Nature's Design Principles

Via the ever-interesting WorldChanging comes this list of Natural Design Priciples.

• Waste = Food


• Self-assemble, from the ground up


• Evolve solutions, don't plan them


• Relentlessly adjust to the here & now


• Cooperate AND compete, not just one or the other


• Diversify to fill every niche


• Gather energy & materials efficiently


• Optimize the system rather than maximizing components


• The whole is greater than the sum of its parts--design for swarm


• Use minimal energy & materials


• "Don’t foul your nest"


• Organize fractally


• Chemical reactions should be in water at normal temperature & pressure




• Vogel's mechanical-engineering-specific principles (summarized):


• Nature's factories produce things much larger, not smaller, than themselves.


• We use metals, nature never does


• Nature makes gradual transitions in structures (curves, density gradients, etc.) rather than sharp corners.


• We make things out of many components, each of which is homogeneous; nature makes things out of fewer components but they vary internally.


• We design for stiffness, nature designs for strength and toughness.


• Our mechanisms have rigid pieces moving on sliding contacts, nature bends/twists/stretches.


• Nature often uses diffusion, surface tension, and laminar flow; we often use gravity, thermal conductivity, and turbulence.


• Our engines are mostly rotary or expansive, nature's are mostly sliding or contracting.


• Nature's engines are isothermal.


• Nature mostly stores mechanical work as elastic energy, sometimes as gravitational potential energy.

Now, think to yourself, how many of the things that I use/own/contemplate owning obey even two of the above priciples? If I wanted to design a new your favorite widget/durable good/structure here how would I go about incorporating at least two or three of those priciples?