idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

Nachrichten, Termine, Experten

Grafik: idw-Logo
Grafik: idw-Logo

idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft

Science Video Project
idw-Abo

idw-News App:

AppStore

Google Play Store



Instance:
Share on: 
07/01/2022 11:32

Learning from nature – how does it work? Research project on the philosophy of biomimetics launched

Sissy Gudat Presse- und Kommunikationsstelle
Universität Rostock

    Living nature offers plenty of ‘inventions’ that could serve as prototypes for new technical products. It is the task of biomimetics to abstract these ideas from nature and to implement them technically. But how exactly does that work? And can biomimetics be considered an independent scientific discipline? A new research project at the universities of Rostock and Tübingen is investigating these questions. It is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) with around 500,000 euros.

    From bird flight to gecko feet, humans have always been inspired by nature for technical developments. In the 20th century, this has been elevated to a programme under the name of biomimetics, and it is hard to imagine our everyday life without biomimetic products such as the Velcro fastener. From the perspective of the philosophy of science, however, biomimetics has not yet been explored.

    Dr. Manfred Drack from the Institute for Evolution and Ecology at the University of Tübingen and Dr. Ludger Jansen from the Institute for Philosophy at the University of Rostock address this research gap and investigate the question of how exactly the transfer of biological knowledge to technical developments works.

    The researchers will examine selected biomimetic development projects to see whether common methods and a uniform subject matter can be found in them, which would justify conceiving biomimetics as a unified scientific discipline. In addition, the basic categories identified in the research processes will be formalised based on a philosophical analysis so that a computer can process them.


    Contact for scientific information:

    PD Dr. Ludger Jansen
    Institute of Philosophy
    University of Rostock
    Tel.: +49 381 83-2818 (Secretary)
    E-mail:ludger.jansen@uni-rostock.de
    Web: https://purl.org/jansen

    Dr. Manfred Drack
    Institute for Evolution and Biology
    Eberhards-Karls-Universität Tübingen
    E-mail: manfred.drack@uni-tuebingen.de
    Web: https://uni-tuebingen.de/en/148575


    More information:

    http://Website of the project: https://biomimetics.hypotheses.org


    Images

    For the construction of his flying machine, Otto Lilienthal thoroughly studied the flight of storks, as can be seen in this pictorial plate from his 1899 book "Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst." (Image: Public Domain).
    For the construction of his flying machine, Otto Lilienthal thoroughly studied the flight of storks, ...

    Public Domain

    Dr. Ludger Jansen (pictured) from the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Rostock explores bionics in terms of the philosophy of science together with Dr. Manfred Drack from the Institute of Evolution and Ecology at the University of Tübingen.
    Dr. Ludger Jansen (pictured) from the Institute of Philosophy at the University of Rostock explores ...

    University of Rostock


    Criteria of this press release:
    Journalists, Scientists and scholars, Students
    Biology, Philosophy / ethics
    transregional, national
    Miscellaneous scientific news/publications, Transfer of Science or Research
    English


     

    Help

    Search / advanced search of the idw archives
    Combination of search terms

    You can combine search terms with and, or and/or not, e.g. Philo not logy.

    Brackets

    You can use brackets to separate combinations from each other, e.g. (Philo not logy) or (Psycho and logy).

    Phrases

    Coherent groups of words will be located as complete phrases if you put them into quotation marks, e.g. “Federal Republic of Germany”.

    Selection criteria

    You can also use the advanced search without entering search terms. It will then follow the criteria you have selected (e.g. country or subject area).

    If you have not selected any criteria in a given category, the entire category will be searched (e.g. all subject areas or all countries).