I once purchased a set of shelves for my office and liked them so much I wanted to make an additional set by "reverse engineering".  After carefully measuring the existing shelves, I was surprised to realize they were designed to be cut from a single sheet of 4 foot by 8 foot plywood.  I was, in a sense, thinking the shelves designers' thoughts after them.  Biological scientists have always used reverse engineering, except that the objects analyzed are living things.  The scientific method is really one of reverse engineering of a completed product - Life.  Uplook Magazine August - September 2006, p. 8.