Jewish thinkers often considered natural science a mere system of hypotheses, which was capable of grasping only the superficial appearance of things, and was subordinate to the absolute truth offered by the Torah.
One can ask whether space is (a) a real thing a substance a thing that exists independently of its inhabitants, or (b) a mere system of relations among those inhabitants.
For example, consider the problem of incongruent counterparts: those who think space is a mere system of relations struggled to explain our intuition that we could distinguish a world containing only a left hand from a world containing only a right hand.
In brief: for Schlegel, as for Novalis or Schleiermacher, language could not be reduced to a mere system of signs and any account of the origin of language had to be able to integrate the two apparently opposite aspects of it.
It simply means one who has moved from mere belief systems or belonging systems to actual inner experience.
However, going beyond the mere definition of the averaged system seems very difficult and we only manage to get explicit results for simple systems where the fast activity dynamics is linear.
Economies are not mere exchange systems, the transformation of labor and energy into tangible goods or production is also part of real economic systems.
So fish, beef and chicken through the nutritionists' lens become mere delivery systems for varying quantities of fats and proteins and whatever other nutrients are on their scope.
All three have expanded beyond mere annotation systems and continue to add useful features such as biodiversity analysis, taxonomic classification and metagenome comparisons.
Last night's episode of "Girls" was, instantly noticeably, not directed by Lena Dunham; the result was, for the most part, a mere delivery system for Dunham's screenplay.
