The Paradox of Self-Starting Systems

Bootstrapping describes a process that launches itself without any external help. It comes from the old phrase of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps, which is physically impossible.

This term beautifully captures the leap from nothing into something. In statistics, it refers to a method where you reuse your own data to estimate the accuracy of a result. Even in computing, it describes how a simple program loads a much larger operating system from scratch. It is a clever way to describe systems that create their own momentum.