Biolinguistics: The Use of Analogies for Interdisciplinary Research

Modern research would be unthinkable without interdisciplinary approaches. For example, many of the biological disciplines provide proof by their names: biochemistry and biological chemistry, biophysics, biotechnology, biomaterials, biostatistics, bioinformatics, and computational biology, all encompass aspects of biology that are influenced by at least one other scientific discipline. How do converging technologies fit into this existing, rich interdisciplinary framework of modern biological research? Technologies are based on science that has found a particular application area, where the driving force is a practical outcome. Different application areas can have the same scientific principles and approaches in common and only differ by the details of their implementation. Thus, in theory, the combination of two scientific disciplines that form the basis of two technologies in different application areas should yield the same benefit as the combination of the two technologies. While this is true in principle, in practice the convergence of technologies provides complementary benefits to existing interdisciplinary research. The way by which technology in one application area is transferred to another application area is through analogy. The use of analogies provides a link to the general public since analogies allow people to grasp concepts immediately by relating them to something they know. Thus, converging technologies have tremendous social impact because they provide a direct means of communicating interdisciplinary research using analogies.