ABSTRACT
There is a school of thought that attempts to restrict the eld of biomaterials to the study of manufactured materials derived entirely or in part from nonliving or synthetic sources. This is an inadequate concept. In the same way that we recognize that biomechanics includes the application of the principles of classical mechanics to the study of the function of living systems, we must recognize that the discipline of biomaterials includes the application of the principles of materials science to the study of the “stuff” from which living systems are made. Thus, tissue mechanics, often considered a subdiscipline of biomechanics, is in fact at the border where biomechanics and biomaterials meet: the former discipline considering tissues as materials with denable deformational properties and the latter considering how these properties arise from composition and structure.
