Reductionism is a philosophical idea or a collection of ideas that believes any phenomenon consists of a minimal number of parts, and can be interpreted and explained once reduce to those parts.
René Descartes first proposed the idea of Reductionism in part V of his "Discourses" of 1637. He believed the world operates as a machine and everything could be broken down into cogs and gears of the machine. In this sense, one can gain an understanding of the machine by taking all of its pieces apart, then putting them back together again.
With this mode of thinking, Reductionists accepted that the most complex functions could be broken down into simple actions. Descartes, for example, believed that non-human animals could reductively be explained as automata, machines that are programed for a set of predetermined functions. Essentially, they equate to elaborate versions of the Digesting Duck.
Examples: Automatas / Music Boxes / Music Machines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzM32wVTbsY
Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of Mechanical and Musical Automata
The Automatons of Yesteryear (Published 2013)
"I try to make new forms of life," says Strandbeests creator Theo Jansen | Dezeen
The American Fotoplayer - Silent Cinema Society
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q
Linear or Rotational
The behavior of a system whose components present multiple localized interactions with each other, can be described as having Complexity.
Complexity is ubiquitous across disciplines of design and science and is often referring to a model that can be broken down into parts or units that are each structurally and operationally distinct - without a higher order to command or define the various interactions.
In certain complex systems, the components themselves can be further broken down into subcomponents, which results in multiple orders of hierarchy and interactions greater than the sum of its parts. The integration of components in a complex system results in dynamic interactions that allows the components to organize as a whole. Local actions of components, big or small, take on a global context, all having effects on the overall system.