High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A nonholonomic system in physics and mathematics, is a system whose state depends on the path taken to achieve it. Such a system is described by a set of parameters subject to differential constraints, such that when the system evolves along a path in its parameter space (the parameters varying continuously in values) but finally returns to the original set of values at the start of the path, the system itself may not have returned to its original state. More precisely, a nonholonomic system, also called an anholonomic system, is one in which there is a continuous closed circuit of the governing parameters, by which the system may be transformed from any given state to any other state.