Life is like Lego - only better - Telegraph In a paper with the arcane title: Scaling of Differentiation in Networks: Nervous Systems, Organisms, Ant Colonies, Ecosystems, Businesses, Universities, Cities, Electronic Circuits, and Legos, Mark Changizi and colleagues at Duke University, North Carolina, looked at networks under economic or natural selective pressure, such as electronic circuits (networks of electronic components), Lego ("networks" of pieces), businesses (networks of employees), universities (networks of academics), organisms (networks of cells), ant colonies (networks of ants), and nervous systems (networks of neurons). They found that, as you might expect, there was an increase in the types of components - or in the case of animate systems, the division of labour - as the total number of pieces increased. But for Lego, the rise in piece types with the size of the set does not occur in a simple, linear way. Moreover, the variety of the most complex things that you can make with a given set does not grow: a Lego set of sufficient complexity to make a Star Wars Death Star can only make, well, a Death Star. "In the new Lego world, the number of piece types in a Lego set grows nearly as fast as the size and complexity of the set," says Changizi. The paradox is that the more complex the set, the fewer models may be made from it. In fact, Lego, old or new, stacks up badly against nature. With just 200 types of cell, it is possible to build not just the human body, but the most complex known object in the universe: the human brain. Imagine trying to build a humanoid robot from just 200 components. Athene Donald, a Cambridge physics professor, wants to see Lego return to the simple, generic universal kits of her childhood for another reason. She is uneasy about Lego's new "Friends" range, aimed at girls. Cute mini-dolls come with handbags, a hair brush, lipsticks, hair salon and cupcakes. She applauds Lego for consciously reaching out to the other 50 per cent of the population, and encouraging manual dexterity, engineering and construction skills, but worries that these girl-friendly ranges reinforce stereotypes: "It used to be that the Lego pirates were unisex (at least I always thought of them as such) and pink was not in evidence." But perhaps all this angst over Lego is anchored in one fact: a surprising number of people care about the aesthetic appeal of these little colourful blocks. Aside from those agonising moments when I encounter one with my bare feet, I count myself among them. Roger Highfield is director of external affairs at the National Museum of Science and Industry