Concepts View

A system exhibiting some or all of the following properties: heterogeneity of parts, non-aggregativity or non-linear behavior, hierarchical organization, robustness, modularity, and adaptive or agential behavior.

A contingent cause, exerted by particular structures or dynamics, that reduces the degrees of freedom of a process on which it acts.  While a constraint influences how a process behaves, it is not altered by that process on the timescale relevant to describing the process. An example is the surface of an inclined plane, which represents a constraint on the motion of a ball rolling across the surface, but which is unaffected by the motion of the ball.