Design in Nature (Bejan, Zane, 2012)

How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization

In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in nature - trees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning bolts - and reveals how a single principle of physics, the Constructal Law, accounts for the evolution of these and all other designs in our world.

Everything - from biological life to inanimate systems - generates shape and structure and evolves in a sequence of ever-improving designs in order to facilitate flow. River basins, cardiovascular systems, and bolts of lightning are very efficient flow systems to move a current - of water, blood, or electricity. Likewise, the more complex architecture of animals evolve to cover greater distance per unit of useful energy, or increase their flow across the land. Such designs also appear in human organizations, like the hierarchical "flowcharts" or reporting structures in corporations and political bodies.

All are governed by the same principle, known as the Constructal Law, and configure and reconfigure themselves over time to flow more efficiently. Written in an easy style that achieves clarity without sacrificing complexity, Design in Nature is a paradigm-shifting book that will fundamentally transform our understanding of the world around us.

JLJ - Bejan has some good ideas here. I like authors like Mr. Bejan who are not afraid to use the head that God gave them to construct or synthesize new concepts out of intuition. We could argue that his concepts are not proven. But, they are useful from a philosophical point of view to help us come to some understanding of our world.

Bejan notices that evolution tends to favor structures which improve the flow properties or motion characteristics of life forms. Perhaps, in reverse, we can argue that those life forms that, for whatever reason, emerged with better flow or motion properties, were favored in adapting to their environment. Hmmm...

p.3 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.

p.6 Life is movement and the constant morphing of the design of this movement. To be alive is to keep on flowing and morphing. When a system stops flowing and morphing, it is dead. Thus, river basins configure and reconfigure themselves to persist in time.

p.9 Design does not emerge willy-nilly. To know why things look the way they do, first recognize what flows through them and then think of what shape and structure should emerge to facilitate that flow.

p.14 The constructal law is a shout from the rooftops: Everything that flows and moves generated designs that evolve to survive (to live).

p.14 We use the constructal law to predict what should occur in nature - that designs should emerge and evolve in time to facilitate flow access.

p.20 The constructal law does much more than explain the designs we see in nature. It articulates a law we can use to understand why designs emerge and predict how they will evolve in the future.

p.32 The constructal law... Its power and correctness rest on this fact: It enables us not just to describe but to predict the evolution of all flow systems... we can use the constructal law to imagine what [a natural system] should look like it it has the freedom to change over time to flow more easily.

p.36 What the constructal law captures is a central tendency in nature... It is because this tendency has a direction, a purpose, that we can predict how things should evolve in the future.

Using the constructal law we can recast organic evolution as a dynamic process that generates better designs... the central tendency is the selection of characteristics that... allow animals and plants to generate more flow (movement) for their mass with less expenditure of useful energy to achieve this movement... The same tendency governs the evolution of inanimate systems; of all the possible configurations, the ones that persist are those that facilitate flow.

p.44 A prerequisite, then, is for the flow system to be free to morph. The emerging flow architecture is the means by which the flow system achieves its objective under constraints. Freedom is good for design.

p.56 But nature does not exist in freeze-frame; it is dynamic, ever evolving.

p.75 By refocusing our attention on how things look - on their evolving designs that are the morphing boundaries of their flow systems - the constructal law reveals, predicts, and explains design in nature.

p.102 It teaches us (1) that everything evolves, not just biological creatures, (2) that there is a predictable direction to these changes, and (3) that we can witness many entities morphing - becoming better and better - right before our eyes.

p.153 But the changes that stick are those that allow the flow system to persist in time.

p.234 The better and more easily we guide and power movement, the more our movement (our culture) persists. Every living thing possesses this ability, to use the environment as fuel

p.236 Freedom is good for design... freedom is a prerequisite for the ability to change, to move more easily. It is, by the way, captured in Darwin's hunch that the survivor is the one who adapts.

p.237 anything that flows - which is just about everything - is "alive" because it evolves as it flows. Life is the persistent movement, struggle, contortion, and mechanism by which animate and inanimate flow systems morph to generate better access for what flows.

Enter supporting content here