Biotensegrity:
The Structural Basis of Life

The second edition of the book ‘Biotensegrity: the structural basis of life – written in collaboration with Stephen Levin – is now available from Handspring and contains much information on the origins of tensegrity and the biotensegrity concept – the underlying principles and their implications for functional anatomy and biomechanics.

A more recent book chapter entitled Biotensegrity: concept, principles and applications now condenses a six-lecture course on biotensegrity – presented in 2024 at the International Centre for Mechanical Sciences in Udine, Italy – is also available.

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The concept of biotensegrity appreciates the inter-twined relationship between every part of an organism and the mechanical system that integrates all those ‘parts’ into a complete functional unit. It thus represents a paradigm shift in biomechanical thinking and changes the way that we think about the complexities of life.

Both books answer the question ‘What is biotensegrity?’ and recognize that all natural forms are the result of interactions between some basic principles of self-organization. They then shows how an appreciation of these ‘rules’ leads to a better understanding of living organisms as functionally integrated and heterarchical units, and forms part of the basic science that underpins clinical reasoning.

Biotensegrity fits with the ethos that unites a wide diversity of different practitioners and therapeutic methods because it intrinsically recognizes the wholeness of the human body. In other words, that an appreciation of the interconnectedness between every part of the organism is essential to a proper understanding of its functions in health and disease.

The concept has also influenced the development of robots destined for the exploration of space, and new classes of joint and prostheses with potential medical applications. It is also gaining momentum within the scientific community who examine the dynamic behaviour of cells and their interactions with the surrounding extracellular matrix and fascia, thus increasing our understanding of cancer and other illnesses. Biotensegrity underpins new ideas about joint mechanics and the global connectivity between these tissues and the nervous system, all of which operate synergistically in controlling movement and are far more than collections of anatomical ‘bits’. Where each ‘part’ is examined in relation to the whole and a more complete understanding obtained.

Super-stability

As this website and our understanding of the biotensegrity concept are constantly evolving, this section highlights a major new development in our understanding of the mathematical framework that underpins tensegrity architecture as the most energy-efficient (and thus most likely) structural system for biology – super-stability.

This was described in 1998 by Connelly & Back but it is only more recently that its significance to biotensegrity has been appreciated.

The standard engineering approach to biomechanics is based on static determinacy and the solving of complex equations to understand motion, whereas the architecture of living organisms consists of “an incalculable number of endlessly transmutable and continuously reconfiguring… closed kinematic chain systems operating at multiple scale levels simultaneously” (Susan Lowell de Solórzano).

What this means is that because biology is fundamentally indeterminate, any attempt to understand this ‘black box’ through standard biomechanical engineering methods will always be a gross simplification, and that an algorithmic approach based on the reality of the subject is destined to be more successful: Biotensegrity as the Super-stability Hypothesis for Biology.