Design in Nature …….In the sixteen years since, I have shown how a single law of physics shapes...

Design in Nature

…….In the sixteen years since, I have shown how a single law of physics shapes the design of all around us.

…..This insight would lead me to challenge many articules of faith held by my scientific colleagues, including the bedrock

beliefs that biological creatures like you and me are governed by different principles from the inanimate world of winds and

rivers and the engineered world of airplanes, ships, and automóviles.

Over time, I would develop a new understanding of evolutionary phenomena and the oneness of nature that would reveal how design emerges without an intelligent

designer. I would also offer a new theory for the history of earth and what it means to be alive.

For a finite-size flow system to persist in time ( to live ), its configuration must evolve in such a way that provides easier Access to the currents

that flow through it.

……but the fundamental isea is this: Everything that moves, whether anímate or inanimate, is a flow system. All flow systems generate shape

and structure in time in order to facilitate this movement across a landscape filled with resistance (for example friction) The designs we

see in nature are not the result of chance. They arise naturally, spontaneosly, because they enhance acces to flow in time.

Flow systems have two basic features (properties)- There is a current that is flowing (ex. Fluid, heat, mass, or information) and the design

through which it flows.

• We also find a treelike structure in the air passeges of lungs (a flow system for oxygen), in the capillaries (a flow system for blood), and the dentries of neurons in our brains (a flow system for electrical signals and images). This trelike pattern emerges throughout nature because it is an effective design for facilitating point-to-área and área-to-points flows. Indeed, wherever you find such flows, you find a treelike structure.

• ……..These include the transportation routes we follow to work (a flow system for moving people and goods), which include many smaller driveways and neighborhood paths flowing into a few larger roads and highways. So, too, do the flowing networks of information, material, employees, and customers that keep those businesses afloat. The engineered world we have built so that we can move more easily does not copy any part of the natural design; it is a manifestation of it.

• Although treelike structures are very common design is nature, they are only one manifestation of the constructal law. • • ….A more complex example is the design of animals that have evolved

to move mass better and better (to cover more distance per unit of useful energy) across the landscape. This includes the seemingly “characteristic” sizes of organs, the shape of bones, the rythm of breathing lungs and beating hearts, of undulating tails, running legs, and flapping wings.

• All these designs have arisen-and work together- to allow animals, like raindrops in a river basin, to move more easily across a landscape.