First Principles Thinking

Biological Parallel

When land plants evolved 470 million years ago, they couldn't copy aquatic strategies—water provides structural support, but air doesn't. First principles demanded novel solutions: lignin for rigidity, vascular tissue for fluid transport, stomata for gas exchange. Convergent evolution repeatedly demonstrates first principles thinking: flight evolved independently in insects, birds, bats, and pterosaurs because physics, not ancestry, dictates wing design. Biology doesn't copy; it derives solutions from fundamental constraints.