ABSTRACT
The second and final stage towards computational reflection requires that the programs be able to modify themselves. The ability for a program to examine and modify itself is called reflection. This is an even more powerful proposition than introspection and, as such, of all the languages that support introspection, only a small subset of them support full reflection. Python being a dynamic language with higher-order functions, it supports dynamic definition of functions, as illustrated above. This would achieve the goal of having different function definitions depending on the existence of the input argument, while avoiding reflection altogether. Reflection was studied in philosophy and formalized in logic long before being brought into programming. Computational reflection emerged in the 1970s within the LISP world.
