Means, Advantages and Limits of Merging Biology with Technology

The natural world spent billions of years in solution-finding during evolution, which could benefit Technology. How do we put that in a nutshell? Biological systems are more complex than the most complex current technology. Any given function and effect are simultaneously coordinated and linked with others at many levels of biological organisation-from cell organelle to organism, to population and ecosystem. Technology does not have tools to deal with the complexity and "goalintendedness" of living systems. But limits for interaction exist on both sides-Biological science itself is also too empirical and not mature enough to provide a solid base for correlating living with technical systems. Moving towards a synthesis,where engineers can utilize the vast amount of available biological data, we suggest using a tool called "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving" (TRIZ) and clarifying some important methodological issues, which have not previously been recognised in bionic engineering: 1) Requirenent for more appropriate definitions of "system", "effect", "function", "law" and "rule". 2) Requirement for understanding or even measuring the degree of contradiction or analogy between functions in biological and artificial and/or non-living engineering system-there is no simple direct correlation between what engineers find useful and what biology does.