Science and Culture Today Discovering Design in Nature
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engineers

chilly
Photo credit: Robert Zunikoff, via Unsplash.

The Challenge from Jason Rosenhouse

"The response would be a lot chillier if they tried the same arguments in front of audiences with the relevant expertise." Is that so? Read More ›
Harvester_ant_hole
Photo: Harvester ants at the entrance to their nest, via Wikimedia Commons.

To Regulate Foraging, Harvester Ants Use a (Designed) Feedback Control Algorithm

These elements of harvester ant behavior present a severe challenge for the evolutionary paradigm. Read More ›
Bicolor_parrotfish 2
Photo: Parrotfish, via Wikimedia Commons.

Jaw Dropping: Nature’s Irreducibly Complex Linkage Mechanisms

Bristol University engineer Stuart Burgess goes deeper into the marvels of such sea creatures as the parrotfish, sling-jaw wrasse, and mantis shrimp. Read More ›
harvester ants
Photo: Harvester ants, by Donkey shot, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ants Use Algorithms Similar to Those of the Internet

Optimization algorithms enable the ant colony to decide how many ants to send to a given food source and when to drastically reduce the number. Read More ›
Area 51
Photo: Area 51, by X51 (Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/x51/ Web: http://x51.org/), CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Biology as Reverse Engineering

An analogy I like to use is NASA finding a crashed spaceship in a cave located in Area 51. Read More ›
orca
Photo credit: Thomas Lipke via Unsplash.

Ever Thought You Could Change Someone’s Mind?

Iain was a diehard atheist from the United Kingdom. "I absolutely knew that I would never believe in a creator. It was inconceivable to me," he recalls. Read More ›
spider
design intuition
Photo credit: edbuscher, via Pixabay.

The Miracle of Spiderwebs

Spiders are another of nature’s master engineers. About half of known spider species (order Araneae) construct webs made of silk. Read More ›
Animal Algorithms
Image source: Discovery Institute Press.

New Book, Animal Algorithms, Spells Fresh Trouble for Darwinism

The book is all about the buzzing, migrating, web-spinning, and colony-building world of ingenious animals. Read More ›
engineering
Photo credit: ThisisEngineering RAEng, via Unsplash.

Engineers in the Systems Biology Revolution

Systems biology is taking the biological world by storm, an approach that treats biological systems as optimally or near-optimally engineered systems. Read More ›
ants
Photo: Copyright by Curtis Clark, licensed as noted, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Insects and Design: Ant and Honeybee Engineers

If you’ve ever watched ants busily tunneling in an ant farm, you may have noticed that the intricate finished product rarely collapses. Why is that? Read More ›

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