Before the above two question are postulated a look at the reasons as to why Biomechanics may have problems needs addressing.
What is Biomechanics?
Biomechanics - Historical Contributions
This provides a problem to all that study and attempt to provide evolution to the movement community as even more than 390 years of the machine views being spoken about the MCO is so engrained in the minds of working scientist that the question “What is the nature of movement and the organism?” is not even entering the educated discussions, as it is assumed that the mechanisms and mechanistic views have already answered it: the organism is a machine and moves as one.
The views that humans and all living things move and survive like a machine was first highlighted by Aristotle who compared the movements of animals to those of automatic puppets in his writing De MotuAnimalium where he also likened the organs of animal motion to the parts of war machines and where he spoke about the human limb being designed like the arm of catapult. There was a very similarly description by poet Lucretius which also compared in hi works De RerumNatura that the movements of animals to be closely related to the functioning of machines. Christian apologist Thomas Aquinas asserted in the Summa Theological that animals can be regarded as machines because they display regular and orderly behaviour. Though this information may in some views have no direct reference to 2013, what it stronger highlights is that even from these views nothing has changed if you look at how modern biomechanics speak, study and research movement.
However, it was not until Rene Descartes that the modern laws that has influenced Biomechanics and human movement were being established. For Descartes spoke and took the comparison between as he felt it was no longer simply the case that it might be helpful, under certain circumstances, to appeal to the workings of machines to illuminate the activity of human organisms, but that this view was the only way to describe and is the true nature that human organisms are machines and that this understanding of humans and all living things being a machine requires no further study.
Conflicting Theories: Machines vs Organisms
As a result, they both admit relational descriptions but one as parts that make up the whole and one which is whole makes up the parts. At the same time, both organisms and machines are organized so that they operate co-ordinately towards the attainment of particular ends, and consequently both can be characterized in functional terms. Finally, the Duration of their operation is, in both cases finite so the laws of physics has attempted to provide there unity.
The problem with the theorist who sit in the mechanistic role is the failure to recognize that in any comparison between two entities, the most immediately perceptible similarities are not necessarily the most important ones. One of the most vital differences between organisms and machines is the purposive system that both organisms and machines operate towards the attainment of particular ends, with their purposiveness being that of a completely different kind. It is that this inadequacy of the mechanistic views of nature are fundamentally different from those of machines, as a machine is extrinsically purposive because it operates towards an end that is external to itself, whereby the organismic is intrinsic in its design. A machine does not serve its own interests but those of its maker or user.
In contrast, an organism is intrinsically purposive because it acts on its own behalf, towards its own ends. Its design is internal, arising from within, and serving no other purpose than to maintain its own organization. A machine is also organized, of course, given that the operation of each part is dependent on it being properly arranged with respect to every other part, and to the system as a whole. But in an organism, the parts are not just there for the sake of each other, but they also produce each other, repair each other, and generally exist by means of one another. Organisms, unlike machines, are not only organized but are also self-organizing and self-reproducing systems.
In addition Organisms have an autonomous self; the phenomena of self-formation, self-regeneration, self-preservation, and self-repair are all characteristic of the internal dynamics of living systems. Machines, on the other hand, lack an autonomous self; their means of production reside outside of themselves, demanding outside intervention not just for their construction but also for their maintenance. Indeed, for the sustained operation of a machine, an external agent is required to determine when defective components need to be repaired or replaced, and to carry them out in a timely fashion. In an organism, all of these processes are carried out from within. Therefore, confronted with a machine, one is perfectly justified in inferring the existence of an external creator responsible for producing it in accordance to a preconceived plan or design.
Dynamic complex biological systems which involve that of human movement have the tendency to spontaneously self-organize themselves to produce novel patterns.
The process of self-organization is the quintessentialness of all living systems. The evolution of living beings may also be associated with the principles of self-organization through interconnected or interwoven parts which will tend to spontaneously generate new organized forms in an attempt to normalize the system. Interestingly, Darwinism essentially ignored the process of self-organization. This complexity follows the principle regarding the sum of the parts being greater than the parts taken independently. However in the classical approach outlined by Sir Isaac Newton was to approach the analysis of this complexity by mentioning there is no moderation: once a system is bounded either above or below no dynamic can be induced into the system that originates outside the bounded region. Once a set of initial conditions is specified, nothing can be changed, and the system cannot self-organize itself due to Newton’s argument that the motion of the whole is the sum of the motion of all the parts and follows directly from the classical interpretation of isolated systems.
The preceding sections have outlined the problems associating the mechanistic view to all living things, with a variety of different explanations giving as to why the machine approach may be covered with fallacies, but why is it not that this view has never been approached and challenged. One main reason is that a machines can at a rudimentary level be mathematically understood, which may give some empirical evidence to a question or series of questions posed by a Scientist. The second reason may be that to challenge an idea takes a source of courage and self-belief in what you are believing and saying.
The question then remains if the approach of the mechanistic view of living things which become the foundation for movement and biomechanics appears to be problematic as highlighted above, then the evolution of biomechanics needs to start by addressing a non-mechanistic view of all living things, including movement. This change in thought and belief would enable the evolution of Biomechanics to become fresh as it was when our forefathers first implemented the mechanistic view to all living things.
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Stephen Braybrook BSc MSc
Stephen Braybrook BSc MSc also known as The Movement Man is philosopher of human movement. He researches the traditional areas of movement and biomechanics and speaks about the future of human movement which is away from the current biomechanical ideology.