Adaptation

During the corresponding discussion the focus turned to the term adaptibility in this context. When can we say that a component is adaptive? If we consider it as a black box is it important to distinguish the system in the box between a fully adaptive (eg. knowledge-based) solution or a hard-coded one (like an EPROM)? As an answer the following two terms have been introduced: adaptive behavior and adaptive methodology clearly separating the component's behavior (external) and the workflows inside (internal).