The New Modularity, Miracles, Emergence, and Grammar Systems

This survey sketches several ways of considering systems starting with viewing them without any attention paid to their modularization, then as composed from functionally specified modules, and then as L. A. Stein’s “post-modular” (or “neo-modular”) systems consisting of relatively independent autonomous modules sharing an environment and acting in it in more or less coordinated ways. A relatively simple, uniform and productive theoretical framework for studying the mentioned aspects of systems modularity and behavior – the framework of the theory of colonies of grammars – is presented.