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From: gal2@kimbark.uchicago.edu (Jacob Galley)
Subject: Tangled hierarchy
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References: <COHENB.95Jul4114552@topdog.slc.com> <3r6klu$jnk@seralph9.essex.ac.uk> <agapow.803362346@latcs1.lat.oz.au> <848855370wnr@shimbir.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 1995 17:46:01 GMT
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Rick@shimbir.demon.co.uk writes:
>
>In article: <COHENB.95Jul4114552@topdog.slc.com>  cohenb@slc.com (Bruce Cohen) 
>writes:y
>>
>> If you think about the structural organization of systems, it seems a
>> reasonable conjecture that the hallmark of complex, adaptive,
>> self-organized systems (perhaps autopoietic systems as well, though I
>> expect that's somewhat controversial) is that its structure is a
>> heterarchy rather than a strict bottom-up or top-down hierarchy.  In a
>> heterarchy (I've heard them called "tangled hierarchies" and the name
>> seems apt). causality usually goes both up and down.
>--------------------------------------------------------
>
>I have come across this term heterarchy before. Can you give me some 
>sources or guidance to its origins (users, subjects areas etc). 

I can't help with `heterarchy' but `tangled hierarchy' was coined by
William Wimsatt, I think.  I'll supply references next week.

Jake.

-- 
The artificial sundering of res cogitans and res extensa is the heritage of
dualism, with the extrusion between them of LIFE---this double-faced ontology
of death creates problems which it has rendered unsolvable from the start.
								<-- Hans Jonas
