What's seen as the greatest invention in human history may not have originated in our brains at all.
Mother Nature, not humans, created the wheel and stuck it in all sorts of places: in insects, in birds, and even in our own bodies.
That's the claim made by Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke University, in an article published last week in the American Journal of Physics.
"Beliefs we take for granted are shattered," he said. "The idea that nature did not invent the wheel happens to be wrong."
The study is another step in Bejan's long quest to find simple, unifying physical explanations to account for the complexities of biology.
In 1996, Bejan invented the idea of constructal law, which spells out, according to a single principle, what it means to survive.
The idea is this: For any system, animate or inanimate, to persist in time, it must evolve to move with greater ease.
Nature's wheel fits nicely into this theory. According to Bejan, all forms of animal locomotion - running, swimming and flying - can be predicted and unified by the underlying wheel.
"This is a physics story of what it means to be the fittest, to survive in nature," he said. "I do not have to know Darwinian order to predict these biological systems. ... Biology is a subchapter of science. Laws of physics are for everything."
Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/06/21/543332/duke-researcher-credits-nature.html#ixzz0ryn2SO6FAtribuita creierului uman de milenii, roata, in viziunea lui Adrian Bejan este de fapt inventia naturii.
Intr-un articol publicat zilele trecute in American Journal of Physics, Dnul Bejan, profesor de inginerie mecanica la Duke University, Statele Unite, sustine ca cea mai mare inventie din istoria omenirii a fost creata de Natura si a fost dezvoltata in insecte, pasari si chiar, si in propriile noastre corpuri.
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