Books
Design in Nature by Adrian Bejan and Peder Zane
Date: 24/07/2016I find that great ideas have their way of standing out and striking you. The Constructal Law of Design in Nature, the central idea behind this book, feels just like such an idea.
As usual the way I found this book has a nice, curious memory for me and I am beginning to feel that its content itself describes the way I found it.
A few months back, I found myself very sick somewhere between the grand Mount Rainier and the city of Seattle on the edge of a beat out town in an outlet mall. My wife had literally been shopping in a department store for over an hour while I waited in agony outside, fighting a wicked cough and copious amounts of drool. Yes, not a pretty sight!
To my luck however, with my eyes always poised and in search, I found probably the only surviving bookstore in the district. A discount store at that, a store that stocks books that have recently either gone out of print or otherwise couldn't be sold.
Now, I always love such propositions because by and large I like books that nobody else does. This volume you are reading about here, "Design In Nature" was found at a wonderful 70% discount. Super!
It is really a book about the "Constructal Law", a law that I hope to describe and elaborate about later in this review but in the words of the Author it is this:
Everything that moves, whether animate 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)
Sounds more like Taichi than real physics I tell you but on further reflection there is something deep going on here that can be describe physically.
The Author puts it even more empathically elsewhere:
Everything that flows and moves generates designs that evolve to survive (to live)
More to come...
| 24jan17 | admin |