# Compositional Dynamics in Learning and Mechanics

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.28984 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.28984/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 27 Jun 2026.

## Abstract (arXiv)

We give a single compositional setting in which gradient-based learning and Hamiltonian-style mechanics appear as functorial semantics. The syntax is an operad Arr whose objects are input-output interfaces (pairs of manifolds) and whose morphisms are *smooth adaptive arrangements*, which consist of a responsive parameter space, a lens given by smooth output and input maps, and a real-valued potential. The main technical result of the paper is what we call *lens internalization*, a lax symmetric monoidal functor Lens(C) → C associated to any symmetric monoidal closed category C. Using it, we provide two functors Phiphase, Phiconf: Arr → PC into the 2-category of polynomial coalgebras -- input-output discrete dynamical systems -- which we take as the semantics category. Phiphase stores both position and momentum, whereas Phiconf stores only position. When applied to a parameterized function, Phiconf recovers the gradient descent training algorithm, with backpropagation as the lens' backward pass. When applied to harmonic particles wired together -- in series, or according to any finite directed graph -- one diagram yields two different regimes, both of which are governed by the graph Laplacian: Phiphase gives the discrete wave equation, which is conservative and second-order, and Phiconf gives the discrete heat equation, which is dissipative and first-order. They are two semantics of one adaptive arrangement, e.g. with the same potential in each case. And because Arr is an operad, such diagrams nest -- larger systems wired from smaller ones -- and each semantics assembles a system's dynamics functorially from its parts. These dynamics are moreover executable: a parameterized neural network and a graph of particles both compile, by the same construction, to explicit state machines one can run.