I might have used ambiguous wording. I meant writing that it seemed as if to reproduce natural processes they thought they had to build a small-scale model or reproduction (or "imitation").
I was asking this because on a much smaller scale I think I'm observing that a similar bulbous or spherical shape seems to work better in typical electrolytic glow plasma experiments, if uncontrollable melting does not occur first. The plasma appears to get stable sooner around the sphere, and mostly just the sphere appears to heat up. It could be the lack or sharp corners, or that heat is not carried away from it too quickly, and so on.