This article from the Journal of Heat Transfer unveils the physics meaning of optimization, knowledge and design evolution, and why these concepts and human activities are profoundly useful for human life.

The design in nature phenomenon facilitates access for everything that flows, evolves, spreads, and is collected: river basins, atmospheric and ocean currents, animal life and migration, and technology (the evolution of the “human-and machine species,” wealth, life). This phenomenon is summarized by the constructal law: the occurrence and evolution of designs in nature, its time direction.

Notably, the constructal law accounts for contradictory end-design statements such as minimum entropy production and maximum entropy production, and minimum flow resistance and maximum flow resistance.

• Adrian BEJAN, Constructal Law: Optimization as Design Evolution, Journal of Heat Transfer, June 2015, Vol. 137, DOI: 10.1115/1.4029850.