Abstract

It is a commonplace to maintain that technology will never be able to reproduce a natural object in full detail. Nevertheless, if one tries to rigorously demonstrate the methodological foundation on which such an assumption is based, one finds a number of interesting problems to clarify. This paper attempts to provide a general framework for the understanding of naturoids, arguing that every naturoid — and the cognitive model upon which it is based — is the result of a reduction in the complexity of natural objects due to an unavoidable multiple selection process. Naturoids take on their own new complexity, which leads to a transfiguration of the natural exemplars and their performances. On the one hand, this transfiguration poses severe problems for those who try to gain knowledge from naturoids regarding the analogous natural objects. On the other hand, a generalized replacement of natural objects and processes with naturoids will change our way of looking at nature. Therefore, the technology of naturoids could develop through successive generations, each of which would take as exemplars already artificialized objects, giving rise to a new kind of evolution.