Bottom-up is a term used to describe the process of solving a problem or achieving an objective. It involves starting with the simplest of tasks and gradually building up greater complexity until the desired result is achieved. Bottom-up strategies can be seen in many disciplines, ranging from software engineering, where bottom-up development may involve breaking a problem down into smaller parts and gradually coding them together, to biology, where bottom-up experimentation involves starting from the most basic components of an organism and attempting to piece together a higher level of functioning. Bottom-up approaches thus focus on the small-scale or “micro” parts of a system, and are oftentimes an effective way to develop a large-scale system or solution.

See also: emergence, evolutionary computing, evolution, self-organization