The system acts to preserve as much of its structure as possible, removing as few symmetries as possible when symmetry breaking occurs.

Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

• The process of adding local symmetries in a structure-preserving way intensifies the feeling, and when carried out fully leads to the emergence of the archetype.claim0.808
• Local symmetries act as a kind of glue which holds space together; the more glue there is, the more the space is one, solid, unified, coherent—and the symmetrical segments must overlap for the glue to be effectiveclaim0.804
  Interpretation of the experimental finding: overlapping local symmetries are the hidden structural feature that creates perceived wholeness
• Overall symmetry in a system, by itself, is not a strong source of life or wholeness; local symmetries create coherence while overall symmetry is often naive and even brutalclaim0.799
  Claim distinguishing the deadening effect of large-scale neoclassicist symmetry from the vitalizing effect of numerous overlapping local symmetries
• Wholeness preservation means the system destroys symmetries and larger centers as little as possible while moving forward — a geometric, not teleological, principle.claim0.791
  Alexander's careful clarification that unfolding wholeness is a structural-geometric claim, not an organismic or purposive one
• In nature, unfolding often consists of a process that establishes local symmetries one by one.claim0.786
  Connects biological morphogenesis to architectural process.
• Structure-preserving transformations govern the emergence of all structure in nature, not just in buildings and art.hypothesis0.785
  Alexander's conjecture extending the unfolding framework from architecture to natural phenomena generally.
• When a system of living processes acts in a human environment, two kinds of structures will appear within reach of every person: a unique private world and an attached public world.hypothesis0.784
  Predictive claim about the automatic spatial output of living process
• In buildings, especially, the success of the process will be judged by the extent to which these middle-range entities appear with their own distinct symmetries, with their own definite and distinct force as strong centers.claim0.783
  Proposes middle-range entity quality as the criterion for judging the success of a building process