MOC : [[SCIENCES]] - [[SYSTÈMES]] Author: [[ribbonfarm.com]] Date : 8/05/22 Source : [[Technical Debt of the West]] ## Mechanism vs Organism - Mechanisms come together by assembly, when a creator arranges raw material in just the right way to serve a particular purpose. They’re typically made out of discrete parts, each with its own purpose that fits into the overall structure. And they’re cleanly-factored and globally-optimized: the result of a far-sighted design process. Organisms, on the other hand, aren’t assembled from the outside. Instead they start out small and simple, and expand outward while gradually complicating themselves. In other words, they grow. The result is a hacky mess of tangled parts, vestiges, fuzzy boundaries, and overlapping purposes: the hazards of a short-sighted, local optimization process. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1456971470/17944523)) - we say, “I have a body,” rather than, “I am a body. ([View Highlight](https://instapaper.com/read/1456971470/17944601))