Engineers constantly look to nature for inspiration.  Birds give us more efficient planes, trees give us stronger buildings, hell even velcro was inspired by a plant.  This is actually an entire field of expertise called biomimicry.  What’s interesting though is that many other aspects of human civilization exhibit unintentional biological comparisons.  To start, watch this incredible TED Talk: The surprising math of cities and corporations Some amazing takeaways:

  • City infrastructure scales like animals. 
  • Metrics with no biological equivalent scale unnaturally (crime, wages, and more).
  • Companies both scale and grow like animals.
Now compare to this book:  Darwin: The Market Whiz. (NY Times book review linked).  The takeaway here is market forces mimic evolution.
Through a broader study of biomimicry, we could come to more scientific consensus on solving some of the world’s worst problems, such as poverty, pollution, and crime.  Just food for thought.