Do you remember when I said “when a thing is untrue, if we say it is true we get contradictions” (The Darwinism contradiction of repair systems)? Here I will deal with another contradiction of Darwinism: that we could name its “bionic antinomy”.
According to Wikipedia “Bionics (also known as biomimetics, bio-inspiration, biognosis, biomimicry, or bionical creativity engineering) is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature to the study and design of engineering systems and modern technology.” In fact, whether we analyze the history of technology, we find how often technical innovations and systems take inspiration from natural models. For some of the more recent examples of biomimetics see The 15 Coolest Cases of Biomimicry. This article synthetically defines bionics as “biologically inspired engineering”.
Bionics divides in sub-fields. For example, robotics, cybernetics and Artificial Intelligence try even to simulate the human body and mind. By the way these research fields are far from having achieved their long-term goal: to construct an artificial intelligent living being. These sub-fields of bionics, despite they are at the forefront of the technological advance, are those where the qualitative differences between artificial and natural systems are maximum. Matters of principle do exist that scientists never will succeed in such task of artificial creation of a true intelligent living being. Yes they will succeed to construct a robot simulating a human, but this robot will be neither really intelligent nor living. And less than less it will be a real “being” either. But this is another story…
The story herein is the strange phenomenon that happens when bionic and biological systems are put on the same table and compared. When a system “biologically inspired” to a certain biological system is considered in technology the terminology applied to it is engineering jargon (what else). When that biological system itself is considered in biology the terminology applied is purely Darwinian. For example, before the sonar of a submarine they say it is sophisticated engineering; before the sonar of a bat they say it is natural selection. This odd double standard always struck me.
What makes this double standard even more absurd is that, as noted above about robotics, the natural systems usually are more optimized and efficient than the equivalent artificial ones. For example, the bats have an echometer emitting 100 kHz supersonic pulses at a frequency of 30 times per second. These waves are reflected and distorted by the surrounding objects and their echoes are intercepted and elaborated by the bat to catch its prey and also just to get around. The signal processing of these echoes is so accurate to allow bats to fly, twisting, looping and zig-zagging through the air, into a completely dark room intersected by tens pianoforte strings without grazing them. The bat’s echometer has more accuracy, more efficiency, less power consumption and less size than any artificial sonar constructed by engineers. What … technological jewel! And many other wonderful examples could be considered in nature.
Let’s try to formalize somehow as a very logic antinomy the double standard situation described above.
(1) Intelligence is what creates and optimizes artificial systems by inserting complex specified information into them. Intelligence is the unique source of CSI.
(2) Bionic systems are fully created by intelligence. Say B the CSI of a bionic system, B > 0.
(3) A bionic system is less efficient than the similar natural system (say N its CSI). Then B < N.
(4) Natural systems are not created by intelligence, then N = 0. This is the fundamental axiom of Darwinian evolution: natural systems seem to be designed by intelligence but it is an illusion only.
(5) From #3 (B < N) and #4 (N = 0) we have B < 0.
(6) From #2 and #5 we have in the same time B > 0 and B < 0, i.e. an absurdum.
The above reasoning logically proves that the evolutionist double standard is a very antinomy. In all logic antinomies there is at least a premise that is untrue. I am sure the UD readers will have no difficulty to discover that the false premise is #4, indeed the Darwinian main hypothesis (all species arose by unintelligent natural processes).
There is a teaching for evolutionists here (as in all other contradictions of Darwinism), simply they cannot have it both ways: biological systems undesigned and their artificial clones designed. Since they cannot deny design in artificial clones, they should resign themselves to consider as designed their biological archetypes too.