35
Education Department of
Seventh-day Adventists
by
Laurel Dovich,
Ph.D.
College
513-03 Institute for Christian Teaching 12501 Old Columbia Pike Silver Spring, MD 20904 USA
Prepared for the
30th International
Seminar on the Integration of Faith and Learning
held at
36
I. INTRODUCTION
“In
the beginning, God created.” The
Biblical account starts with God engineering the earth we live in. In His crowning work, God created man “in His
image” – also with creative powers. The
engineering community has made a career out of exercising this God-given
creative power – creating the physical environment that we live and work
in. Engineers have the distinguished
legacy of following in their Creator’s footsteps, thinking God’s creative and
analytical thoughts after Him. Should we
not spend some time reflecting on the Master Engineer as we train engineers to
work responsibly in this world?
In
the Biblical account of creation (Gen. 1-2), not much emphasis is given to the
careful design and detail of the creation process. Man is the only creature that seemed to have
some thought and planning to its design.
Man was formed from the dust of the ground before being given life, and
was very intentionally given a companion, whereas all the rest of creation was
simply spoken into existence. Only later
on in the Bible is tribute given to the careful planning and engineering of
creation.
Scientific
study keeps uncovering more and more intricacies in the design of the natural
world. The proving ground for the
existence of a Creator has been concentrated mostly in the biological realm,
which studies nature’s chemistry and control mechanisms. Not much reflection on
creation has been done from the perspective of engineering, since the natural
sciences that engineering is built on – physics, chemistry, mathematics
– require only implicit faith in the orderliness of the universe and our
ability to understand it. Biology’s discoveries of the infinite subtlety in nature’s chemistry and
control mechanisms is indication that the engineered design of nature is
sophisticated, also.
The
dichotomy between biology and engineering extends into Christian science classrooms.
Examples of God’s creations are marveled at in the biology classrooms;
after all, they are studying what already exists - the already written book of
nature. However, this emphasis on our
Creator does not happen in the engineering classrooms – where students are
being trained to create a new best-seller based on the available
resources. Engineers are studying how to
create things that don’t exist, and therefore spend classroom time looking at
natural laws that govern design, rather than retrospectively looking at things
that are already designed. Engineering designs are restricted to available
resources, and little attention has been given to mechanical properties of
biological materials because biologist and engineers are headed in different
directions. Biologists and doctors
typically have an aversion to mechanical and mathematical things, and
engineering has been going through a phase of using man-made materials rather
than natural ones. Thus, the natural
world is more and more removed from the engineering discipline.
This
paper will try and close the gap between engineering and biology, and look at
nature from an engineering perspective.
The natural world has much to teach us about our Creator, and about
design principles set forth by the Master Engineer. Due to the immense scope of the topic, the
discussion is limited to applications in the structural engineering realm –
structural design and materials.
Hopefully this will be a springboard to encourage those in the physical
sciences to look at nature in the light of their discipline, and construct
their own applicable illustrations.
37
Except
for the most primitive forms of life, all living things have a bracing skeleton
- internal or external, which gives them stability and form. This structural support system ranges from
the vein system that stiffens leaves to the skeletons of vertebrates. Even a very simple and primitive kind of
life needs a membrane, a cytoskeleton, with at least a minimum of mechanical
strength to contain the living matter and to give protection from outside
forces.
The
whole world is a lesson book of God’s creation, and the examples given are but
a fragment of the structural design considerations in creation. This paper will look at spider webs, as well
as the support structures of plants and vertebrates, and a mollusk shell.
Much recent attention has been given to the
incredible planar orb spider webs. They has been called a miracle of nature - an engineering feat
that man has been unable to duplicate!
Researchers are examining the spider web material and the structure.
The strength, toughness and elasticity of spider
silk has caught the attention of scientists (university, military, commercial)
who are looking for better performing materials. Spider silk is finer than human hair, lighter
than cotton and ounce for ounce stronger than steel. It is tougher, stretchier,
and more waterproof than the silkworm’s strands, which are used for fine
garments today. A spider can make up to
seven different types of silk, with different strength, flexibility,
stickiness, and translucence.
Capture silk is the resilient material at the center
of the spider’s web, spiraling between the spokes of the web. This miracle fiber can stretch to almost
three times its length and return unharmed to the original length when the load
is removed. This allows the web to
oscillate back and forth after an insect hits it. If the web were stiff, the insect would just
bounce off.
Dragline silk is stronger than capture silk, but
less flexible. It is used to form the
guy lines and framework for wheel-shaped orb webs. It was designed for a different purpose than
capture silk, and meets the needs of that purpose. Dragline silk exhibits a combination of
strength, toughness, and weight, which is superior to Kevlar - our strongest
synthetic fiber. At 30 times thinner
than a human hair, it rivals the strength of Kevlar, but is far more elastic and
lightweight. It is alleged that if the
diameter of dragline silk is increased to half the diameter of a human hair, it
can hold two medium-size people. If
bundled into a cord as thick as a pencil, it can stop a jet landing on an
aircraft carrier.
38
Understandably, man is trying to duplicate God’s
design, a design superior to anything that human materials engineers have come
up with. Researchers at Cornell (Lipkin, 1996) concluded that “nature has gotten it
right. It’s our challenge as scientists
to find out what nature did.” They are
working on determining the spiderweb fiber’s
molecular architecture, understanding the genes that yield silk proteins, and
learning how to spin the raw material into threads. Scientists have identified the genetic
sequence for the spider dragline silk, which consists of more than 22,000 base
pairs. There is disagreement about how
much of the sequence needs to be cloned to make proteins good enough to spin
into top-quality synthetic threads. They
are probing for a material as tough as natural silk, but easier and cheaper to
make. There are visions of using this synthetic silk for surgical sutures,
suspension bridge cables, endurance fabrics for athletes and the military,
bulletproof vests and parachutes. Spider
silk withstands very low temperatures before becoming brittle (low
glass-transition temperature), making it ideal for the frigid temperatures parachuters encounter.
(Benyus, 1997, p. 132)
The manufacturing process that our Creator designed
for spiders to use is also amazing.
Spiders make silk threads in environmentally benign ways. Proteins are processed from water-based
solutions, without using petroleum products or organic solvents. The closest man-made material we have to
spider’s silk is Kevlar, which uses petroleum-based materials at high temperature
and pressure in a sulfuric acid bath - all of which are harsh on the
environment.
And leave it to God not to forget any details in
creating this exceptional, astounding material.
Natural dragline silk glistens in glorious golden tones. Researchers are tinkering with regulatory
genes that spiders use for camouflaging their silk, in an attempt to alter the
color.
The structure of the spider’s web is another
awe-inspiring design. The planar orb web
is an extraordinarily efficient structure for capturing fast-flying, massive
(on an insect’s scale) objects. It is
analogous to a fishing net catching a passenger
plane!! It is incredible how these webs
dissipate so much kinetic energy and capture such large projectiles without
being ripped to shreds. Strong and
resilient, the web absorbs energy when prey fly into
it, stretching with the impact, oscillating, and then retracting into place
again. Does the secret lie more in the
silky material or in the clever structure?
At University of Oxford (Lin, 1995), computer models
were used to structurally analyze a complete spider web. They found, unexpectedly, that air resistance
has a tremendous effect on the performance.
The small threads of silk (less than one-thousandth of a millimeter in
diameter) are viscous in air. They
create a drag, like walking through water, or pulling ropes transversely
through water. This aerodynamic damping
has a tremendous effect on capturing prey, and dissipating energy as the whole
web bobs back and forth through the air.
A researcher at University of Kyoto (Milius,
2000) has discovered that some spiders tune the web vibration, making them
tighter or looser, depending on their hunger level. This is indication that there is even more
functionality in the structure.
39
Researchers (Lipkin, 1995)
also looked at how the projectile stresses were balanced across the whole
surface of the web, due to its unique geometry.
They concluded that the effectiveness and efficiency of the web design
has practical applications for tent-like structures with many cables. “Nature has much to teach, not just about
aesthetic forms, but about mechanics.”
Plants have several structural systems. All the structural systems of the plant
kingdom are assisted by internal fluid pressure in withstanding mechanical
stress, increasing the efficiency of the structural material. Researchers, trying to apply this concept of
internal pressure, are investigating portable housing where beams would be
inflated with air. (van Dam, 1995) The most obvious structural system in a plant
is the stem that holds the photosynthesis factories up where they can receive
light. There is a structural mechanism
that holds the leaves out to collect the light, rather than allowing them to
droop from their attachment point. The
plant’s roots anchor the whole structural system. The structural systems of plant stems, leaves
and roots will be touched on briefly here.
The stem of a plant is typically a compression
member, holding up the weight of the superstructure. In addition, the stem must
also resist the bending caused by winds.
In doing so, it functions as a cantilever beam, anchored at the base by
its root system. The stem materials are
optimally designed for this type of loading.
They are anisotropic - strong in the longitudinal axis, but weak in any
other direction.
Trees, because of their size, carry the largest
loads in the plant kingdom. Strong winds
create loads more critical than the weight of the tree. Wood is stronger in tension than in
compression due to the buckling of the cell walls under compression. Thus, to reduce the high compressive loads
from the wind, new wood cells are formed in a tensioned state around the outer
ring of the trunk. The bending
compressive load from the wind has to overcome this pre-tensioning before the
trunk goes into compression. This
pre-tensioning reduces, by about half, the critical compressive stress due to
the bending from the wind. (Gordon, 1978, p. 282)
The shape of the tree trunk is also cleverly
advantageous. If a compression buckling
crease does develop in the trunk cells, it would try to propagate perpendicular
to the longitudinal direction of the tree.
(The shorter length means less energy per depth of penetration.) As the buckling crease
tries to propagate, the surface width to buckle increases due to the round
cross-section. The surface width
of the buckling front increases more rapidly than the strain energy released
from the material behind it, thus the buckling front is arrested. No doubt this kind of buckling control is
also relevant to the rounded cross-sections of bones. Man has removed this
compression crease control from the timber used in construction. Rather than using round sections where the
width of the creasing front increases as it propagates, man cuts the wood into
rectangular shapes that have a uniform width all the way across, and aren’t
effective in arresting the propagation of a buckling crease.
40
Wood is one of the most common building materials
for man-made structures. Weight for
weight, the strength of timber and stiffness of timber is comparable to
commercial steel. This good strength and
stiffness, combined with low density, means that wood is very efficient in
beams and columns. Wood has an
exceptionally high work of fracture, which allows the trees to stand up to the
buffeting of the wind, and also makes wood such a useful material. This high work of fracture cannot be
accounted for by any of the recognized work of fracture mechanisms which
operate in man-made composites.
Unlocking the key to this mechanism holds promise for the design and
manufacture of artificial composite materials.
Bamboo is stronger than timber, and ounce for ounce
stronger than concrete. The energy
needed to produce bamboo is approximately half that required for wood due to
the fact that it grows quickly -up to 3 feet per day, and sawmills are
unnecessary to get it into a form for construction. The production energy is 1/8th
that of concrete and 1/5th that of steel for equivalent bearing
capacity. (Roach, 1996) The tubular
shape makes the most of the material and lightens the weight. The tubular cross-section has much more
resistance to compressive loads than a solid cross-section with the same amount
of material. The thin walls of the tube
run the risk of local buckling of the tube wall, thus the bamboo has nodes to
stiffen the tube wall. This is the same
type of system that is used to stiffen an aircraft fuselage.
The structural design of other plant stems is also
indicative of engineering principles in use.
Tulip stems are circular, reflecting the fact that the blooms sit
centered on the stems. Asymmetrical
daffodils have an elliptical cross section, increasing the moment of inertia in
the direction of the off-centered bloom.
The elliptical stem also allows the daffodil stem to twist more than the
tulip stem. In the wind, daffodils twist
to face downwind. Wind tunnel tests
showed this reduces the flower’s drag by 30 percent, thus reducing the lateral
force the stem has to resist. “Studies
of lobster antennas, horsetail stems, and twiggy parts of more than 50 plant
and animal species reveal a fairly consistent ratio of ‘twistiness
to bendiness.’ …Tulips conform to that pattern, but daffodils proved to have an
unusually high ‘ratio of flexural to torsional
stiffness.’” They were designed to dance
in the wind! (Why Tulips Can’t Dance, 2000)
A cholla cactus has a
tubular supporting structure with oval openings in it. This structural support combines maximum
rigidity and strength with minimum expenditure of material and weight. It is reputed to surpass any man-made
construction in mechanical efficiency. (Feininger, 1956, p. 26)
41
Vines, lacking structural rigidity in their stems,
are designed to cling to a stronger form.
They anchor themselves with root and tendril. The tendrils are sensitive as fingers as they
probe the air for a hold. They have an
incredibly strong grasp once they curl themselves around their anchoring host.
They can work their way into the mortar on a masonry wall, and degrade the
structural integrity of the wall.
In the competitive struggle for existence, many
plants depend on the structural efficiency of their leaves. They must try to expose the maximum area to
sunlight, for photosynthesis, at the minimum metabolic cost. Leaves are therefore important panel
structures, and must hold themselves out flat to catch as much light as
possible. Leaves use several structural
methods to increase their resistance to bending. Nearly all leaves are provided with an
elaborate rib structure – typically a main rib from which a system of somewhat
parallel secondary veins branch off, which in turn are connected by an
irregular network of small auxiliary veins.
According to tradition, the structure of the Crystal Palace (1851) was
patterned after the main leaf ribs of the Victoria Regia
lily. The membranes between the veins of the leaves are stiffened by means of
cellular construction, and in some cases they are further stiffened by
corrugations. In addition to all this,
the leaf as a whole is stiffened hydrostatically by the osmotic pressure of the
sap.
Plants, as inanimate structures, need a method of
structurally anchoring themselves to the earth.
As mentioned above, vines anchor themselves to a more rigid structure;
however, they still need a root system to collect minerals and water. Most plants rely solely on their root system
for structural anchorage to the ground.
There are several types of root systems.
Most trees and some plants (dandelions) use a taproot system for their
foundational strength. This is similar
to pile foundations that human engineers use – e.g. telephone poles. Another type of anchoring system is the
multi-root system, where there is not a single dominant root. This system is used for plants that don’t
have high bending loads (grasses), or where the depth of taproot needed is
incredibly large. This is the case for
the large Coastal Redwood trees. They do
not put down a taproot, but instead rely on interlock with the root system of
adjacent trees to resist the sizable bending stress due to wind. Removing some trees in a grove almost
invariably leads to wind fall of others due to the disruption of this root
interlock system.
The structural system of vertebrates consists of
bones, muscles and tendons. The bones
are held in compression by the muscles and tendons. In compression, bone is as strong as granite. Although neither granite nor bone were
designed to carry tensile loads, thus the tensile strengths for both are low,
bone is amazingly 25 times stronger than granite in tension. (Cameron, 1999, p. 96) This gives a miraculous allowance for the
accidental application of tension to the bones.
42
Bones are sculpted for strength and minimum
material. Bones employ engineering principles of the arch to achieve strength,
and they reduce weight through elimination of material in places where it is
not needed. The variations in
cross-sections and densities make them look as if they were designed according
to the latest engineering theories, but they’re formed to tolerances that human
engineers wouldn’t dare to specify. The
changes in cross-sectional areas are smooth transitions. This gradual gradient alleviates stress
concentrations and crack proneness that abrupt changes and interfaces
cause. These blending gradients are
found all over in nature.
Bones are not designed to resist torsion, or
twisting. Large and bulky
cross-sections are required to get torsional strength
and stiffness. Rather than take on this
added weight, the skeletal mechanisms are designed to avoid any torsional loadings.
Problems only arise when unnatural torsional
loads are applied – like humans wringing the neck of a chicken to kill it or
man attaching long levers to their feet and skiing downhill rather poorly,
resulting in broken legs. The vertebrae
of the chicken are very weak in torsion, as are our legs, but it takes unusual
loads to apply these torsional demands. Human engineers came to the rescue, though,
(at least for man) designing the modern safety bindings that release
automatically in torsion. The chicken is
still out of luck! By avoiding torsional loadings, there are significant bulk and weight
savings in the bones. As long as they
are not subjected to unnatural loads, most animals can afford to be weak in
torsion.
Abalones are members of a large class of mollusks having
one-piece shells that are suctioned to the oceans’ rocky surfaces by the
mollusk’s muscular foot. The abalone
shells are rounded or oval with a large dome towards one end, and a row of
respiratory pores. The hard outer shell
is rough textured and dull. The smooth
inner nacre is delicately swirled with iridescent color, and used for jewelry
and mother-of-pearl inlays on furniture.
The meat is an Asian delicacy.
Nine species occur in
Abalone shells are among the hardest, most durable
materials in nature. Research has shown
that the shells consist of alternating layers of hard and soft material. The electron microscope illuminates a highly
ordered layering of ultra-thin calcium carbonate (chalk) platelets held
together by an organic protein matrix which is one billionth of a meter
thick. (
43
The highly ordered structure of the abalone shell is
due to the shape of the protein chains that form the template for the inorganic
platelets to crystallize in. These
hexagonal disks are mirror perfect in shape and
placement, echoing one another. Even the
grains within the disks show mathematical repetition and beauty that
characterize natural form. (Benyus, 1997, p. 99)
If
we recognize the activity of an engineer when we observe mechanical devices, we
can also observe the activities of a Designer when we observe similar features
in living organisms. The complexity of
God-designed structural mechanisms is much higher than man-made designs, the
quality is incomparably greater, and the similarities point to a single
Designer with a wholistic approach to design.
Some
complexities in structural mechanisms and materials have been mentioned above –
complexities that man is still trying to understand,
complexities beyond the imagination, creativity and ability of human
engineers. Natural materials are formed
in environmentally benign ways, with a small number of simple building blocks –
sugars, proteins, minerals, and water. Precise control is exercised at every
level of the process, from the arrangement of atoms into molecules, to the
assembly of molecules into intermediate components such as fibers and crystals,
up to the final architecture of larger, multifunctional composite materials
like wood, bone, or marine shells. The microstructural control that is the norm in nature is still
far beyond the capacity of human engineering.
Humans start with a vast number of advanced, complex compounds (fibers
and resins) that are assembled in relatively simple ways. Man-made ceramics and metals are subject to
energy intensive heat and/or pressure to squeeze them together into a hard
material. They are plagued with the
problem of cracking and brittleness. In
recent years we’ve gotten them down to finer grains (nanometer size) but
brittleness is still a problem. Nature’s
crystals are finer, more densely packed, more intricately structured, and
better suited to their tasks.
Quality
is evident everywhere in nature, not just in the design process, but also the
manufacturing process. Natural
structures are often breathtakingly complex and elegant. Dr. Roman Vishniac, superb photographer of nature’s manifestations,
states: “Everything made by human hands
looks terrible under magnification - crude, rough, and unsymmetrical. But in nature every bit of life is
lovely. And the more magnification we
use, the more details are brought out, perfectly formed, like endless sets of
boxes within boxes.” (Feininger, 1956, p. viii) This
intricacy can be illustrated by the tendon, which shows a hierarchy that is
almost unbelievable in its multileveled precision. Tendons are a twisted bundle of cables, where
“each individual cable is itself a twisted bundle of thinner cables. Each of these thinner cables is itself a
twisted bundle of molecules, which are, of course, twisted, helical bundles of
atoms. Again and again a mathematical
beauty unfolds, a self-referential, fractal
kaleidoscope of engineering brilliance.” (Benyus, 1997,
p. 100) Man has no hope of achieving
this level of intricacy and quality in his designs or manufacturing.
44
Similarities
found in nature point to a single Engineer.
The stiffening veins of a leaf and those of an insect’s wing exemplify
identical membrane stiffening principles, although one is a plant and the other
an insect. The humerus
of an eagle (a vertebrate) and the shell of a King crab (a crustacean),
unrelated animals, have structures that are stiffened in very similar ways - by
struts and braces to achieve maximum strength with minimum weight and
expenditure of material. These similarities in unrelated things point to a
single creative mind in their design.
The
Christian perspective of an intelligent design of the universe is gaining more
respect in intellectual circles and the culture at large as more and more
complexity and specificity is discovered at the most elementary levels of
matter and life, especially in the biological sciences. Intelligent design
proponents claim that living organisms appear designed because they are designed, exhibiting features that
natural processes cannot mimic. In observing the structural complexity, quality
and similarities in nature, the conclusion is almost inescapable, that there
was a very definite structural design process involved.
The overwhelming complexity and intricacy in the design of nature should send all engineers humbly to the feet of the Master Engineer to learn whatever design lessons they can! There is no engineering school that can give them that depth of knowledge, understanding and wisdom. The book of nature gives instruction in physical design principles, economy, functionality, aesthetics, safety, recylability and a wholistic approach to design. These principles, drawn from the Master Engineer’s designs, should be engrained in engineering minds and reflected in every design.
Structural Design principles are everywhere in
nature. The examples are endless –
tension structures, compression structures, panels, membranes, all designed in
accordance with the known laws of mechanics, and some that are currently beyond
the understanding of man.
Man understands that it is
more efficient to collect compression forces into as few members as
possible. While in tension, diffusing
the load into many members to accommodate lighter end fittings more efficiently
resists loads. These design principles
are illustrated in vertebrate animals.
There are a small number of compression members (bones) centrally
located, surrounded by a wilderness of muscles and tendons and membranes
carrying the tension. The ends of many
tendons are splayed out into branched ends, each branch having a separate
little joint to the bone. Thus the
weight, and perhaps the metabolic cost, is minimized.
45
As the size of an animal
increases, scaling design principles can be seen in the skeleton. The dimensions of the vertebrae of small
monkeys and middle-sized monkeys and gorillas are roughly proportional to the
height and weight of the animal, since direct scaling works for compression
members. Other bones, which are
subjected mostly to bending (ribs, limbs), become disproportionately thicker for
larger sized animals. This is due to the
fact that the weight of the structure increases as the cube of the dimension,
but the resisting cross-section increases only as the square of the
dimensions. This is in agreement with
the square-cube law for scaling.
Man does not have a
comprehensive understanding of structural mechanics and materials. He is still trying to unlock some of the
incredibly efficient design principles used in nature. This study of nature for better design
methods is called biomimicry. Past designs based on nature include
hypodermic needle tips shaped like rattlesnake fangs and Velcro, which is based
on seed burs. Research is currently
being done on spider webs, beetle shells, abalone shells, rat’s teeth, animal
quills and spines, stems of grasses and grains, water-resistant mussel
adhesive, and numerous other God-engineered designs. Nature is a lesson book for engineering
design principles.
All of engineering is undergirded
with economy. Man’s engineering
solutions are optimized to use a minimum of materials, labor and time. The monetary cost of the design is typically
the bottom line. God’s creations reflect
a different type of economy. In nature,
the ‘metabolic cost’ is what designs are optimized around – the price of a structure
in terms of food and energy. Weight
directly affects metabolism, thus natural materials are lighter than man-made
structural materials. Perhaps we should
be looking at design with respect to economies beyond the monetary cost.
Natural materials are carefully matched to
the required needs. There is a large
range of strengths in biological solids.
Muscles are weak, tendons are strong, which
accounts for the very different cross-sections of muscles and their equivalent
tendons. Biological materials are less
dense than nearly all metals, in an attempt to reduce the metabolic cost to the
living organism. However, in strength to
weight ratios, metals are not too impressive when compared with plants and
animals.
46
Biological
materials have the amazing capacity to repair themselves and adapt to changing
environmental stresses. The proportions
and strength of living structures tend to become optimized with regard to the
stress demand. Trees on exposed
wind-swept cliffs develop stronger wood than the same species growing in the
sheltered valley. Bone, a two-phase
composite material, has a porosity that is not fixed. It remodels in response to the mechanical
demands placed upon it, economizing the body’s metabolic cost by maintaining
only the amount of bone needed.
Astronauts subjected to only 4 days of weightlessness showed bone
mineral losses, which can take several months to regain after normal activity
is resumed. (Hawkins, 2001, p. 21) Many natural materials can sense the surrounding
environment and adapt.
We can conclude God created materials for a
particular application, with mechanical properties that matched the expected
loads and functions, while minimizing the weight to reduce metabolic cost to
the creature. Man is not capable of
creating a new material to match each application, but could do a better job of
responsibly using materials that are suited for the application. Man also cannot create structures that adapt
their strength to the environmental loads applied. Thus, man has to be much more mathematical
and conservative in his approach.
Some safety is built into the natural system,
in that natural materials can gradually increase their strength to meet demand
and in some cases heal the damage due to overloading. Neither of these methods is available to
human engineers, though, so we are left with factors of safety to ensure
reliability in our designs.
In a wholistic
design sense, Christ took on Himself the liability of this world when He
created it. The malfunctioning of His
creation cost Him His life to redeem it.
Human engineers also need to take responsibility for their work. Mistakes and insufficient safety allowances
in structural engineering can cause death to the structure’s occupants. Engineers carry a large responsibility, and
the Master Engineer models our accountability.
Functionality in God’s designs can be clearly
seen. The purposefulness of design is
executed with clarity of organization, economy of materials and outstanding
workmanship.
Each skeleton is designed with function in
mind. The burrowing African Hero shrew
has vertebrae that are joined together with interlocking prongs, giving a
backbone structure strong enough to support the weight of heavy animals that
might step on its shallow tunnel. The
mole skeleton has robust shovel shaped paws and a wedge-shaped skull, both
enabling it to tunnel easily. The pygmy
armadillo skeleton has an armored tail plate.
This plate corks the hole to its burrow when it flees from an enemy head
first into the burrow. The bones of
flying or rapidly moving animals are light and hollow. Those of animals that move more slowly, and
need more protection from preditors, are heavier and
denser.
47
The arrangement of leaves on the support system of
plants may be aesthetically pleasing, but they are placed primarily for
function. They are arranged in patterns
such that each leaf receives it full share of light. The prickly pear cactus turns its small,
thick, fleshy leaves so the narrow edge is facing the sun. This presents a minimum surface to
dehydration. The Virginia creeper, a
plant that is designed to thrive in the shade, has large, thin leaves, arranged
in a natural mosaic to prevent one leaf from shading another.
The tent caterpillar spins its nest in the
spring. Although it
appears flimsy and loosely woven, this house of silk is strong enough to
protect its inhabitants from caterpillar-eating birds and tight enough to keep
out the rain. Bald-faced hornets and paper wasps build nests in which
the combination of material and structure provide incredible heat insulating
properties.
Functionality is the driving force in the design of
nature. In man’s approach to structural
engineering, loads are designed for first, and serviceability / functionality
requirements – deflections, vibrations, waterproofness,
etc., are looked at secondarily.
Nature’s design seems to consider functionality at a higher level in the
design process. The choice of materials,
the fabrication, and the shape of the structure all affect functionality in
nature. Thus, the functional aspects had
to be a consideration from the beginning of the design process, not an
afterthought. Perhaps functionality
should be a higher priority in human designs.
It seemed that God was very concerned with
aesthetics. The created world, though
fallen, is still beautiful. Man still
seeks the environment of nature for regeneration of spirit. This concern for aesthetics can be seen when
looking at the minutest detail of nature.
God is a lover of beauty. This is
evident in the natural world – the array of colors, shades, shapes and
textures, all skillfully combined and contrasted. Bright, living colors are used rather than
somber browns and greys. There is an immense
variety. God is the Master Artist, and
this is evident in His designs.
Everything in the natural world is
biodegradable. All life is based on a
carbon and nitrogen cycle. Carbon
combines with oxygen to form one of the gases of the atmosphere. The leaves of green plants absorb this gas,
and combine it with water to form sugar.
The process is powered by sunlight.
Plant-eating animals, needing carbon to build their tissues, obtain it
by eating green plants. Flesh-eating animals
obtain carbon by eating animals that have fed on plants. Dead organic matter is broken down into its
basic components by fungi and bacteria, and in so doing they free carbon to
begin once more the cycle needed for all life.
Nitrogen has a similar cycle.
48
The Christian engineer needs to consider the
ultimate end of his creation. What
happens when the structure or material reaches the end of its life cycle? Does it fill a landfill, while more resources
are depleted from the earth for a replacement structure? Or can it be recycled into use again?
Natures’ processes are not only
technologically superior, but also environmentally benign. The bess beetle can
turn sugar and protein into an outer shell that is lightweight yet strong, stiff
and damage resistant. The spider can
spin water-soluble protein molecules into insoluble silk threads that are
tougher than Kevlar. The abalone can
crystallize chalk from seawater, and turn that substance into a shell that
exceeds the strength of most advanced ceramics.
Living organisms can turn simple building blocks into materials that are
superior to advanced synthetic composites manufactured from the latest
high-tech materials. Kevlar, the
man-made super material, is produced in vats of boiling sulfuric acid under
very high pressure. The process is
energy intensive, and the materials used are dangerous to work with and
difficult to dispose of. Spider silk, on
the other hand, is spun from natural, renewable raw materials, at room
temperature and pressure, using water instead of sulfuric acid as the solvent,
and the end-product is biodegradable.
Perhaps engineers need to develop materials inspired by natural models
to replace the petroleum-based plastics and fabrics of this century.
In the current structural engineering realm,
metals and concrete require a great deal of energy to manufacture. For light loads, devices made of steel and
concrete have much higher energy costs than more sensible materials. Timber is one of the most ‘efficient’ of all
materials in a strictly structural sense.
A wooden structure is many times lighter, it uses much less energy per
ton to produce, and is a renewable resource.
The biggest problem with timber is the time it takes to grow. Plant
geneticists have been breeding fast-growing varieties of commercial
timber.
No living organism can survive without dependence
upon other organisms. Each is an
essential part of the great web of life.
Spiders are one of nature’s regulating devices that prevent insects from
reaching such numbers that they would destroy all plant life, and themselves die of starvation. But without insects, many flowers and trees
would not be pollinated and could not reproduce their kind. Without plants, there would be neither
animals nor man, since both depend upon green plant life for their food. In the design of the world, everything is
interdependent and balanced. There is a wholistic approach to its design.
49
The human engineer needs to take a wholistic approach to design as well, and consider the
balances required of nature. No engineer has intentionally disrupted this
balance, but designs have produced unintended consequences.
Aswan High Dam in
The
natural world can counteract a certain amount of unintended consequences,
it is the cumulative effects that are taking their toll. As a Christian engineer, we are entrusted
with the responsibility of caring for the earth (Gen. 2:15, Ps. 8:6). We are compelled to look wholistically
at everything we design, not only in the environmental sense, but also the
humanitarian sense.
As
the world population grows, there will be a higher demand for life-supporting
infrastructure. It is estimated that the
population of the earth will increase by 50% in the next 50 years! The major
growth is projected in less developed countries and urban areas. Sustainability is becoming an issue. There is a need for better, safer, more
energy-efficient and more world-friendly life supporting systems. These challenges call for engineers who are
out to change their world, to make it a better place, and improve the quality
of life for all the people of the earth.
The Christian engineer should be the first to start moving in this
direction, rather than taking the least cost approach to engineering.
In addition to the many technical lessons to be
learned from God’s creation in the engineering classroom, there are spiritual
benefits as well. There is no notion
more important to the Christian mind than the notion of God as Creator. Our understanding of anything will be
incomplete and maybe quite inaccurate unless we take into account His presence
as Creator. It puts us in our place and affects the way we understand what the
universe is like. Thus, in the
classroom, two things are important:
that we point students to the Creator and warn them of about the
pitfalls.
50
A. POINTING
TO THE CREATOR
Since
the creation act is a starting point for the Christian faith, and a reference
point to develop further Christian growth, God used nature’s classroom for
spiritual formation. Many Biblical
characters spent extended time in nature to learn the lessons God wanted them
to: - Moses, John the Baptist, David, Paul.
The lessons from creation are still important in faith formation and
provide a gold mine of opportunities to integrate faith and the profession of
engineering.
Classroom
use of examples from God’s creation can facilitate initiation of faith for our
students. The creation account is the
beginning of God’s word to man, and the starting point of God’s relationship
with man. Paul used God the creator as a
starting point in evangelism. (Acts
Beyond
faith initiation, examples from nature can be used to nurture spiritual
growth. Nature conveys knowledge of
God’s character. “For since the creation
of the world God's invisible qualities--His eternal power and divine
nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” (Rom
Our
classrooms are our missionfield. This is where we are responsible for seeing
that “no man misses the grace of God.”
(Heb. 12:15) Since creation is
used as a starting point for faith in the Bible, and to promote Christian
growth, should it not be used as an anchor point for faith within the science
and engineering classrooms? The Spirit
of Prophecy places teachers with the responsibility
of sharing creation with their students.
(White, 1913, p. 456; White, 1958, p. 599)
The classroom use of illustrations from nature, of engineering lessons drawn from God’s creations, has the potential of a lifelong effect on students. Hopefully it will bring into harmony their earthly profession and their spiritual life. No longer will these be distinct, separate compartments of their life. Using illustrations from nature would add divinely given responsibilities to the engineering knowledge that students receive in the classroom. They will have guidance from the Creators’ examples to guide their engineering decisions and will carry the responsibility of caring for the earth in their creations.
51
The
emphasis on following God’s example in engineering would reduce the illusion
that success is measured by material acquisitions, social power and prestige,
which sometimes is the motivation behind pursuing the engineering
profession. It would place a higher
calling to the profession, a higher calling to success, and a God-given
responsibility to the profession.
B.
WARNINGS ABOUT PITFALLS
There
are a few things that a teacher must guard against in presenting Creation
examples in the classroom. In order to
be faithful to our Christian convictions, we need to ensure that nature is not
exalted above God, nor held in place of God (Pantheism). We must also realize that sin has altered
God’s creation, and our finite mind is not capable of understanding all of
God’s designs.
One
pitfall that engineers could fall into is limiting God to the laws of the
physical world. Our engineering designs
are based on the laws of physics and the optimization of mathematics –
principles that seem to be reliable and constant. We have a lot of faith that these laws will
always be in effect and thus our engineering designs will function as
conceived. These principles are natural
phenomena, the basis of
(or maybe a part of) the creation process. It is possible to exalt these natural
principles above nature’s God, the author of all true science, and think that
nature’s laws are so firmly established that God Himself could not change
them. This was the mindset of the
antediluvians who had never seen rain before.
They reasoned that the laws of nature had been fixed, which gave them
reassurance that rain would not fall.
Some miracles of the Bible relate to the abrogation of the laws of
physics that engineers design by: the
floating axe head, walking on water, the sun standing still. These testify that creation is still under
the control of the Creator. The laws of
nature known to man do not restrict Him – they restrict only us.
Another
pitfall is not tying the wonders of nature to a personal, involved God. In looking at the marvels of nature, there is
a risk of becoming so infatuated with the laws of
nature and matter as to overlook, or refuse to acknowledge, the continual
working of God in nature. We must make a
very concerted effort to thwart off that influence, and be very careful that we
exalt the Creator in our illustrations from nature. It is not sufficient to just present the
marvelous wonders of nature, since there are pantheistic influences and
pressures all around. Examples of design
in nature must be overtly accompanied with a tie to the Creator – to make sure
students are making our intentioned link to a Creator.
|
The
existence of evil causes problems for pointing to nature as a perfect
reflection of the Creator. Some
structural things in nature seem poorly designed. Why do the disks between the vertebrae become
less pliable with age, and increase the likelihood of slipped disks? Why do insects hollow out the structural
capacity of trees, reducing strength so drastically that they are felled by a
storm? Why does muscular dystrophy eat
away the functionality of the structural muscles? It does not seem right to blame God for
designing this degradation. On the other
hand, if God is not responsible for the poor designs, should He be credited
with the good designs? The presence of
evil in nature does not refute the argument for design, but may raise questions
about the nature of the character of the Designer.
Despite
the effects of sin, nature is still able to show us the character of God, and
it is still intended to be our lesson book.
“In the briers, the thistles, the thorns, the tares, we may read the law
of condemnation; but from the beauty of natural things, and from their
wonderful adaptation to our needs and our happiness, we may learn that God still
loves us, that His mercy is yet manifested to the world.” (White, 1948, p. 256-7)
As
more discoveries are made in the scientific world, the more we realize the
immensity of things we do not understand!
Our ignorance and limitations become evident. Just how God accomplished the work of
creation has never been revealed to finite man, nor
the details of the design. This was made clear to Job (Job 38-39), when God
replied to his questionings:
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely
you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone?
The
human mind, though fallen, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts
from its Creator. God made us in His
image, able to think, reason and create inanimate
things but only within a limited scope. “The secret things belong to the Lord
our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever.” (Deut.
29:29) We need to realize that we have
only part of the picture, and we need God to provide a fuller view of the
picture. Fortunately, the mind of Christ
is available to us when we receive things of the Spirit of God. (I Cor. 2:6-16)
It
is important in any discipline to recognize that our finite minds limit our
understanding, and to realize that we are not going to come to correct
interpretations of what we see unless we allow the mind of the Infinite God to
guide us. “By faith we understand….” (Heb.
11:3) This concept must be clearly
conveyed to our students. They need to
understand that scholarship is an act of worship, for it is the unveiling of
meaning – a value that is near and dear to God.
(Sire, 1990, p. 94)
53
VI. CONCLUSIONS
The
created world is a lesson book for engineers.
The incredible, awe-inspiring designs in nature point to the wisdom and
creativity of their Engineer, and show us how finite our knowledge is. God’s wholistic
design scheme holds many lessons for human engineers as far as design
principles, functionality, materials selection, aesthetics, safety, recyclability and environmental renewal. Beyond conveying technical lessons, bringing
creation examples into the classroom will aid in fostering faith and
integrating Christian responsibilities with the engineering profession. It is a way of effectively integrating faith
and learning in the engineering classroom.
Exploring the wonders and mysteries of nature in the classroom also sets
up an anticipation for the life to come, where our
queries will be answered, our perplexities solved, our understanding enlarged,
and our engineering education completed at the feet of the Master Engineer.
Ellen White, elaborating on heaven, says, “Christ, the heavenly Teacher, will
lead His people to the tree of life that grows on either side of the river of
life, and He will explain to them the truths they could not in this life
understand. In that future life His
people will gain the higher education in its completeness.” (Nichol, 1957, p. 988) Let us point our students to their Creator,
and thus show them the path to a ‘complete’ higher education.
Benyus, Janine M. (1997), Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, William
Morrow & Co., NY.
Cameron, John R. (1999), Physics of the Body, Medical Physics Publishing,
Campbell,
Todd (1993), “Nature’s Building Blocks,” Popular
Science, 243(4), 74-77.
Feininger, Andreas (1956), The Anatomy of Nature, Crown Publishers,
Gordon,
J.E. (1978), Structures: or Why Things
Don’t Fall Down, Da Capo Press,
Hawkins,
David (2001), Biomechanics of
Musculoskeletal Tissues, http://dahweb.engr.ucdavis.edu/dahweb/126site/chp2.pdf
Holy Bible, New International Version
(1978), Zondervan Bible Publishers,
Jensen,
M. (1998), “Gene Cloned for Stretchiest Spider Silk,”
Science News, 153(8), 119.
Koen, Billy Vaughn (1985), Definition
of the Engineering Method, American Society for Engineering Education,
54
Lipkin, Richard (1995), “Computer Reveals Clues to Spider Webs,” Science News, 147(3), 38.
Lipkin, Richard (1996), “Artificial Spider Silk,” Science News, 149(10), 152-153.
Milius, S. (2000), “Hungry Spiders tune up Web Jiggliness,”
Science News, 157(13), 198.
Nichol,
Francis D., ed., (1957), Seventh-day
Adventist Bible Commentary, Vol. 7,
Review & Herald Publishing, Washington, DC.
Roach,
Mary (1996), “Bamboo Solutions,” Discover,
17(6), 93-96.
Robbines, Jim
(2001), “Engineers Ask Nature for Design Advice,” New York Times, Dec. 11, F1.
Sire,
James W. (1990), Discipleship of the
Mind: Learning to Love God in the Ways We Think, Intervarsity Press,
Van
Dam, Laura (1995), “The Inside Story on Spines and Bone,” Technology Review, 98(3), 10-11.
White, E.G. (1913), Counsels to
Parents, Teachers and Students, Pacific Press Publishing Association,
White, E.G. (1948), Testimonies
for the Church, Vol. 8, Pacific Press Publishing Association,
White, E.G. (1952), Education,
Pacific Press Publishing Association,
White, E.G. (1958), Patriarchs
& Prophets, Pacific Press Publishing Association,
“Why
Tulips Can’t Dance.” (2000), Science News, 157(6), 95.