Amazon.com Review
"Life is what biology's all about. Technology is something else altogether. Or so I believed before I got into a kind of biology that's about technology as well as life," begins biomechanics expert Steven Vogel in the preface to Cats' Paws and Catapults. Vogel examines the "mechanical worlds of nature and people" in such chapters as "The Stiff and the Soft" and "The Matter of Magnitude." Lots of line-drawing illustrations help readers understand the examples used to answer questions of animal and machine efficiency, design and repair. Vogel clearly loves the puzzles of biology--why, for instance, do daffodil stems bend at only one precise spot? This book is filled with intriguing answers to such hidden questions, and curious readers will eagerly dive into Vogel's investigations of whether nature or human design is superior and why the two technologies have diverged so much. --Therese Littleton
From Library Journal
Nature often comes up with simpler solutions to engineering problems than do human engineers. Does that mean that nature's technology is superior? Arguing that nature can be improved upon, Vogel's comparison of biological and human-made technologies shows how and why.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The flight of Icarus admonishes not only human hubris but also our inclination to imitate natural technology, in this case flapping wings. Had Icarus only known why curved wings produce better loft than do feathers and wax! Or better, had he only read Vogel's book and its unexpected surprises that overturn the adage that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Vogel argues that few biological technologies are duplicable in human technology; he says there are about 12, such as eardrums being imitated by telephones. Vogel, a biologist, approaches the organism's problems of survival as if it were an engineering problem. Although a mechanical engineer would make calculations and then choices among designs for structure, stiffness or flexibility, power, and locomotion, the engineering of evolution favors only what enhances survival. Vogel expounds on examples as overlooked as tree leaves, asking how they remain attached in high winds. Composed of curiosity and counterintuition, this amply illustrated work should attract anyone interested in biology. Gilbert Taylor
From Kirkus Reviews
Has human engineering improved on nature? A biologist answers the question. Biomechanics is the discipline that explores natures answers to what are essentially engineering problems. Vogel (Biology/Duke Univ.; Vital Circuits, 1992) doesnt share the widespread assumption that human engineering is doomed to crank out clumsy imitations of what nature perfected eons before our race first chipped a stone into a cutting edge. For nature, sometimes to its disadvantage, must play by the rules of evolution, via natural selection; it is also restrained by geometrical and physical constants relating to growth and change, and it enjoys far less flexibility than do most human designersnature cannot easily ``go back to the drawing board'' when an existing structure won't serve its purposes. Humanity is better at making things big, while nature excels in compactness: No bird can match a jetliner for size, but 10,000 viruses could fit along the length of our tiniest machine. Vogel explains basic principles of engineering science, giving examples both from the familiar human world and from biological entities. The problems discussed include the ways a structure (a skeleton, a bridge, a tower, a wing) can be designed to resist various stresses; ways of generating power (steam engines, wind, and water mills); and ways of building up large structures from small (bricks, cells). Certain overarching verities emerge from this investigation: our preference for the right angle, where nature uses curves; our heavy dependence on the wheel, which is almost completely unknown in nature; and our favoring of sliding surfaces (metal hinges) over bending ones (sinew, muscle). Vogel is generally convinced that our technology surpasses nature's evolutionary trial and error, but the reader is likely to emerge with greater respect for both. His well-written overview eyes the larger questions implicit in the subject. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
...a mind-expanding compendium of comparisons between two very different ways of turning the materials of our planet into the gadgetry of survival ... He's great at using the contrast provided by human technology to clarify the detail of natural mechanisms. But he's careful to point out the dangers of trying to make a single terminology describe processes that are fundamentally different. -- New Scientist, Roger Bridgman
A charmingly conceived and written book. -- Foreign Affairs, December 1998
He is a trained observer with the rare ability to bring both professional knowledge and innocent-eyed enthusiasm to the task. -- The New York Times Book Review, M.R. Montgomery
Like Blake, Vogel labors well the minute particulars--presenting, elegantly and in detail, the two technologies' similarities and striking differences. Biology and engineering illuminate each other here, with joy and wonder. -- Whole Earth, Fall 1998
About the Author
Steven Vogel, James B. Duke Professor of Biology at Duke University, lives in Durham, North Carolina, and is the author of Life's Devices.
From The Washington Post
If you've ever wondered why civilization keeps trying to build a better mousetrap when evolution has already perfected the house cat, this is the book for you....By the end, you have grown so accustomed to using engineering to understand nature, and natural criteria to evaluate human constructions, that you'll never look at a tree or trestle in the same way again.
