Abstract
Evolutionary concepts may have great appeal when studying material culture and its designed objects. As a matter of fact, there is robust tradition in using biological analogies to understand designs, as it occurs in the field of bionics, where the simulation of vital processes advocates not only an approach of a purely cognitive nature but, rather, an operative programme allowing the translation of isomorphisms between living organisms and technology into effective design solutions. More generally, natural sciences offer an uncommonly rich apparatus for analogies to be applied to the domains of the sciences of the artificial. But how widely applicable are Darwinian metaphors? To which extent do the Darwinian concepts of variation and selection provide meaningful theoretical tools across product innovation? What can they add to the analysis of product designs? To this end, this study takes the form of a literature review about evolutionary approaches to the analysis of technological change, along with a number of interpretations about the analogies between natural evolution and the dynamics of product variety generation.
Highlights
The generalizable ideas on the analogy between biology and technology are recurrent in many disciplinary fields
The developments and consolidation of bionics –on it side– are largely disseminated: the simulation of vital processes and structures have merged into the research domains and applied studies translating natural structures and processes into models for artificials designs (Robinette, 1961; Yeang, 1974; Pearce, 1978; Di Bartolo, 1981; Coineau & Kresling, 1987; Nachtigall & Kresling, 1992, 1992a; Kresling, 1995, 2012)
The methodology embodied by technological Darwinism implies that a natural organism, structure, or process may produce a model to be extended to an artificial system
Summary
The generalizable ideas on the analogy between biology and technology are recurrent in many disciplinary fields. The methodology embodied by technological Darwinism implies that a natural organism, structure, or process may produce a model to be extended to an artificial system (or artefact, or structure, or process). Comparing evolutionary principles –derived from either the classical darwinian theory (Darwin, 1872) or the Modern Synthesis (Huxley, 1963)– to technological evolution is not intended to directly produce design theories (Pizzocaro, 1994, 2020). What is claimed invests the conjecture that the basis of structurally similar systems that proceed by different self-evident rules, there may be unifying principles, as theorized by the epistemological studies on the general nature of change in biological and cultural systems (Laszlo, 1985, 1986, 1988)
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