ABOUT THIS BOOK
Although complexity surrounds us, its inherent uncertainty, ambiguity, and contradiction can at first make complex systems appear inscrutable. Ecosystems, for instance, are nonlinear, self-organizing, seemingly chaotic structures in which individuals interact both with each other and with the myriad biotic and abiotic components of their surroundings across geographies as well as spatial and temporal scales. In the face of such complexity, ecologists have long sought tools to streamline and aggregate information. Among them, in the 1980s, T. F. H. Allen and Thomas B. Starr implemented a burgeoning concept from business administration: hierarchy theory. Cutting-edge when Hierarchy was first published, their approach to unraveling complexity is now integrated into mainstream ecological thought.
This thoroughly revised and expanded second edition of Hierarchy reflects the assimilation of hierarchy theory into ecological research, its successful application to the understanding of complex systems, and the many developments in thought since. Because hierarchies and levels are habitual parts of human thinking, hierarchy theory has proven to be the most intuitive and tractable vehicle for addressing complexity. By allowing researchers to look explicitly at only the entities and interconnections that are relevant to a specific research question, hierarchically informed data analysis has enabled a revolution in ecological understanding. With this new edition of Hierarchy, that revolution continues.
REVIEWS
“Allen and Starr focus on the elementary, but often disregarded, fact that ecological systems cannot avoid considerations as hierarchies. This analysis is fascinating stuff and deserves the compliment of being read very slowly.”
— Lawrence B. Slobodkin, Quarterly Review of Biology, on the first edition
“Given the scope and novelty of the subject, Allen and Starr have attempted an ambitious task in drawing together many of the threads of thinking on hierarchies. They present this in a very personal synthetic style with wit and zeal, incorporating jargon and concepts from systems science, statistics, and science fiction. . . . This book should fill an important role if it helps to stimulate a future systematic and rigorous treatment of hierarchies.”
— George Sugihara, Nature, on the first edition
“The original edition of Hierarchy was in its day a seminal work. That it has taken thirty years for a second edition is almost a crime. During the intervening years, Hierarchy’s concepts have found application in a vast number of fields, and the lessons learned thereby have gone on to affect the accepted wisdom in ecological studies. Considerations of hierarchy are critical if one is to have an understanding of communication within any ecology or system. Thus, a work that explores the hows and whys of the formation, maintenance, and degradation of hierarchies is equally critical. This needed update will be invaluable.”
— Michael Lissack, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence and president of the American Society for Cybernetics
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0001
[level;medium number;narrative;percolation;prediction;run-off;scale;soil;specification]
The introduction starts developing narrative and prediction in science. It is explicit about Weinberg’s concept of medium number systems that come from an inept system specification. Large number systems are predictable with averages and representative numbers: e.g. gas laws. Small number systems can be modeled and predicted addressing one particle at a time: e.g. solar systems. Medium number systems have unstable constraints so any particle can dominate whole system behavior. There are too many particles to model each separately, but too few for stable averages: e.g. which bubble streams appear in champagne. An example of soil run-off and percolation is worked through. The first centimeter of soil is medium number. (pages 1 - 32)
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Chapter 1. Hierarchies - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0002
[complexity;constructivism;epistemolgy;grain;level;hierarchies;medium number;realism;scale]
Hierarchies are not real in an external world, they are heuristic epistemological devices. Mathematically they are partially ordered sets. Hierarchies are occupied by entities inserted at levels. The levels are sets that have an asymmetric relationship. Complex systems appear hierarchical and require a constructivist approach. Rosen’s modeling relation deals with hierarchies when it links formal models to analogical observables. The new computational power lets us address hierarchical complexity. In the end hierarchies are medium number and contradictory. (pages 35 - 42)
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Chapter 2. The Janus-Faced Holon - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0003
[causality;codes;constraints;dialectics;duality;hierarchy;holon;part-whole;scale]
Hierarchies are occupied by holons at levels. Koestler’s concept of the holon invokes a part-whole duality, that raises contradictions. The holon is the surface that integrates the environment for the parts, and the parts for the environment. What is included in a holon is subjective choice. The holon is another expression of Levins and Lewontin’s dialectical materialism in biology. Holons yield to the four Aristotelian causes. Holons are created, tell narratives and become a modified entity all at different rates. (pages 43 - 67)
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Chapter 3. Scales and Filters - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0004
[filters;fractals;message;scale;writing]
Signals are filtered to give message. Filters can run into the future to give anticipation. The filter defines the scale of a holon. The distinction between signs and signals is explained in the origins of writing. Internal genons and external environs are conceptual devices for addressing signals arriving into and departing from holons. The symmetry of some filters for transmission versus reception is explained by coupling movie cameras to projectors. (pages 68 - 82)
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Chapter 4. Sirens of Certainty - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0005
[arts;modernism;observer;post-modernism;reification;science]
Sometimes experience feels so convincing we mistakenly imagine it actually is real. Such reification is common in modernist science philosophy, but it usually muddles the ideas in question. Most biological questions are not settled by more data to access the reality of the situation. In the arts and the sciences there are equivalent phases of creativity in the face of filters on and in the world. There is always an observer in an observation, and that necessarily colors the perception. The authors subscribe to a post-modern view. (pages 83 - 96)
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Chapter 5. A Wrinkle in Time: Evolution by Preadaptation - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0006
[complementarity;emergence;essence;high gain;life origins;meaning;physiology;preadaptation;purposiveness;scale]
Evolution by natural selection is a rate-dependent process, but there is also a rate-independent account imposed from above as a complementarity in the form of a constraint. The chapter deals with the evolution of purpose and meaning in life origins by a process of intensification. The notion of essence is developed as that which explains the equivalence in the categories that make models. A species or a role can be an essence. Essence is purposely not an idealist concept. The chapter rejects the gene-centered New Synthesis and instead uses a physiological hierarchy between gene and phenotype. Economic notions of efficiency and return on effort explain different patterns of evolved resource use. (pages 99 - 164)
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Chapter 6. Functional and Structural Boundaries - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0007
[communication channel;endosymbiosis;evolution;near-decomposability;spatial boundary;surface;temporal boundary]
There is a distinction between spatial and temporal boundaries. Enzymes, with distinctly faster reaction rates separated living systems in a temporal domain before there were spatial cell membranes. Death is a matter of relative reaction rates. Surfaces slow communication in space in a large ratio of change in time to space,big changes in rates across small spaces. Meanwhile channels facilitate communication in a small ratio of time differences across a large space. Hierarchies manifest only near-decomposability, allowing weaker communication between upper level structures to occupy higher levels. Boundaries obscure the functioning of lower level processes, e.g. the IRS does not know if you did your taxes with pencil and paper or a computer. Life is radically reorganized by the placement of surfaces in endosymbiosis. Life is a complex of electrical chemical organization set in a defined spatial context. There are subtle boundaries involved. (pages 165 - 187)
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Chapter 7. The Self-Replicating Hierarchy - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0008
[chromosome;duplication;genetics;hierarchy;holon;jugaard;mutation;self-replication;stability]
Self-replication at levels stabilizes whole hierarchies. Chromosomal modification changes the relaxation time of genetics, affecting the rates of evolution. There is a temporal hierarchy that corresponds to a genetic hierarchy. Hierarchies facilitate invasion of alien species. (pages 188 - 196)
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Chapter 8. Scaling Strategies - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0009
[cannibalism;cultivers;disease;endsymbiosis;invasive species;perturbation;resilience;resource capture;scale;strategies]
Life and society use scaling strategies to avoid spread of disturbance with scaling that creates gaps and obstructions. Cannibalism turns offspring into food as necessary. Disease adjusts its virulence up or down to deal with changing degrees of connections between hosts. Invasion of alien species is facilitated if there is a human haven from which they can escape, as in rabbits in Australia. Endosymbiosis is a way of making biological hierarchies deeper, more robust, and resilient. It occurs in business as takeovers and franchises. Rescaling can adapt to resource availability making for a more robust scheme. (pages 197 - 214)
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Chapter 9. Identifying the Scale in Community Ecology - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0010
[context;correlation;data reduction;data tranformation;distance;emergence;hierarchy;multivariate analysis;plant community;scaling]
Plant community data of species in places are compressed to give meaningful pattern in a lower dimension space. The outcome of analysis is affected by the context and transformation of the data. All this is a set of scaling operations that effect emergence in the data. Curvature in output can be distortion but is often the interaction between levels of analysis. (pages 217 - 239)
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Chapter 10. Hierarchy as a Context for Modeling and Simulation - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0011
[chaos;conversation;fractals;Monte Carlo analysis;panarchy;phase diagrams;prey-predator;resilience;simulation;stability]
In contrast to multivariate statistics stands deterministic analysis by manipulating equations. This can be applied up hierarchies to look at resilience of the system. Iteration of equations led to chaos theory as one aspect of complexity. Iterative Monte Carlo approaches offer answers to equations that otherwise cannot be solved. The method recalculates through incidental changes in variables and takes the average of iterations. A holistic approach uses phase diagrams to show the structural stability of equations describing population behavior. Patterns of changing stability lead to discussion of landscapes that show various patterns of resilience. The chapter works its way up from predation, through various patterns of instability in a hierarchical discussion. (pages 240 - 269)
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Chapter 11. Diversity and Connectedness - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0012
[agriculture;complexity;connectedness;diversity;filtering;social hierarchies;stability;territoriality]
Diversity is largely debunked as a meaningful concept, particularly with regard to stability. The key to stability is the degree and pattern of connectedness. This applies to the stability of agricultural systems. Over-connected systems spontaneously go into positive feedback that tears the system apart. Under-connected systems are open to invasion. The systems we see often are those with some device for adjusting connectedness so as to fall within the bounds of stability. Accordingly animals turn to territoriality and social hierarchies to maintain stability as the environment presses them toward some version of catastrophe. (pages 270 - 300)
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Chapter 12. Scale as an Investigative Tool - T.F.H. Allen, Thomas B. Starr
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226489711.003.0013
[collapse;economics;endosymbiosis;engineering;inertial frames;interference patterns;point of view;positive feedback;scale;society]
The diversity of life forms depends on the existence of the eukaryotic cell. Eukaryotes overcome scaling conflicts where increased size separates the working structural parts from genetic instructions that lets them play their role. For engineers emergence means collapse and negative, unfortunate outcomes. Accordingly engineers overbuild. In ecological systems complexity is a way around emergence in that it expects radical change and works to incorporate it as a normal happening. Biological and ecological systems work with varying contexts that change inertial frames. The chapter presents a protocol for using scale. Three alternatives are: 1. use an easily applied scale; use an elaborate exact scale. 2. change the scale; change the point of view. 3. focus on the form of the scale used; focus on what appears using the scale. It appears that society is at its scaling limits, about to be overcome. Complexity in both the situation and in the response causes social problem solving itself to cease to work. Issues of scale and complexity appear to underlie the disenchantment in the First World. It may take us down as it did the Romans. (pages 301 - 348)
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