Catalogo Experimenta 06

TECHNOLOGIES
HIDDEN
BY NATURE
edited by Davide Vannoni
In Italian the definition of technology is “the study of the technique
and its application”, while under the name technique
we find “way of working, producing, creating something”. In
more general terms, we can consider collection of practises,
instruments and knowledge that an individual or a group of
individuals put together to resolve a problem.
The definition is obviously anthropocentric and seems to instead
exclude all that is opposed as natural and biological,
and yet in nature there exist levers, pumps, conditioners, varnish,
electric and chemical power stations of which we mostly
ignore the function inasmuch as we consider them part of
other systems.
The heart of a whale pumps hundreds of litres of blood every
minute consuming a Watt of electricity, the nests of termites
have a constant internal temperature of 24 degrees,
Peter and Rosemary Grant confirm the evolutionary theory of
Darwin studying the 13 types of beaks of the chaffinches of
the Galapagos, all evolutes from a single replication and which
perform different functions according to the type of seed
from which the bird is nourished.
In conclusion, nature produces millions of “technical” solutions
in continuous evolution in response to what the envi-
ronment wants. Each species has developed some and depends
on those for survival of the single individual of which it is
composed and for their replication.
Man in his turn has developed solutions of survival, first of
all the brain, this “technological” instrument has a notable
in the dynamics of the species, as the cognitive psychologist
Steven Pinkert points out, and the problems it creates are different.
First of all it is cumbersome: the female pelvis is scarcely
able to host the head of an unborn child, in so much as
its “creation” called for a different balancing of gait, making
women, at the bio-mechanical level the worst walkers compared
to men, in addition the position of a large head joggling
on the neck exposes human beings to major risks of injury
or damage, for example, following a fall. Thirdly the brain is
energy consuming, despite representing 2% of body weight,
it consumes 20% of the energy and nutritive substances. In
addition the brain requires being able to be used, a lot of time,
for this we spend the major part of our life or as children, or
to look after children. Finally the brain is limited and slow, to
react to the environment in simple tasks requires much longer
time due to the neuronal paths: some insects are able to bite
in less than a millisecond. Such factors perhaps are able to
explain an ironic question asked by the same Pinkert: if the
intellectual quotients of the average man is of 107 and that of
an average trout is 4, then why does man have such difficulty
in catching a trout?
In a nutshell the brain has a cost, to be able to sustain the
human species it has had to renounce larger muscles, thicker
bones, more egg...
However nothing in nature is produced with a negative cost/
benefit relationship and, apart from some inconvenience
amongst which is to make us yield, to be at the arrival point
of an evolutive chain or, still worse, a type beyond the mechanisms
of evolution, the brain is placed as an extremely useful
organ for survival.
INDEX SCIENTIFIC STUDIES
131