Regardless of a system's complexity or scale, its growth can be considered to be a spontaneous thermodynamic response to a local convergence of down-gradient material flows. Here it is shown how system growth can be constrained to a few distinct modes that depend on the time integral of past flows and the current availability of material and energetic resources. These modes include a law of diminishing returns, logistic behaviour and, if resources are expanding very rapidly, super-exponential growth. For a case where a system has a resolved sink as well as a source, growth and decay can be characterized in terms of a slightly modified form of the predator–prey equations commonly employed in ecology, where the perturbation formulation of these equations is equivalent to a damped simple harmonic oscillator. Thus, the framework presented here suggests a common theoretical under-pinning for emergent behaviours in the physical and life sciences. Specific examples are described for phenomena as seemingly dissimilar as the development of rain and the evolution of fish stocks.