At first glance, the adaptive evolution of living organisms and the development of human artifacts seem worlds apart. When a gene mutates, it does not do so intentionally. The mutation may be helpful, harmful, or neutral as far as the survival of the species is concerned. By contrast, human artifacts like tools, products, and even organizations are the fruits of a conscious struggle to invent and improve.

What can biology and technology possibly have in common? Perhaps nothing, perhaps a great deal.

The Cambrian explosion

In the Cambrian period of the Paleozoic era, some 500 million years ago, a burst of biological creativity took place that finds an echo in the development of many technologies. Over a relatively brief period of time, a vast diversity of fundamentally different life forms appeared. What was extraordinary about the Cambrian explosion, as it is known, was that the emergence of new organisms happened "top down."

In the taxonomy of living creatures, the highest categories, kingdoms and phyla, capture the most general features of a very large group of organisms. The phylum of vertebrates, for instance, includes fish, birds, and mammals. There are 32...