Dynamics play a major role in a variety of disciplines. This paper contributes to the identification of common principles underlying approaches to dynamics used within cognitive and noncognitive disciplines. As a central, unifying principle, the temporal factorisation principle is introduced, formalised and illustrated. This principle expresses, that every temporal relationship of the form 'past pattern implies future pattern' can be factorised into a relationship of the form 'past pattern

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... es present state' and a relationship of the form 'present state implies future pattern'. It provides a conceptual framework which unifies various approaches to dynamics, including the cases where cognitive agent states are modelled.