You may know the architect Christopher Alexander from "A Pattern Language" and his influence on design patterns/agile.
Later in life he studied the organizing principles of nature and well-man-made artifacts and discussed the common patterns in his books "On the nature of order" [1]. The ideas are perhaps more grandiose than this author is discussing, but also very interesting when applied to engineering.
While it may be tempting to look to nature to draw inspiration for engineering, realize that nature/evolution often makes horrendous engineering "decisions" precisely because it is not intelligently engineered. The most often cited example is the inferior laryngeal nerve in mammals, which is 15 feet longer than necessary for giraffes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_laryngeal_nerve#Evide...
Has it ever been determined where the first seeds of life came from? Hydrogen atoms don't spontaneously mix with whatever else is needed for a cell and just become a bacterium or virus. It is widely accepted that everything on earth evolved from single cells, but where did the very first "parent" cell come from in the universe?
Assuming that 100% unassisted evolution is feasible (an assumption that I personally don't believe in) then the random interactions of basic building blocks within an early primordial soup plus external factors such as temperature, atmosphere, and lightning eventually resulted in random combinations which eventually connected to each other to form proteins and other cell building blocks which eventually formed the first cell.
They're just downvote-happy nowadays. I gained "downvote priviledge" two weeks ago and still haven't used it.
If I don't like something, I don't read it. And if the comment is legitimately against HN community guidelines, usually 5+ people have beaten me to the downvote, so I don't waste my time.
Hydrogen atoms fuse in stars to create heavier atoms. Rocks form. Organic molecules form given heat and time. Pre-cellular life forms. Some theorize that the first cells formed inside bubbles in rocks. Others think otherwise http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17987-how-life-evolved...
Later in life he studied the organizing principles of nature and well-man-made artifacts and discussed the common patterns in his books "On the nature of order" [1]. The ideas are perhaps more grandiose than this author is discussing, but also very interesting when applied to engineering.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Order-Phenomenon-Environmental-...