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Heterarchy and Hierarchy -
Two Complementary Categories
of Description
Introduction
by Eberhard
von Goldammer
The term 'heterarchy' was introduced into science
more than half a century ago by the neurophysiologist and cybernetician
Warren St. McCulloch in his study "A
Heterarchy of Values Determined by the Topology of Nervous Nets". Since
that time the term 'heterarchy' which has be considered as complement to
'hierarchy' has scarcely been noticed by the main stream of scientific
research. This is amazing because McCulloch introduced this term in
connection with the function and organizational structures of neural
networks. Therefore one would expect that at least the neural networkers,
i.e., the researchers from the camp of Artificial Intelligence, of cognitive
and neuro-sciences, or of brain research and connectionism would be
interested in the interplay of heterarchically and hierarchically organized
process structures – but not at all! Obviously there is no interest on
heterarchical process structures, i.e., one is convinced that the models of
neuro-sciences which are known today already simulate the conditions of
heterarchical process structures. If the latter assumptions should be true
then this would be not only a big mistake but also a kind of scientific a
self-deception.
Today the term heterarchy has been re-discovered form
the side of organizational theory. This is not a surprise since
hetararchical structures can only be observed within living systems such as
organisms or for instance in social organizations such as post-industrial
companies. The sociologist
David Stark, for example, reports on heterarchical organizational
structures in post-socialist enterprises. In his book Many Dimensional Man
James Ogilvy writes "the new self is heterarchical, many dimensiona…l"
and in his recent book
Creating Better Futures Ogilvy writes "complex problems may require the
complexity of heterarchy". But what is the complexity of heterarchy ?
In his contribution "Organisation
und Postmoderne" Markus Reihlen describes the transition of the modern
society in a post-modern or post-industrial society form the organizational
point of view (see also:
The Logic of Heterarchies [6a]).
However, what has been ignored until today is the fact that the study of
heterarchical process structures is essential for any modeling of living
systems in general. Such a modeling provides a new scientific logical
understanding – a new scientific paradigm. In the early in seventies it was
the philosopher and logician Gotthard Günther who interpreted McCulloch's
study "A
Heterarchy of Values …" Two of his essays should be mentioned within
this context, namely: "Cognition
and Volition" and Das Janusgesicht der Dialektik.
In the sense of "knowledge recycling" in "Heterarchy
and Hierarchy - Two Complementary Categories of Description" the attempt
is made to redraw the scientific logical problem which is known for more
than half a century in order to deduce a sharper scientific definition of
the complementary terms heterarchy and hierarchy.
Important note: For the deeper understanding of the
above mentioned text "Heterarchy
and Hierarchy - Two Complementary Categories of Description" an
additional and coordinated text "Heterarchy
sidetext" is necessary which either directly contains or deepens sources
mentioned in the actual article. It is advisable to keep both texts open
within Acrobat Reader in order to jump forth and back using the links
between them. Attention: If you want to download the texts, store them in
the same folder and do not change the filenames, otherwise the links don't
work!
Remark: The link to Markus Reihlen was changed
22.11.2012. Markus Reihlen is no longer Member of the Universit of Cologne,
he owns a professorship for strategic management at Leuphana University
Lüneburg.
Explicit listing of links:
[1]
http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/mole/m/mcculloc.htm
[2]
http://www.sociology.columbia.edu/people/index.html?professors/dcs36/index.html
[3]
http://ag.arizona.edu/futures/fut/ogilvy.html
[4]
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195146115/qid=1064765884/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_8_2/302-9682129-6952867
David Stark (Santa Fe Institute) "I'm interested in finding out to what
extent hierarchy versus heterarchy is there in the new kind of firm which is
emerging,"
[5]
www.leuphana.de/markus-reihlen.html
[6]
http://www.vordenker.de/reihlen/mr_org-post.pdf
[6a] M. Reihlen (english text)
http://www.uni-koeln.de/wiso-fak/planung/download/arbb-91.pdf
[7]
http://www.vordenker.de/ggphilosophy/c_and_v.pdf
[8]
http://www.vordenker.de/heterarchy/a_heterarchy-e.pdf
http://www.vordenker.de/heterarchy/b_heterarchy-e.pdf
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