Diverse, superficially dissimilar structures may share functionally similar limits to growth. As the title of the popular undergrad book on back-of-the-envelope estimation put it: "Consider a Spherical Cow!"
https://open.substack.com/pub/guyberliner/p/consider-a-spherical-cow?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3we9u
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How literally can we take the injunction, “consider a spherical cow!” from the popular, eponymously titled undergrad text on modelling and estimation? Do a lot of different structures share attributes with geometric spheres? What are clear exceptions? How do we identify them? (Clearly, it seems that the natural world has evolved at least some structures that overcome the constraints imposed by the scaling laws for spheres. Evidently, the human brain with its fantastically complex folding is one such case! So, does the system of human knowledge and the progress of collective scientific advancement more closely resemble a brain, than a sphere?! Why or why not? It should be relatively obvious how much these questions have profound implications for the future of a planetary civilization.)