Historical empathy interprets past actors under their own beliefs and constraints — a historicist, context-bound method. Historicism supplies the genus: Context-bound understanding. Historical Empathy preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Interpret in context. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Historical empathy interprets past actors under the beliefs, values, information, and options they actually faced, deliberately reconstructing the decision environment of the period rather than imposing present-day frameworks. That is the activity of Interpretation — recovering meaning from a representational substrate under a framework that makes some readings available and others not — specialized to historical evidence under the period's own conceptual scheme. Historical empathy is interpretation disciplined by anachronism-avoidance and period-internal framing.

Historical Empathy is a kind of interpretation: reconstructing past actors' frames recovers meaning under their available beliefs and constraints.


Historical empathy presupposes presentism because its methodological structure is defined as the corrective to presentism: it deliberately reconstructs past actors' decision environments under the beliefs, norms, and information they actually held rather than under those of the interpreter's present. Presentism supplies the diagnostic error pattern (import of present categories into past contexts) against which historical empathy positions its discipline. Without the prior identification of presentism as the systematic interpretive error, there is no contrast that historical empathy is engineered to avoid and against which its methods are justified.

Historical empathy presupposes presentism because it is a corrective discipline defined precisely against presentism's import of present values into the past.


Historicism is a specialization of interpretation. The general pattern recovers meaning from a representational substrate given a framework that makes some readings available and others not, producing readings that are answerable to evidence and convention. Historicism instantiates this with the framework being the documentary, institutional, and material conditions of the phenomenon's specific historical period, treated as a precondition for understanding. Beliefs, institutions, and practices are read on their own terms by reconstructing the period; abstracting from those conditions is held to misread the phenomenon.

Historicism is a specific kind of interpretation that recovers meaning by reconstructing the period-specific conditions of a phenomenon.


Historicism holds that phenomena — beliefs, institutions, practices — are products of specific historical conditions and cannot be adequately understood by abstracting from those conditions. The methodological commitment to contextualization presupposes that historical trajectories constitutively shape what exists at any time, not merely as background but as causally determinative. Path dependence supplies exactly that: outcomes determined not by current conditions alone but by the specific historical trajectory that produced them. Without the path-dependence claim that history accumulates constraints, historicism's insistence on period-specific interpretation has no structural ground.

Historicism presupposes path dependence because interpreting phenomena on their own period-specific terms requires that historical conditions constitutively shape outcomes.


A holarchy is a nested ordering whose every unit is a holon that integrates upward into a higher-level whole. This presupposes emergence: the appearance, at a higher level of organization, of properties or behaviors that are not attributes of lower-level constituents and are not trivially predictable from them. Each level above contributes new descriptive vocabulary and causal roles that the constituent holons do not individually possess. Without emergence supplying the structural reason that the higher level is more than the sum of holons, the nesting collapses into a mere set membership rather than a layered ordering of qualitatively distinct levels.

Holarchy presupposes emergence because each level above the holons must possess properties or behaviors not attributes of the constituent holons.


A holarchy is composed of holons that face downward as wholes governing their parts and upward as parts within a larger whole. This dual-facing identity requires that the system already be organized into a stack of horizontal strata with each layer providing abstractions and services to the next — the structural commitment layering names. Without an underlying multi-level stratification, there would be no upward face for a unit to be a part of and no downward face for it to govern as a whole. Holarchy specializes layering by demanding mutual whole-part status at every level.

Holarchy presupposes layering because Janus-faced holons only exist where a system is already organized into stacked strata of whole-and-part levels.


A holarchy is a nested ordering whose every unit is a holon, simultaneously a whole with respect to its parts and a part with respect to the level above. This presupposes modularity: decomposition into discrete, largely self-contained components with stable interfaces. Each holon must be self-contained enough to be a whole downward (internally coherent module) while interfacing cleanly enough to be a part upward (composable with peers). Without modularity's commitment to bounded units with explicit interfaces, the Janus-faced identity collapses; the holon needs the modular structure to face both directions coherently.

Holarchy presupposes modularity because each holon's dual-facing identity as whole-and-part requires the well-bounded self-contained module that modularity supplies.


Validation supplies the prerequisite condition: Confirming that an artifact actually solves the intended problem in its real operational context, as distinct from confirming it was merely built to specification. Holdout Set operates against that background: Reserve a disjoint portion of evidence to score a candidate it never shaped. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.

Holdout Set typically presupposes Validation, whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.


'homeostasis is one biological OUTCOME of a stabilising correction loop... this prime is the general loop mechanism.' discrepancy_driven_correction is the broad loop of which homeostasis (constant-setpoint biological case) is a special instance. Discrepancy-Driven Correction supplies the genus: Iteratively close the signed gap between a target and an observation. Homeostasis preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Maintain internal stability. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


'homeostasis is one biological instance of stability — a regulated variable held near a setpoint by negative feedback'; stability is the general structural pattern covering passive cases (a damped pendulum, a peg) with no homeostat. Stability supplies the genus: A system's tendency to return toward an operating point after perturbation. Homeostasis preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Maintain internal stability. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Horizon scanning is a specialization of foresight whose distinctive move is broad, ongoing surveillance for weak signals — emerging technologies, slow-burning trends, anomalies — that have not yet become mainstream but could reshape decisions if they grow or converge. It inherits foresight's commitment to structured anticipation of plural futures informing present action, and supplies the specific monitoring component of the foresight methods stack, focusing on the small-but-potentially-significant end of the signal-to-noise spectrum that single-future forecasting and reactive news monitoring miss.

Horizon scanning is a specific foresight method that systematically surveils weak signals of nascent change before they reach the mainstream.


Horizon scanning is a specialization of monitoring in which the observation function is tuned to the weak-signal end of the signal-to-noise spectrum: nascent technologies, slow-burning trends, emergent shifts not yet mainstream but with structural potential. It inherits monitoring's general apparatus of continuous observation and alerting and specializes by fixing the target band to faint, anomalous, leading-indicator signals and by combining broad-source surveillance with interpretive practices for amplifying what would otherwise be dismissed as noise. Where standard monitoring tracks deviations from a known setpoint, horizon scanning tracks signs that the setpoint itself may shift.

Horizon scanning is a specialization of monitoring focused on weak early signals of change that have not yet become mainstream.


Horizon scanning is the systematic, ongoing search for early signals of change — nascent technologies, emerging shifts, anomalies — not yet mainstream but structurally significant. The method is meaningful only against the prior recognition that meaningful change typically begins with individually weak and collectively discordant observations at the periphery. Weak signals and emerging issues names that substrate: the structural commitment that early-phase change appears as weak signals requiring deliberate peripheral attention. Without weak signals as a first-class category, horizon scanning would have nothing distinctive to look for and no rationale for its counter-routine attention.

Horizon scanning presupposes weak signals & emerging issues because its systematic peripheral search targets exactly the weak-signal end of the spectrum.


Human-centered accommodation is a specialization of accommodation. The general pattern is selective internal adjustment to external pressure that preserves identity while restoring fit; the human-centered case specifies the external pressures as the actual cognitive, physical, sensory, and temporal capacities of the humans interacting with the system. The system reconfigures itself around real human constraints rather than around idealized users. The same fit-by-internal-modification logic applies, with human capability as the specific source of the demands to which the system must accommodate.

Human-centered accommodation is a specialization of accommodation in which the external pressures are real human cognitive and physical capacities.


Hypothesis testing is a specialization of statistical inference in which the inference is cast as a formal decision under sampling uncertainty: a null and an alternative are stated in advance, a test statistic with a known null distribution is chosen, and a threshold is set to control long-run error rates. It inherits the general inferential commitment of reasoning from finite samples to population claims under explicit accounting for variability, and specializes by structuring that reasoning as a dichotomous reject/retain verdict with controlled error probabilities.

Hypothesis testing is a specialization of statistical inference that frames the inferential question as a pre-specified decision between two complementary hypotheses.


Hypothesis testing is a specialization of verification. The general pattern checks that an object conforms to its specification via a defined procedure yielding evidence and a verdict. Hypothesis testing instantiates this with the object being a research claim about a parameter, the specification being a pre-specified null hypothesis (often no effect), and the procedure being a test statistic with known null distribution evaluated against a pre-set threshold controlling Type I error. The verdict is reject or fail-to-reject H0. It is verification with calibrated long-run error control as the procedure's structural guarantee.

Hypothesis testing is a specific kind of verification, checking sample evidence against a pre-specified null with controlled error rates.


Hysteresis is a specialization of path dependence. The general path-dependence pattern says current state depends on the historical trajectory, not just on current external conditions. Hysteresis specializes by adding a particular signature: as an external parameter is varied up and down, the system's state traces a loop rather than a single-valued curve, with multiple stable states accessible at the same parameter value depending on history. The same history-encodes-state commitment persists, with the loop in the response curve as the diagnostic shape of the path dependence.

Hysteresis is a specialization of path dependence in which the loop structure is visible in the response curve to a varied parameter.


Hysteresis is a specialization of state and state transition. The general pattern specifies a state space and a transition relation, with future behaviour depending on current state plus inputs. Hysteresis instantiates this with multiple stable states existing at the same external parameter value: which one the system occupies depends on the path through parameter space, so the response curve forms a loop rather than a single-valued function. History is encoded in the system's internal state in a way external parameters alone cannot reveal, which is exactly the state-as-Markovian-summary structure the parent pattern names.

Hysteresis is a specific kind of state transition where current state depends on the path by which conditions were reached.


Icon-index-symbol distinction is the structurally-particularized form representation takes when Peirce's trichotomy is applied: the icon-target correspondence is grounded in resemblance, the index-target correspondence in existential or causal contiguity, and the symbol-target correspondence in convention. It inherits representation's faithfulness-claim apparatus — target, medium, correspondence convention — particularized by classifying the three structurally distinct ways the correspondence can be grounded, each with different inference rules for the interpreter.

Icon-index-symbol distinction is the specific shape representation takes when signs are classified by the ground of their relation to the referent.


Iconicity is a specialization of representation. The general pattern maps a target onto a medium under a stated convention so operations on the medium correspond to operations on the target, with a faithfulness claim about preserved structure. Iconicity instantiates this with the convention being motivated by perceptible resemblance between sign form and meaning, so an interpreter with sufficient exposure can infer meaning from formal properties rather than rote memorization. The mapping is grounded in shared structure between form and referent, distinguishing iconic representation from the purely conventional symbolic mode.

Iconicity is a specific kind of representation where the form-meaning correspondence is motivated by resemblance rather than pure convention.


Iconography is a specialization of symbolic representation. The general pattern fixes sign-meaning relations through collective convention rather than resemblance or causal link. Iconography instantiates this with the convention being a culturally-organized visual repertoire (icons, emblems, allegorical figures, attributes, colors, gestures) whose meanings are prescribed within a shared visual system. It is symbolic representation specifically operating across visual channels with a systematic catalog of conventional forms, so that interpreting a visual element draws on the shared cultural code rather than on perceptible resemblance to what it denotes.

Iconography is a specific kind of symbolic representation organized as culturally-systematic repertoires of visual forms.


The fallacy is carrying a (legitimate) idealizing ABSTRACTION across a deployment boundary without re-introducing the friction terms it dropped; it presupposes an abstraction and is the specific decision-error of trusting it where its preconditions stop holding. Abstraction supplies the prerequisite condition: Focus on core elements. Idealized-Substrate Fallacy operates against that background: Designing against a friction-stripped idealized substrate, then deploying onto a real one where the elided terms dominate. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Idempotence is a specialization of invariance in which the preserved feature is the result of applying an operation and the transformation family is further applications of the same operation: f(f(x)) equals f(x), so repetition leaves the output unchanged after the first application. It inherits the general invariance commitment that a named feature remains unchanged under a named family of transformations, and specializes by fixing both: the feature is the operation's value and the transformation is self-repetition. This grounds safe retry, replay, and duplicate-tolerance in distributed systems.

Idempotence is a specialization of invariance in which the preserved feature is the operation's output and the transformation family is repeated application of the operation.


Idempotence is a kind of iteration in which the iteration step f satisfies f(f(x)) = f(x), so the state carried between rounds stops changing after the first application and every stopping condition is trivially met. It inherits iteration's commitment to repeated application of a process, but specializes the notion of progress: there is no further convergence to chase once the operation has fired once. This is what makes idempotent operations safe to retry, replay, or duplicate under uncertain delivery — repetition adds nothing beyond round one.

Idempotence is a specialization of iteration whose progress-rule collapses every repeat application to the same state as the first.


Identifiability specializes injectivity to a model or target parameter mapped into observable distributions. Success means singleton preimages on the admissible target subspace, with an epistemic gating interpretation.

Identifiability is injectivity of an admissible internal-target-to-observation map.


Social Identity Theory supplies the prerequisite condition: Identity via groups. Identification operates against that background: One party aligns belief or action with another because it recognizes itself — its values, memberships, identity — in the other, with persuasion proceeding via self-concept rather than argument. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.

Identification typically presupposes Social Identity Theory, whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.


Identifier_assignment CREATES the handle that indirection later resolves (dereference uses indirection); minting+binding is a prior distinct act that presupposes the indirection-resolution machinery. Indirection supplies the prerequisite condition: Introduces intermediary references. Identifier Assignment operates against that background: Mint a durable handle for an entity and bind it to that entity in a public, queryable record, so future reference can route through the handle without re-describing the entity. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Every identifier assignment performs Naming Act/Object's authoritative binding of an opaque portable token to an entity. It adds guaranteed uniqueness within a namespace, a durable public binding record, and a resolution protocol that ordinary personal, ceremonial, or descriptive appellation need not provide.

Identifier assignment is the managed-reference species of appellation, adding namespace uniqueness, a durable binding record, and a dereference protocol to authoritative token-to-entity binding.


Criteria of Individuation supplies the genus: The rules a system fixes for what makes something one entity — when parts compose a single whole, when two presentations are the same entity, and which kind supplies a thing's persistence — together constituting its inventory of countable individuals. Identity-Providing Kind preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A category whose membership fixes what it takes for an instance to remain the same instance over time, supplying persistence criteria rather than a temporary description. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Identity-Providing Kind is a specialization of Criteria of Individuation, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Identity_providing_kind ISOLATES the one essentialist sub-question (which category fixes sameness over time) and supplies the cease-to-exist test the broad notion lacks — a specialization of essentialism narrowed to persistence-over-time. Not every essential property is identity-providing. Essentialism supplies the genus: Inherent defining properties. Identity-Providing Kind preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A category whose membership fixes what it takes for an instance to remain the same instance over time, supplying persistence criteria rather than a temporary description. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Criteria of Individuation supplies the genus: The rules a system fixes for what makes something one entity — when parts compose a single whole, when two presentations are the same entity, and which kind supplies a thing's persistence — together constituting its inventory of countable individuals. Identity Test preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: The rule that decides, in a given system, when two presentations refer to the same entity. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Identity Test is a specialization of Criteria of Individuation, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Immutability is the constraint-particularized commitment that in-place mutation is excluded from the admissible operations on a value once created: any apparent change must be realized as a new value while the original is preserved. Where constraint names binding restrictions on admissible configurations generally, immutability fixes the restriction at the operation of overwriting, so that the feasible set of operations on any created entity excludes destructive modification and the historical states remain separately addressable.

Immutability is the specific shape a constraint takes when in-place modification of a value or record is forbidden across all subsequent operations.


Impartiality is a structurally-particularized instance of symmetry, where the transformation group is the permutation of party identities and the object held invariant is the treatment, judgment, or allocation. Once a line is drawn between relevant features and irrelevant identity features, impartiality asserts that swapping the identities of the parties leaves the outcome unchanged. The general algebraic pattern of invariance-under-a-named-group takes on its ethical-political form here, with identity as the action and like-treatment as the invariant.

Impartiality is the specific shape symmetry takes when the transformation group is permutation of party identities applied to treatment.


Impedance mismatch and coupling efficiency presupposes compatibility because the efficiency of energy, signal, or influence transfer across an interface is exactly compatibility's relational alignment condition expressed quantitatively: matched impedances are the compatibility condition for non-reflecting transfer, mismatched ones are the breakage. Without compatibility's framing of coexistence-and-interaction as a between-entity property, mismatch has no reference baseline; coupling efficiency is a continuous measure of how nearly the interface satisfies compatibility at the relevant characteristic property. Compatibility supplies the prerequisite condition: The relational condition under which two or more entities can coexist or compose without breakage, interference, or contradiction. Impedance Mismatch and Coupling Efficiency operates against that background: Property differences reduce energy or signal transfer efficiency. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Impedance mismatch and coupling efficiency presupposes compatibility because lossy transfer between subsystems is the failure of their characteristic properties to align.


Impedance mismatch and coupling efficiency presupposes interoperability because its core claim, that transfer between subsystems is lossy when their characteristic properties diverge, is a claim about the degree to which two systems can effectively work together across an interface. Interoperability supplies the structural baseline of cross-system cooperation through agreed interfaces; impedance mismatch then names the structural pattern by which efficiency degrades as the interface conditions are not met. Without the prior commitment to systems composing through specified interfaces, there is no notion of mismatch to grade.

Impedance mismatch and coupling efficiency presupposes interoperability because mismatch only makes sense as a deviation from a baseline of effective cross-system transfer.


An implementation intention is prospective memory specialized by pre-binding a future cue to a particular action. Prospective Memory supplies the genus: An intended future action is encoded paired with a triggering cue, persists latently without rehearsal, and is retrieved and executed when a parallel cue-detection process fires. Implementation Intention preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Pre-binding a specific future cue to a specific action so that at execution time the cue triggers the behavior without re-deliberation. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Improvisation generates competent moves within and against a developing constraint set; remove that backbone and the result is unconstrained production or noise rather than situated improvisation.

A live backbone of rules, resources, timing, or form is a constitutive part of improvisation rather than an incidental limitation.


A payoff attached to an act functions as an incentive only when its consequence can alter later selection or effort; without that return path it is merely an outcome, not a behavior-shaping signal.

An incentive contains a consequence-to-future-choice feedback path linking payoff signals to subsequent behavior.


Incentive compatibility is a specialization of compatibility in which the entities being made to coexist without breakage are the participants' private payoff calculations and the mechanism designer's desired outcomes. It inherits compatibility's general structure of two systems aligning so they can interact without contradiction, and specializes by fixing the systems to self-interested agents and a rule structure: the mechanism is compatible with the agents' incentives when truthful or socially desired action is also their best response. The compatibility relation here is between motivations and rules rather than between physical plugs, formats, or organisms.

Incentive compatibility is a specialization of compatibility in which the entities reconciled are an agent's self-interest and a designer's objective.


Incentive compatibility and mechanism design are interdefinable structural complements: mechanism design is the engineering discipline that searches for rule structures implementing desired outcomes under private information and self-interest, while incentive compatibility is precisely the property such a rule structure must satisfy — that each agent's best response coincides with the designer's intended action. Neither is prior. The field is defined by the property it pursues; the property is defined by its role in the field. Each makes sense only with the other already in view, as the question and its required answer.

Incentive compatibility and mechanism design are interdefinable complements — the property a mechanism must have to do its job, and the field that engineers for it.

Mechanism design and incentive compatibility are interdefinable structural complements: mechanism design is the engineering discipline that searches for rule structures implementing desired outcomes under private information and self-interest, while incentive compatibility is precisely the property such a rule structure must satisfy — that each agent's best response coincides with the designer's intended action. Neither is prior. The field is defined by the property it pursues; the property is defined by its role in the field. Each makes sense only with the other already in view, as the question and its required answer.

Mechanism design and incentive compatibility are interdefinable complements — the field that engineers for the property and the property the engineering targets.


Event Lifecycle Phases supplies the genus: Decomposing a hazard-bearing event into pre-event, event, and post-event regimes and treating each phase, not the event, as the primary unit of intervention design. Incident Response preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system facing acute, time-critical disruption engages a temporary command regime that prioritises stabilisation over diagnosis, accepts reversible degradation, defers root-cause analysis, and compresses decision authority for the duration of the acute phase only. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Incident Response is a specialization of Event Lifecycle Phases, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


An incomplete contract is, structurally, a contract (a rule-set fixing outcomes for some contingencies) plus the distinctive move of an acknowledged gap and designated gap-handler and governance. contract is the canonical genus; incomplete_contract is the specific kind that deliberately leaves gaps. severs it from interface (complete contract over its cases), delegation (only the decision-right piece), and optionality (a held right) — none is the genus; contract is. Good conviction: the is a specialization of holds even though the prime is heavily framed (law/econ), because every instance is literally a contract or rule-set. Contract supplies the genus: A multi-party bundle of obligations, breach criteria, and remedies under an accepted enforcement regime. Incomplete Contract preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A rule-set that deliberately leaves gaps and designates a handler to fill them. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


The failure is not raw data difference or evaluative disagreement; it requires separately maintained surrogates that guide inference until joint action exposes the mismatch. Representation supplies an internal constituent: Model complex ideas. Inconsistent Shared Model requires that role within this mechanism: Subsystems hold mutually incompatible models of the same external state, undetected until a forcing event requires joint action. Remove the parent-role and the child loses a required internal operation, even though the parent can exist outside the child. The child is therefore built from the parent rather than being a taxonomic kind of it.

Inconsistent Shared Model contains two or more representations of one referent whose individually coherent contents cannot jointly be true.


'Not search_and_retrieval — search is the ACT; an index is a pre-built side structure that makes certain searches fast.' An index presupposes a retrieval setting it accelerates; it is the apparatus-for-retrieval, not the retrieval activity. Search and Retrieval supplies the prerequisite condition: Locate and extract information. Index operates against that background: An auxiliary key-to-location table that makes lookup fast at the cost of maintenance. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


An index stands for an object while adding the differentia that the sign-object relation is actual contiguity or dependence rather than resemblance or arbitrary convention.

Indexicality is representation specialized to signs whose reference is grounded in existential, causal, or contextual connection.


Indifference curves presuppose marginal utility because the slope of any indifference curve at a point — the marginal rate of substitution between the two goods — is by definition the ratio of their marginal utilities. The construction of a level set of the utility function requires the partial-derivative machinery of marginal utility to determine how much of one good compensates for less of the other while keeping satisfaction constant. Marginal utility supplies the local rate-of-change apparatus that gives indifference curves their slope and curvature.

Indifference curves presuppose marginal utility because their slope — the marginal rate of substitution — is the ratio of marginal utilities of the two goods.


Indifference curves presuppose preference because each curve is by definition the locus of bundles the consumer ranks as equally preferred — a level set of the preference ordering rendered visually as a curve in commodity space. Without preference as the underlying ordering on the choice set, there is no equivalence class of equally-ranked bundles to draw, no marginal rate of substitution to read off, and no ordinal structure for the curves to represent. Preference supplies the ordering primitive; indifference curves are its geometric representation.

Indifference curves presuppose preference because each curve is a level set of the agent's preference-based ordering over consumption bundles.


Indifference curves are the specific shape representation takes when an ordinal preference structure is mapped onto geometric level sets in commodity space. Representation's general anatomy — target, medium, faithfulness-preserving mapping under a stated convention — is structurally particularized into the consumer's preference ordering as the target, two-dimensional curves in commodity space as the medium, and the convention that movement along a curve preserves indifference. The general structured-mapping operation is preserved; the specific shape is its geometric realization that makes substitution and choice tractable through visual reasoning.

Indifference curves are the specific shape representation takes when consumer preferences are mapped onto level sets in commodity space.


Indirection presupposes abstraction because the referencing mechanism interposed between consumer and provider must commit to a purpose-relative projection: what features of the provider the reference exposes (the interface contract) and what it hides (identity, location, implementation). Without abstraction's judged choice of load-bearing structure, the indirection layer has no principled content to mediate -- it would have to forward everything, defeating the decoupling, late binding, and substitution that motivate it. The reference is an abstraction made concrete as a runtime handle. Abstraction supplies the prerequisite condition: Focus on core elements. Indirection operates against that background: Introduces intermediary references. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Indirection presupposes abstraction because interposing a referencing layer requires deciding which features of the provider to retain as the contract.


The live Indirection signature explicitly includes a single-valued mapping from each admitted reference to its provider. Remove that map and an intermediate name or handle cannot resolve, so there is only an extra object, not a usable layer of indirection. The whole adds reference lifecycle, decoupling, resolution timing, substitution, costs, and failure modes.

Indirection contains the reference-to-provider mapping that its resolution mechanism evaluates while decoupling consumer from provider.


Indirection is a specialization of layering. The general pattern organizes a system into horizontal strata where each layer provides abstractions higher layers depend on while hiding internal implementation. Indirection instantiates this at minimum scale: a single interposed reference between consumer and provider, hiding the provider's identity, location, or implementation behind the reference. The reference is a one-element layer that the consumer talks through; substituting the provider does not propagate to the consumer because the layer absorbs the change. Late binding, polymorphism, and virtualization are all instances of this minimal-layer pattern.

Indirection is a specific kind of layering, interposing a reference between consumer and provider to decouple them.


An infinite regress is a specialization of dependency where the directed relation "A relies on B being prior, present, or supplied" iterates without natural stopping point: each justifier, explainer, or ground itself requires another of the same kind. It inherits dependency's core asymmetry but adds the structural feature that the chain is non-terminating unless exited via foundationalism, circularity, or explicit endorsement of the unbounded series. The pathology is precisely a dependency relation that fails to reach a base case.

An infinite regress is a kind of dependency chain in which each element depends on a further element of the same kind without termination.


The dependency or justificatory relation gives a regress its domain-specific content, while the absence of any finite terminal member gives it its unbounded structure. Infinity is therefore a constituent of the regress rather than a synonym: many infinite structures are not regresses, but a genuine infinite regress cannot be reduced to any finite chain.

An infinite regress contains an unbounded same-kind sequence whose continuation beyond every finite stopping point is its infinity constituent.


Infinite regress is a specialization of recursion in which the defining feature of a base case is absent: each step generates a further step of the same kind, and no terminating condition halts the chain. It inherits the recursive structure of a rule that relates each instance to a smaller or similar one, and specializes by stripping out the well-founded measure that would force termination. The same self-similar structure that grounds productive mathematical recursion, deprived of its base case, becomes the diagnostic problem of an unending justification chain.

Infinite regress is a specialization of recursion in which the self-referential chain lacks a base case and continues without terminating.


An infinite regress is a specialization of reflexivity in its coherentist resolution: when the unending chain of same-kind dependencies cannot be grounded foundationally, the regress can only be closed by looping back on itself, producing the self-referential structure that reflexivity formalizes. Inheriting reflexivity's pattern in which a system's representation becomes part of what is represented, infinite regress is the diagnostic shape that exposes when justification, explanation, or grounding has no exit except a return to its own starting point.

An infinite regress is a kind of reflexivity in which the chain loops back to reference itself when coherentist closure is taken.


Social norms and informal enforcement are interdefinable structural complements — neither is prior; each is the negation/complement of the other. A norm without distributed disapproval is just a private preference; diffuse sanctioning without a shared expectation about how people should behave has no rule to enforce. The expectation gives the sanction its target and legitimacy; the sanctioning gives the expectation its bite and stability. They co-constitute the same order phenomenon viewed from the rule side and the enforcement side respectively.

Informal enforcement and social norms are interdefinable complements: each norm requires diffuse sanctioning, and informal sanctioning presupposes a shared expectation.

Social norms and informal enforcement are interdefinable structural complements. A norm differs from a private preference because members anticipate distributed approval, correction, withdrawal, or sanction, even when conformity keeps any overt response latent. Informal enforcement, in turn, presupposes a shared expectation that gives the response its target. The relation does not require visible punishment in every norm instance; it requires a decentralized response structure capable of maintaining the expectation.

Social norms and informal enforcement are interdefinable complements: norms carry anticipated decentralized response, while informal enforcement presupposes a shared behavioral expectation.


Information asymmetry is a specialization of asymmetry: the relation between two parties' knowledge states fails the swap-test — exchanging the better-informed and less-informed party changes the terms, prices, and risks of the interaction. It inherits asymmetry's directed-imbalance structure and particularizes it to the epistemic-distribution case where the relevant imbalance is who knows what, not who has what. Akerlof's lemons market is the canonical instance of asymmetry in the knowledge dimension.

Information asymmetry is a kind of asymmetry in which two parties hold unequal private knowledge relevant to their interaction.


An information cascade is a specialization of herding behavior: sequential actors place more weight on the visible aggregate of prior choices than on their own private signals, producing a chain in which each subsequent decision contributes little new information. It inherits herding's commitment to crowd-imitation under uncertainty and the resulting collective divergence from integrated-private-signal outcomes, particularized to the Bayesian-rational case Bikhchandani, Hirshleifer, and Welch formalized where copying is locally optimal given observed history.

An information cascade is a kind of herding behavior in which actors sequentially copy predecessors' choices, overriding private information.


Both present a simplified surface over a complex interior; frames hiding as a change-protection-motivated specialization adjacent to abstraction (which selects for comprehension). Abstraction supplies the genus: Focus on core elements. Information Hiding preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Deliberately concealing internal facts behind a stable public surface to control dependencies. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Information hiding is a deliberately-drawn boundary with a controlled-access policy (concealed-side vs visible-side); it presupposes a boundary as its load-bearing element. Boundary supplies the prerequisite condition: Defines system limits. Information Hiding operates against that background: Deliberately concealing internal facts behind a stable public surface to control dependencies. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


If all candidate levels possessed the same relevant information, moving responsibility among them would create no information-locality consequence; unequal, non-interchangeable informational positions generate the placement constraint.

Information Locality becomes discriminating only when candidate owners differ in access to information material to the criterion they might own.


Information scent is the cue-guided traversal mechanism within search that applies when the space is too large to enumerate and the goal is not directly perceptible. 'the cue-guided traversal mechanism within search,' absent in exhaustive enumeration and direct retrieval. Presupposes the search-and-retrieval problem. Search and Retrieval supplies the prerequisite condition: Locate and extract information. Information Scent operates against that background: An agent navigates a partially-known space by reading local cues at decision points that predict the value of going further, with cue-destination correlation governing traversal efficiency. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


An Information Use License is the already-transmitted-information species of a present act binding future conduct to another party under release and breach terms. A recipient presently self-binds a future course on which a relying party may depend, with a before/after boundary, release conditions, and breach consequence. The bound future conduct is specifically the use, attribution, or disclosure of information the recipient has already received and cannot unlearn.


Inheritance is the specific dependency of a derivative on a parent ALONG A LINEAGE, with default carry-over and substitutability — a specialization of bare dependency ('not dependency in general'). Dependency supplies the genus: Directed relation in which one element relies on another being present, prior, compatible, or supplied, with a specifiable failure mode if the condition is unmet. Inheritance preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: Transmitting structure along a lineage by default, with selective override. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Inherited-substrate risk operates on a borrowed substrate the system relies on without re-deriving it; it presupposes a dependency relation and adds the audit-boundary asymmetry and latent origin condition. 'every inherited substrate is a dependency' but adds a direction-of-attention claim. Dependency supplies the prerequisite condition: Directed relation in which one element relies on another being present, prior, compatible, or supplied, with a specifiable failure mode if the condition is unmet. Inherited-Substrate Risk operates against that background: A system built on a borrowed or inherited substrate carries forward latent conditions of the substrate's origin through an inheritance channel that the new system's audit boundary does not cross, so the risk concentrates exactly where attention does not. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Both have a declared domain, codomain, and single-valued assignment from inputs to outputs. Injectivity adds the strict differentia that no two distinct inputs share an output, yielding recoverability by a left inverse on the image. General Function Mappings may collide or leave distinctions unrecoverable, so the relation is strict subsumption.

Injectivity is a Function Mapping specialized by the no-collision requirement that distinct inputs receive distinct outputs.


Containment supplies the prerequisite condition: Holding a hazard, process, or agent within a deliberately maintained perimeter to prevent its spread or uncontrolled interaction with the surroundings. Innovation Sandbox operates against that background: A bounded enclosure where prohibited or untested behaviour runs without its consequences escaping. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Innovation Sandbox presupposes Containment, whose structure must already obtain for the child mechanism to be meaningful or operational.


Experience with a weakened threat changes retained internal state so later behavior or prediction resists the threat family; adaptive memory, generalization, and booster decay supply the child's differentia.

Inoculation is learning specialized to durable defensive updating from attenuated pre-exposure paired with successful response.


The split is closed only when every unit of incident quantity is assigned to one named output channel, including any explicitly modeled conversion or loss channel. Without conservation across the accounting boundary, the output amounts need not sum to the input and the complement or sum-to-one inference fails. Input Partition is the routing-and-closure operation; Conservation Laws supplies the invariant that makes that closure valid.

Input Partition presupposes Conservation Laws because its defining closure requires the named output channels to account for the incident quantity without unexplained creation or loss.


Flow supplies quantity per time across a boundary; Input Pressure fixes source externality, persistence, rate distribution, bounded response, and driver-side factoring. After the systems_cybernetics frame is stripped away, the retained structural roles are those of Flow: Structured movement of energy, matter, or information. Input Pressure adds the local frame and commitments expressed in its identity: A sustained external input rate acts as the load variable a bounded receiving system must absorb or respond to. The parent pattern remains recognizable without that vocabulary, while the child is the framed realization of it. That preservation test establishes decomposition rather than taxonomic subsumption.

Input Pressure is the externally sourced, sustained-rate specialization of Flow acting as load on a bounded receiving system.


Inquiry-based learning is a specialization of pedagogy in which the instructional agent arranges the learner's encounter so that the learner formulates questions, plans investigations, gathers evidence, constructs explanations, and revises understanding — approximating disciplinary practice. It inherits pedagogy's commitment to deliberate, calibrated structuring of content engagement aimed at durable capability change, and adds the specific commitment that the structure mimics authentic inquiry rather than transmission, treating the learner's own investigative activity as the load-bearing mechanism through which the targeted capability is acquired.

Inquiry-based learning is a specific pedagogy in which the structured encounter takes the form of investigating questions like disciplinary practitioners.


The loop contains feedback because observed consequences must return to alter the next model-guided action. Cut the evidence return path and changes can be observed but cannot correct later understanding or action, destroying the loop. parent_in_child


The loop contains iteration because revised practical and epistemic state is carried into a subsequent pass. Remove recurrence with state carried forward and there is no cross-cycle accumulation, only a one-off action study. parent_in_child


The loop contains learning because evidence must durably update the retained model or capability that selects later action. Remove durable experience-driven model change and the process may react or regulate but does not conduct cumulative inquiry. parent_in_child


Inspection paradox is the species of selection_bias where inclusion probability is PROPORTIONAL to the attribute being measured (encounter-based, length-weighted), giving a known mechanically-correctable bias E[L^2]/E[L]. selection_bias is the parent. Selection Bias supplies the genus: Skewed sampling. Inspection Paradox preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: When sampling proceeds by encountering items rather than enumerating them, longer items are over-represented in proportion to their length. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Instability is the property whereby small perturbations grow rather than decay, causing departure from a reference state. The construct is meaningful only relative to a specified reference state whose balance is being assessed, and the diagnostic is the failure of restorative mechanisms to dominate amplifying ones. Equilibrium supplies that reference state — the balance condition on a named set of quantities — against which perturbations are measured. Without an underlying equilibrium concept defining the balanced state and its restorative tendency, there would be nothing for instability to deviate from.

Instability presupposes equilibrium because growth-rather-than-decay of small perturbations is defined relative to a reference state's balance.


Instability is the property whereby small perturbations grow rather than decay, characterized by an amplification mechanism that overcomes restorative or dissipative tendencies. This presupposes feedback: the structural arrangement in which a portion of a system's output is routed back to influence its subsequent input, with the sign and strength of coupling determining whether the loop opposes or reinforces. Positive feedback supplies exactly the amplification that turns small disturbances into growing deviations. Without a closed loop returning the system's behaviour to its own input, perturbations have no channel through which to compound into instability.

Instability presupposes feedback because perturbations grow only when an amplification loop routes output back into input.


An institution is a self-reproducing complex of rules and roles whose force depends on participants treating its prescriptions as binding standards: deviations are sanctioned, expectations are reproduced across generations. This requires the normative dimension — the standing distinction between correct and incorrect conduct relative to a standard, with criticism and guidance keyed to it. Without normativity's ought-side architecture, institutional rules would be mere regularities with no enforcement logic and no basis for the expectation that participants ought to comply.

An institution presupposes normativity because its rules and roles only function when participants treat them as prescriptions to be followed and sanctioned.


An institution is a durable, self-reproducing complex of rules, roles, and shared expectations that structures recurrent behavior beyond particular participants. Roles are internal constituents of that complex: each role defines a position with associated rights, duties, and expected conduct that remains stable as occupants change. Removing roles would eliminate the position-to-expectation structure through which an institution distributes action and reproduces itself across successive incumbents.

Roles are internal constituents of institutions, defining durable positions whose expectations persist across occupants.


Institutional lag names the temporal maladjustment between fast-changing material conditions and slow-changing formal rule systems, which is intelligible only against the prior commitment that institutions ought to adapt to track the conditions they govern. Without adaptation's machinery — the process by which a system modifies internal structure in response to sustained environmental change — there would be no benchmark against which lag could be measured. Adaptation supplies the expected fit-tracking behavior whose absence or delay the lag pattern diagnoses.

Institutional lag presupposes adaptation because the diagnosis only makes sense against the expectation that institutions ought to adapt to changed conditions.


Institutional lag names the temporal maladjustment between fast-changing material conditions and slower-changing formal institutions like laws and regulatory bodies. This is a particular case of the broader culture-lag pattern in which a society's components change at different rates, producing strain when faster components outpace slower dependents. Culture lag supplies the general structural commitment — differential adaptation rates across coupled components — that institutional lag instantiates with formal rule systems as the slow-changing side. Without the general lag pattern, the institutional case loses its analytical frame.

Institutional lag presupposes culture lag because mismatched adaptation rates between formal institutions and material conditions instantiate the general culture-lag pattern.


Institutional lag is the temporal maladjustment between rapidly changing material or technological conditions and the formal institutions — laws, regulators, bureaucratic procedures — that should govern them. The construction requires institutions in place as the slow-changing object whose adaptation is being measured. Institution supplies the durable self-reproducing rule-and-role complex whose stability gives it both durability and rigidity. Institutional lag is the consequence of that rigidity meeting accelerating change: the formal rule complex cannot adapt at the rate conditions demand, so it presupposes institutions as the slow-adapting reference body.

Institutional lag presupposes institution because the temporal maladjustment it names occurs between fast-changing conditions and slow-adapting institutional rule systems.


A time-dependent, correlated (non-zero-mean) drift of a measurement instrument's interpretive practice while its stated spec stays fixed — a specialization of temporal degradation applied to interpretive calibration (vs a static bias removable by one calibration). Temporal Decay and Degradation supplies the genus: System properties or capabilities systematically diminish over time. Instrument Interpretive Drift preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A measurement instrument's interpretive practice silently shifts over time while its stated specification stays fixed, contaminating longitudinal trends. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Integer linear programming is defined by adding to linear programming the requirement that some or all decision variables take integer values, which is precisely the discreteness commitment: the variables range over an enumerable set of separated states rather than a continuum. Without discreteness's machinery — the separated-states property that admits enumeration and combinatorial reasoning — there would be no integrality to impose and the problem would collapse back to continuous linear programming. The Discreteness prime supplies the separated-states structure that integer programming requires for its yes/no, on/off, and assignment decisions.

Integer linear programming presupposes discreteness because the integrality restriction on decision variables imposes the separated-states structure on the feasible set.


Integer Linear Programming retains Linear Programming's linear objective and linear constraint system while adding the differentia that some or all decision variables must take integer values. Dropping that restriction yields the corresponding continuous LP relaxation. ILP therefore inherits its optimization and internal-constraint structure through LP rather than repeating those broader heads directly.

Integer Linear Programming is Linear Programming specialized by integrality restrictions on some or all decision variables.


An interface is the particularization of boundary to a setting where the demarcation between systems carries an explicit exchange protocol: a contract specifying exposed surfaces, hidden internals, signal types, and side-specific guarantees. Where boundary names the conceptual demarcation between an entity and its outside generally, interface fixes the boundary as bilateral and structured: it adds asymmetric visibility, formal protocol, and the commitment that each side can evolve independently provided the contract is honored — a richer particular form of the boundary pattern.

An interface is the specific shape boundary takes when it adds an explicit contract specifying what crosses, what is hidden, and what guarantees hold on each side.


Interface Mismatch contains an Interface as its defining locus. The parent supplies two sides, a bounded exchange surface, and an interaction contract; the child adds an offered-versus-required contract gap that prevents composition even though each side may remain locally workable.

A rule-governed exchange surface is the internal locus at which an interface mismatch's offered and required contracts fail to align.


Interfacial energy is the per-unit-area COST a boundary carries while it exists — it presupposes a boundary (the line) and prices it. 'a boundary is the static line; interfacial energy is the pressure on that line.' Presupposes-parent. Boundary supplies the prerequisite condition: Defines system limits. Interfacial Energy operates against that background: A per-unit-boundary cost that scales with seam length rather than bulk, driving systems toward configurations with less total boundary unless opposed. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Interference and contention presupposes concurrency because its mechanism is multiple simultaneous demands competing for the same limited resource: take away the time-overlapping execution and contention disappears, since sequential consumers would each get the resource in turn without mutual interference. Concurrency supplies the structural condition of overlapping loci of activity with their attendant ordering and coordination problems; contention names what happens when those overlapping activities collide on a bottleneck and degrade each other's latency, throughput, or quality.

Interference and contention presupposes concurrency because mutual interference among shared-resource consumers requires the consumers to proceed in overlapping time.


Interference and contention is a specialization of constraint. The general pattern restricts admissible configurations to those satisfying a binding condition, with the feasible set as a first-class object. Contention instantiates this with the binding condition being shared-resource capacity: when multiple processes demand a single resource, only a subset of concurrent access patterns are admissible, and exceeding capacity produces measurable degradation. It is constraint operating dynamically at the resource bottleneck: the resource's capacity binds the joint feasible region of concurrent demands, producing latency increases and dropped transactions when the bound is approached.

Interference and contention is a specific kind of constraint, where shared-resource competition restricts admissible concurrent throughput.


Interference and contention presupposes scarcity because the degradation pattern -- mutual interference, queueing, dropped throughput -- arises only when simultaneous demands exceed a shared resource's capacity, which is exactly scarcity's defining condition. Without finite supply relative to demand, parallel processes do not contend; they simply proceed. Contention is scarcity manifesting at the operational interface where each consumer's presence reduces capacity for the others, making the allocation problem visible as latency rather than as price. Scarcity supplies the prerequisite condition: A finite resource is insufficient to satisfy all competing wants. Interference and Contention operates against that background: Competing demands for shared bottleneck degrade throughput. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Interference and contention presupposes scarcity because competing demands for a single limited resource is the contention dynamic scarcity induces.


Positional Advantage supplies the genus: Occupying a location in a value-graded space such that the position itself confers advantage — leverage, reach, defensibility, reaction-time — independent of the resources or force held at that location. Interior Lines preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A centrally-positioned actor with shorter paths to multiple fronts converts a positional property into a reaction-time advantage, reallocating a shared reservoir faster than a dispersed periphery can coordinate. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Interior Lines is a specialization of Positional Advantage, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Interleaving is a specialization of multiplexing in which the dividing scheme is time-order within a single sequence: multiple logically distinct item-streams share one resource by alternating their slots rather than each owning a contiguous run. It inherits the general multiplexing commitment of many logical channels over one physical substrate, with the resource partitioned so streams remain non-interfering and a reverse operation can separate them. Its distinctive specialization is that the dividing dimension is fine-grained sequential interleave, which buys the discrimination-forcing and fault-scattering properties characteristic of the pattern.

Interleaving is a specialization of multiplexing in which the dividing dimension is sequential order rather than a physical channel split.


Intermittency is a specialization of heavy-tailed distributions. Specifically, it instantiates the rare-extremes-dominate-aggregates pattern in the time-series subclass: signal amplitude distributions exhibit heavy tails (flatness above 3, burst clustering, multifractal spectra) so that quiet periods contribute little to totals while sporadic bursts contribute most of the variance and higher moments. Like other heavy-tailed phenomena, it inverts the assumption that the bulk governs behavior; intermittency is the temporal subclass where burst-and-quiet cycling makes the dominance of rare events visible as activity profile.

Intermittency is a specialization of heavy-tailed distributions in which rare high-amplitude bursts dominate an otherwise quiescent signal.


Intermittency presupposes rhythm because its central claim is that activity is dominated by rare bursts separated by long quiet intervals, which only registers as a structural pattern against an implicit expectation of how events should be distributed in time. Rhythm supplies that expectation: it organizes time into a parsable frame of grouping, accent, and interval, against which deviations stand out. Without a rhythmic background frame defining what counts as on-time or as smooth flow, the burst-and-quiet signature collapses into mere unstructured variation with nothing to mark its exceptionality.

Intermittency presupposes rhythm because identifying bursts as exceptional requires a baseline expectation of patterned recurrence against which they register as exceptional.


Internal intensification is a structured trade-off between two qualitatively distinct cost structures (densify-within-boundary vs expand-boundary). concedes 'a pure capacity-cost comparison with no boundary at stake is ordinary trade_offs' — this prime is the boundary-laden specialization. Trade-offs supplies the genus: Balancing competing priorities. Internal Intensification preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system needing more capacity densifies, deepens, or re-uses underused positions inside its existing boundary before expanding the boundary outward, a choice between two qualitatively different cost structures that compounds over the trajectory of growth. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


Interoperability is a specialization of compatibility. Specifically, it instantiates the relational coexist-and-compose-without-breakage property by routing the alignment through explicitly agreed-upon standards, interfaces, or protocols, so that any two systems conforming to the spec can communicate and coordinate. Where compatibility names the broad condition that entities can interact without contradiction, interoperability is the engineered subclass where the alignment is achieved systematically and scalably via shared specifications rather than one-off bridges between particular pairs.

Interoperability is a specialization of compatibility that achieves cross-system function through shared standards rather than pairwise adaptation.


Interoperability is a specialization of modularity. The general pattern decomposes a system into discrete components with stable interfaces defining what each provides and depends on, enabling independent design and modification. Interoperability instantiates this across system boundaries: distinct, independently-designed systems can compose and cooperate provided they conform to shared specifications, moving from one-off integration to systematic compatibility. The shared protocol or standard is the stable interface; conformance is the modularity commitment extended across organizational and implementation boundaries. It is modularity as the ecosystem-level capacity for any two protocol-conforming systems to interoperate.

Interoperability is a specific kind of modularity, requiring components to compose via shared interface specifications.


Interpretation is the activity of recovering meaning, intent, or applicable function from a representational substrate — sign, text, dataset, behavior, trace — within a framework that makes some readings available and others not. The operation presupposes a representation: a structured mapping where features of the medium correspond to features of a target under some convention. Representation supplies that substrate with its faithfulness claim. Without an underlying representation carrying encoded structure, interpretation would have nothing to decode and no convention against which to test the legitimacy of a reading.

Interpretation presupposes representation because recovering meaning from a substrate requires that substrate already encode something interpretable.


'Set-and-membership supplies the collections and the ∈ test; intersection is one OPERATION on them.' Intersection presupposes the set apparatus and adds the simultaneous-AND combiner. Set and Membership supplies the prerequisite condition: Groups and categorizes elements. Intersection operates against that background: The elements common to all of several collections. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


'this prime is the specific coupling of a beneficial mechanism's output to a harmful output through one inseparable step' — a specialization of coupling. The 0.858 nearest neighbour is coupling, the genuine genus (here child-not-parent). Coupling supplies the genus: Interdependence among subsystems. Intervention-Coupled Harm preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A beneficial intervention produces its harm through the same causal channel that produces its benefit, so the two cannot be tuned apart. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


The harm is by definition a state change outside the intervention's declared benefit interface, riding the same channel as the benefit. Side Effect supplies the genus: An action's change to shared state beyond its declared interface. Intervention-Coupled Harm preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A beneficial intervention produces its harm through the same causal channel that produces its benefit, so the two cannot be tuned apart. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Sharper case of trade_offs where the harm-benefit ratio is FIXED BY THE mechanism (not independently dialable). frames it explicitly against generic trade_offs. Trade-offs supplies the genus: Balancing competing priorities. Intervention-Coupled Harm preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A beneficial intervention produces its harm through the same causal channel that produces its benefit, so the two cannot be tuned apart. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


It retains Concept Drift's learned relationship, calibration regime, stationarity assumption, changed input-outcome mapping, and silent loss of validity. It adds a causal restriction: the shift is produced by the intervention or control action whose justification depended on that relationship, rather than by an independently moving world.

Intervention-Induced Model Invalidation is Concept Drift specialized to endogenous change caused by deploying an action based on the calibrated rule itself.


The representation enters the causal loop: it selects, justifies, or parameterizes an intervention; affected actors or mechanisms respond; and the relationship the representation encoded changes. Reflexivity is broader and also includes self-fulfilling stabilization, recursive representation, and self-reference that need not invalidate a model.

Intervention-Induced Model Invalidation is Reflexivity specialized to a model or calibrated relationship becoming an input to the represented system and thereby undermining its own validity.


Ratchet Effect supplies the genus: Direction-asymmetric coupling plus a locking element produces accumulating one-way displacement under bidirectional forcing. Intervention Stack Accretion preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A system accumulates concurrently active interventions, each justified at add-time, whose joint cost grows super-linearly and whose removal requires a distinct named operation. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.

Intervention Stack Accretion is a specialization of Ratchet Effect, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Every admissible instance in the prime's identity has quantifiable input, response, an asymptote, and an EC50-like position. The source calls the dose-response curve the empirical object and the prime the decision discipline read from it; no exception is supplied that lacks the mapping. The inherited typical qualifier therefore understates a strict identity dependency.

Intrinsic Ceiling vs Input strictly presupposes a response mapping from which its independent ceiling and input-to-approach coordinates are read.


Invasive_species is the ecology-specific child; this is the substrate-general parent covering virgin-soil epidemics, financial-instrument export, platform diffusion, regulatory arbitrage. Release From Controlling Context supplies the genus: An actor's intrinsic dynamics, calibrated by a home context's constraints, run unconstrained when moved to a recipient context lacking them. Invasive Species preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A newcomer enters a system whose native controls are absent or weak against it, and outpaces them to spread and displace incumbents before the system can adapt. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Inversion reverses a relation, sequence, or structure, producing the dual or converse form. This presupposes reversibility: the structural property of whether an action or transition can be undone or restored, with reversibility-as-option distinguished from irreversibility-as-commitment. Inversion can be applied only to relations and operations that admit an inverse; an irreversible process cannot be inverted in the operational sense, only reasoned about counterfactually. The existence of R^(-1) given R, and the preservation under composition with the inverse, are exactly the structural conditions reversibility names.

Inversion presupposes reversibility because reversing a relation, sequence, or dependency requires that the operation admits an inverse.


Inversion is a specialization of symmetry. The general pattern is invariance under a specified group of transformations, with the algebraic commitment that the transformation leaves a stated feature unchanged. Inversion instantiates this with the transformation being reversal (of a relation, sequence, or dependency chain), and the preserved feature being some underlying element or equivalence (composition with the inverse returns the identity). Jacobi's invert-always-invert heuristic exploits the fact that the inversion transformation belongs to the symmetry group of the structure, so working in the inverted regime is mathematically equivalent for many purposes.

Inversion is a specific kind of symmetry, reversing a relation or sequence while preserving some underlying equivalence.


Inversion is a specialization of transformation. Specifically, it instantiates the input-rule-output mapping where the rule reverses a relation, sequence, or dependency chain (R to R-inverse, or a structure to its dual), preserving certain elements or equivalences while altering relational direction. Like other transformations, it specifies what is preserved (the underlying equivalence) and what is reshaped (the order, direction, or dependency); inversion is the subclass whose reshaping operation is reversal itself, generating regimes whose dynamics differ from the unreversed case.

Inversion is a specialization of transformation that reverses a relation, sequence, or dependency structure while preserving underlying equivalence.


The inverted pyramid is prioritization PLUS the structural commitment to truncation-resilience: it takes an importance ranking and arranges the artifact so any prefix carries the load-bearing content and degrades gracefully. 'prioritization ranks; the pyramid arranges for truncation-resilience.' Presupposes the ranking and adds the truncation envelope and graceful-degradation invariant. Prioritization supplies the prerequisite condition: Ordering competing claims on finite resources by a value or urgency metric to produce a ranked sequence of action under constraint, making explicit what gets done first and what does not get done at all. Inverted Pyramid operates against that background: A communication ordered so the most decision-relevant content appears first, in decreasing order of importance, degrading gracefully under truncation from the bottom. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


The inverted-U is a single-peaked non-monotone (hence nonlinear) response shape with an interior optimum where the first derivative is zero. It is a specialization of nonlinearity (disproportionate, non-proportional output).


Invisible Affordance inherits Affordance's real agent-environment fit: the capability genuinely supports an action for the relevant user. It adds an announcement apparatus, a sampled-surface set, and a mismatch that excludes the real option from the user's perceived option set. An invisible affordance cannot lack the underlying affordance, while ordinary affordances may be visible; the relation is therefore strict one-way specialization rather than a sibling analogy.

Every Invisible Affordance is a genuine affordance whose action-possibility exists but is absent from every surface the prospective user reliably samples.


The floor 'is a constraint, formally a binding inequality at the optimum' but adds the two-level structure (intra-regime vs structural lever) the general constraint concept does not carry. It is a specialization of constraint, specialized to a mechanism-generated bound that transfers variance when over-driven. Constraint supplies the genus: Limits possibilities to guide outcomes. Irreducible Floor preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A quantity of interest has a structural lower (or upper) bound that the available proximate levers cannot push past without inducing pathology elsewhere, because the floor is a consequence of the system's generating mechanism rather than a target the operator chose. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Irreversibility is a specialization of the broader reversibility-and-irreversibility structure, isolating the case where the process has a privileged direction and restoration to the prior state is structurally precluded without compensating environmental change. It inherits the general framework of whether system transitions can be undone and specializes by fixing the answer to one-way: entropy increase, lost information, broken-symmetry selections, sunk costs that cannot be recovered. The reversibility-irreversibility pair frames the dual options; irreversibility names the commitment pole — locked-in resources, closed pathways, thermodynamic or practical infeasibility of return.

Irreversibility is a specialization of reversibility-and-irreversibility focused specifically on the one-way pole of the dual structure.


Every isomorphism is a one-to-one and onto mapping with a unique inverse. It adds the strict differentia that both the mapping and its inverse preserve the structure declared for the objects. Arbitrary bijections need preserve only cardinality, so Bijectivity is the immediate set-level genus.

Isomorphism is Bijectivity specialized by two-sided preservation of the named operations, relations, order, topology, or other structure.


Isomorphism presupposes invariance because the structure-preservation requirement on the bijection -- group operation, graph adjacency, vector-space linearity, topology -- is exactly the joint commitment to a named preserved feature under a named family of transformations. The isomorphism is the transformation, and the preserved structure is what makes it an isomorphism of that kind rather than a mere bijection. Without invariance's framing of preserved-feature-under-operations, there is no criterion separating structure-preserving maps from arbitrary set-bijections. Invariance supplies the prerequisite condition: Properties unchanged under transformation. Isomorphism operates against that background: Structure-preserving mapping. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.

Isomorphism presupposes invariance because a structure-preserving bijection is the family of transformations under which the structure is preserved.


It inherits the efficiency gain, effective-cost reduction, expandable demand, aggregate recombination, and graded offset. It adds the strict magnitude condition that rebound exceeds 100 percent, so total input use rises rather than merely falling less than expected.

Jevons Paradox is the more-than-full Efficiency Rebound region in which demand expansion reverses the sign and raises total resource use.


Joint attention is not 'more attention' but a second-order multi-agent relation BUILT ON attention ('built on top of it') — two+ attenders plus mutual registration. It presupposes attention; it does not subsume it. Attention supplies the prerequisite condition: The selective allocation of a fixed processing capacity to some inputs while the rest are filtered out, surfacing scarcity upstream of every decision. Joint Attention operates against that background: Two or more agents share an attentional target and each knows the other attends to it. If the parent condition is removed, the child relation becomes undefined or loses the mechanism asserted by this edge; the parent can obtain independently, so the relation is presupposition rather than subsumption.


Joint versus Separate Evaluation is the evaluation-procedure species in which simultaneous comparison changes attribute evaluability and can reverse judgments. The evaluated objects remain fixed while a change in their comparison context changes their ordering or valuation. The manipulated context is whether alternatives are evaluated together or separately, and the mechanism is mode-dependent attribute evaluability.


The phenomenon cannot occur without an Evaluation: both joint and separate modes evaluate the same bounded options, but each mode changes the criterion frame by making a different subset of attributes evaluable and therefore can change the verdict. Evaluation supplies the common operation on which the mode toggle acts. Comparison remains foundational through Evaluation; the old direct edge was a flattened shortcut and was only typical because comparison is engaged explicitly in joint mode but suppressed in separate mode.

Joint-vs-Separate Evaluation presupposes Evaluation because it is a mode effect defined over procedures that map criteria and attributes into verdicts.


Frames detached verification as the SUBCLASS of procedural_fairness_due_process aimed specifically at neutralizing an interested party's path to the verifier ('procedural fairness is the genus; detached verification is the conflict-of-interest-cutting species'). A specialization. Procedural Fairness (Due Process) supplies the genus: Due process. Journalistic Objectivity preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A claim is licensed by a procedure whose authority depends on holding the verifier structurally outside the interests at stake, so preferred-outcome leakage is made expensive. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


Juxtaposition is a kind of comparison specialized by its alignment mechanism: placing elements in close spatial, temporal, or conceptual proximity so that their relational reading becomes the primary content-carrying feature. It inherits comparison's commitment to placing items under a shared frame with an alignment rule that yields a relational output, and supplies the specific case where the alignment rule is unmediated adjacency and the output is whatever meaning, contrast, or connection the audience derives from the bare pairing without explicit comparative markers.

Juxtaposition is a specialization of comparison in which proximity placement is the alignment rule and relational reading is the output.


Juxtaposition presupposes contrast because placing elements in close proximity produces relational content only when the difference between them is perceptually or cognitively detectable as emphasized. Without contrast's mechanism of foregrounding differences against a background of less-prominent features, mere co-location of elements would not produce meaning beyond the elements themselves. Contrast supplies the difference-detection that makes the bare adjacency content-bearing; juxtaposition is then the specific compositional move that arranges elements to exploit that contrast as the primary message.

Juxtaposition presupposes contrast because relational placement of elements derives its content from the perceptually emphasized differences between them.


Kairos is the specific structure within temporal_dynamics where action effectiveness is conditional on a transient receiving-system state the actor must detect and reach within. 'temporal_dynamics is the broad study; kairos is the specific structure.' A specialization. Temporal Dynamics supplies the genus: System outcomes depend fundamentally on timing, sequencing, duration. Kairos preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: An action's effectiveness depends not on its own quality but on its alignment with a transient state of the receiving system — a window that opens and closes. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.


The beauty contest is a coordination game, but a peculiar one whose target is RECURSIVE (the population's own expectation) rather than an exogenous landmark. A specialization of coordination_problem_and_equilibrium_selection where the focal point is a belief about a belief. Coordination Problem and Equilibrium Selection supplies the genus: Multiple stable equilibria require alignment on single outcome. Keynesian Beauty Contest preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: The rational choice is not what you most prefer, nor what you think others prefer, but what you think others believe others will choose. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association.


The pattern requires a consolidated upstream channel whose average cost falls as shared volume amortizes fixed coordination, transport, or infrastructure. Removing those trunk economies erases both the trunk-versus-endpoint contrast and the growing-share invariant by which upstream improvement makes the last mile more dominant. Economies of Scale is therefore a constituent of the mechanism, not a claim that last-mile work itself enjoys scale economies.

Last Mile Delivery contains upstream Economies of Scale whose shared trunk amortizes cost across volume, creating the cost contrast that makes endpoint delivery disproportionately expensive.


The final segment must adapt separately to heterogeneous endpoints, and its cost scales with their cross-instance differences rather than with trunk volume. If endpoints are interchangeable, the shared channel can extend to them and the characteristic last-mile concentration disappears. Variability is thus a load-bearing constituent, while Last Mile Delivery adds the consolidated trunk, interface adaptation, and growing cost-share relation.

Last Mile Delivery contains endpoint Variability because differences in location, access, timing, language, infrastructure, behavior, or trust defeat the trunk's consolidation logic.


Bottleneck supplies the genus: The single limiting stage that caps an entire system's throughput. Last-Mile Failure preserves that general structure while adding its differentia: A distribution network's per-unit cost, latency, and failure rate spike at the final stage where its geometry fans out from few-trunks-carrying-much to many-leaves-each-carrying-little, so upstream throughput overstates endpoint coverage. The parent can occur without those added commitments, whereas removing the parent structure leaves no basis for classifying the child as this subtype. That asymmetry establishes subsumption rather than mere association. The typical qualifier limits the claim to the characteristic route, not a constitutive requirement of every instance; exceptions must retain the child's identity through another mechanism.

Last-Mile Failure is typically a specialization of Bottleneck, retaining the parent's defining structure while adding the child's specific commitments.


Latency is a specialization of constraint. The general pattern restricts admissible configurations to those satisfying a binding condition, with the feasible set as a first-class object. Latency instantiates this with the binding condition being the irreducible time interval between stimulus and observable response: no configuration can produce a response faster than the transit cost through the channel or pathway. The bound is physical (signal propagation, processing time, dead time) rather than statistical, and it partitions the achievable response-time region. It is constraint operating along the time dimension as an irreducible lower bound on signal transit.

Latency is a specific kind of constraint, binding system response time below an irreducible transit minimum.


Latency is the irreducible time interval between stimulus and observable response — the transit cost of a single signal through a channel or process. The construct is constitutively temporal: it measures the gap between an input event and its corresponding output event along the earlier-to-later dimension. Time supplies that ordering with measurable duration and irreversible succession. Without time as a structural foundation, there would be no interval to measure, no past input distinct from present output, and no characteristic delay distinguishing latency from throughput.

Latency presupposes time because the irreducible interval between stimulus and response is a temporal duration measured along time's ordering.


The bundle's invisibility is a per-category accounting frame failing to aggregate across heterogeneous categories — it presupposes the aggregation operation (and critiques its absence across categories). Loosely held; the prime is more a valuation-discipline than an aggregation specialization.