The human body is an assemblage of parts that don t fully rotate. Anyone who has sprained an ankle, torn a rotator cuff, or tried to view behind them in an owl-like fashion can attest to the limits of human design. And these limitations pervade natural systems. With the exception of flagella, true wheels don t exist in the natural world. There are two modes of locomotionthe first is simple rolling, and the second is fixed rotation, such as a wheel or propeller. Humans have a created a world of that relies on rotationmany ...
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The human body is an assemblage of parts that don t fully rotate. Anyone who has sprained an ankle, torn a rotator cuff, or tried to view behind them in an owl-like fashion can attest to the limits of human design. And these limitations pervade natural systems. With the exception of flagella, true wheels don t exist in the natural world. There are two modes of locomotionthe first is simple rolling, and the second is fixed rotation, such as a wheel or propeller. Humans have a created a world of that relies on rotationmany objects that require human muscle to move, from the knobs on a stove, to a steering wheel, to the track ball on a computer mouse. To the mind of a biomechanist, this point of connection between the human muscular-skeletal system and the world in which we use it to navigate is a terrain for marrying human functioning, development, and history. Cranks and Cranes does just that. Steven Vogel employs his love of history and his remarkable understanding of how things work to look at wheels and other rotational devices and how they are powered by the muscle and skeletal systems of humans and other domesticated animals. "
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