Bechtel and Richardson’s Discovering Complexity (2010 [1993]) is organized around a flowchart representing choice-points in the discovery of a mechanism. The process of searching for mechanisms begins with a provisional characterization of the phenomenon. Then follow strategies of localizing the mechanism within the system, and decomposing the phenomenon into distinct sub-functions. Localization of function involves determining which of these sub-functions of the system is performed by which parts. Bechtel and Richardson further characterize the use of excitatory and inhibitory experiments to obtain these kinds of information. Bechtel and Abrahamsen (2013) add a subsequent stage, in which scientists recompose what they have learned about the functional parts by putting them back together to produce the phenomenon in question (perhaps using simulations). 