The greater part of of natural inspiration i design is visual rather than mechanical.
What is the reason for natures richness in pattern? Is it all function of adaptation to environment and of the struggle to survive? What pattern-forming mechanisms underlie the structure of matter to bring about results in which the pattern features of one species or material are so similar to another? These questions have begun to receive answers in recent years. The results have the capacity to alter many of our assumptions, bringing back to nature many of the associations of beauty and wisdom that were traditionally found there, and which have important implications in cultural, even political terms.
The ecological movement has created a justifiable anxiety about mankind's relationship to nature. It has urged us to pay attention to lessons of the natural world, for the order of nature is not just visual. It includes the cycles of birth, life and death, the cycle of day and night, and the cycle of the seasons. Nature is not just about objects; it is also about systems and the shifting relationship between an object and its context. It has much to do with submission to the cycle. This is ancient wisdom, but it has taken a long time to learn it through the medium of modern science. (Alan Powers, Nature in Design, 1999.)
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