreversible Thermodynamics    Risø National Laboratory     Niels Bohr Institute and 
Technical University of Denmark    Building 128                 Department of Chemistry
Building 321                       P.O. Box 49                  University of Copenhagen 
DK-2800 Lyngby                     DK-4000 Roskilde             DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø
Denmark                            Denmark                      Denmark

WHAT NATURE DOESN'T:
DEVICES KNOWN ONLY AS HUMAN TECHNOLOGY

by Steven Vogel
Duke University
Durham, North Carolina, USA

Tuesday, October 30, 2001, 11.00 h
at Physics Dept., Bldg. 306, Aud. 33, DTU

Abstract: All to often we hear that everything in human technology has been anticipated by nature, that human design has always been derivative and never truly creative. The speaker, a biologist supposedly familiar with nature's accomplishments, takes issue with the claim, citing numerous mechanical devices unknown or minimally developed in nature. Denial of nature's preeminance, though, asks the interesting question of why devices that have proven so useful to us often play a severely limited role in nature's technology.