In Other Words
In mechanics, the principle of reproduction is often called “inertia”. Today we might instead speak of a “program” that lets a physical body recur again and again in the same manner. This behavior can be modified by forces, which, as a rule, are due to other objects — the execution of the program can be modified by inputs, ultimately by other programs.
Here we generally make use of still another terminology saying that it is the thing’s “space” that lets the thing reproduce itself, maybe influenced — or superposed — by other spaces, spaces of other things.