Humans recognizing patterns nature did actually reveal something concrete and applicable. See the Golden Ratio.
I'm talking about stuff like:
reality has fractal shapes -- eeehhh... it kind of doesn't
Circuit boards look like cities for electrons -- they look like cities for ants for me. But no, actually they don't look at all like cities, not the most recent smd circuits and there's no living spaces, no suburbia, no parks and so on on circuit boards, nothing like cities. Just roooughly looking like a city for a child, especially all the old stuff with big vacuum tubes and big capacitors.
Rivers look like arteries in a body -- no it doesn't look anything like. Arteries are tubes, rivers just go from high to low elevation and all rivers end up in lakes or seas. There's multiple loops, from your heart to your lungs to clear CO2, from the heart to the rest of the body to give O2 and nutrients; then most of the blood returns via capillary to the veins that make the reverse course and some of the fluids go into the lymphatic system. I mean, nothing like rivers. Sure, if you look at a small picture from high above, it might look similar, but so would be trees and branches, roads or a peace of lint from my belly button.
Lightning looks like offspring lineages -- again, no, it kind of doesn't.
I say this about the universe not because i made it up, but because i see the pattern and i recognize a material cause for it.
Tree branches and arteries try to complete a similar function. They want to cover an area or volume as much as possible.
Circuit boards and cities look alike because they also complete similar functions. Roads/traces serve as a means of transport and buildings/components are places where the transported object undergoes a process, be them electrons or people.
Routers and networks also have a topology similar to information propagation in people or societies too because they serve the same function. People/routers are nodes and the info connection is an edge.
I'm not saying all of human society can be reduced to a CISCO manual, I'm saying they share similar structures.
Offspring lineages and lightning patterns are also similar because of the similarities between evolution and reproduction and finding the path of least resistance.
Not all of these structures have to be branching. There are many other kinds. Like how water forms a vortex and galaxies spiral.