[AntonioLao]

Are there such things? The science of engineering is all about design. So maybe by discussing what is engineering and what an engineer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Petroski) does could shed some answers regarding (1) biological grand designs and (2) non-biological grand designs. These two categories cover an extremely wide range of topics. In order to limit the scope, here are narrowed to grand designs of the human mind and grand designs of stellar systems hoping for the emergence of a grand design toward cold fusion technology.
Grand designs of the mind start from processes of evolution. Therefore a point of departure would be properly Darwin’s theory of evolution. At face value readings Richard Dawkins’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins) books seem to indicate that the evolution of life is not based on any grand design whatsoever but a process relying on genetic choice and decision as in trials and errors, and by survival and adaptation. In other words, life evolves by stochastic chances and random probabilistic fluctuations, in layman terms, by making mistakes after mistakes. These were not mistakes at the outset before any external interactions by choice and decision made at the wrong place and at the wrong time (space-time).
So a species that constantly, continuously, or repeatedly makes wrong choices and bad decisions is likely to cause internal or external extinction. For example, external agent of human hunters caused the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon). Another example of external causes is the anatomy of the evil mind at http://www.psychassault.org/. Both of these examples possess internal agents that can be found within the inner working of the mind.