Interesting, and thanks for the answer. It's a while ago, but when I used reflection in Java (in v1.4, IIRC), what it did seemed like some of the capabilities you describe under introspection above. Maybe they just used a different term for it than you do. Example: Finding the methods of a class and calling them dynamically at runtime, finding the number and types of the arguments of a method, etc. These capabilities were part of the java.reflect* package, IIRC.