Hierarchies

You are made of organs. Organs are made of tissues. Tissues are made of cells. Cells are made of molecules. Molecules are made of atoms. Atoms are made of particles.

You live in a city. Cities exist in regions. Regions form nations. Nations exist on continents. Continents are on Earth. Earth orbits the Sun. The Sun is in the Milky Way. The Milky Way is in the observable universe.

Hierarchies are nested levels of organization where each level contains and emerges from the level below while being contained within the level above.

Reality is structured in layers—from the smallest scales to the largest, from the simplest components to the most complex wholes. Understanding hierarchies reveals how complexity builds, how different scales interact, and where you fit in the cosmic order.

What is a hierarchy?

Levels of organization

Hierarchy: From Greek hieros (sacred) and arkhein (to rule)—originally meant sacred rule or holy order

In systems theory: Nested levels where:

Lower levels are parts of higher levels
Higher levels emerge from lower levels
Each level has distinct properties and principles
Levels interact but maintain partial independence

Not just top-down control: Despite the etymology, hierarchies in nature aren’t about domination but about organization—how complexity is structured.

Key properties

Containment: Each level contains multiple entities from the level below

Organs contain many cells
Ecosystems contain many organisms
Galaxies contain many stars

Emergence: Each level has properties that don’t exist at lower levels

Cells are alive; molecules aren’t
Consciousness exists at brain level; neurons alone aren’t conscious
Economies have properties individuals don’t have

Relative autonomy: Each level operates by its own principles

Chemistry follows chemical laws (not reducible to pure physics)
Biology follows biological laws (not reducible to pure chemistry)
Psychology follows psychological laws (not reducible to pure biology)

Interaction: Levels influence each other both ways

Bottom-up: Lower levels constrain higher levels
Top-down: Higher levels influence lower levels
Bidirectional causation across scales

Natural hierarchies

Physical scales

The cosmic hierarchy:

Quantum scale (10⁻³⁵ m):

Planck length: smallest meaningful distance
Quantum foam, strings (hypothetical)
Uncertainty principle dominates
Particle-wave duality

Subatomic (10⁻¹⁵ m):

Quarks, leptons, bosons
Fundamental particles
Quantum field theory governs

Atomic (10⁻¹⁰ m):

Protons, neutrons, electrons
Elements of periodic table
Chemistry emerges

Molecular (10⁻⁹ to 10⁻⁶ m):

Chemical bonds create molecules
Water, proteins, DNA
Biochemistry possible

Cellular (10⁻⁶ to 10⁻⁴ m):

Basic unit of life
Metabolism, reproduction
Biology fully emerges

Organismal (10⁻³ to 10¹ m):

Individual living beings
Behavior, consciousness (in some)
Ecology studies interactions

Ecosystems (10³ to 10⁶ m):

Communities of organisms
Energy and nutrient flows
Emergent stability

Planetary (10⁷ m):

Earth, other planets
Biosphere as whole system
Gaia hypothesis

Stellar (10⁹ m):

Stars, solar systems
Nuclear fusion, gravity
Create heavy elements

Galactic (10²¹ m):

Billions of stars
Spiral arms, supermassive black holes
Dark matter scaffolding

Universal (10²⁶ m):

Observable universe
~200 billion galaxies
Dark energy, expansion

Each level has: Characteristic scale, appropriate physics, emergent properties, distinct dynamics

Biological hierarchies

Structural hierarchy:

Atoms → Molecules → Organelles → Cells → Tissues → Organs → Organ systems → Organisms → Populations → Communities → Ecosystems → Biosphere

Information hierarchy:

Nucleotides → Genes → Chromosomes → Genomes → Organisms → Populations → Species
Information encoded at each level

Functional hierarchy:

Molecules perform chemical reactions
Organelles perform cellular functions
Organs perform body functions
Organisms perform ecological functions
Ecosystems perform planetary functions

Developmental hierarchy:

Zygote → Morula → Blastula → Gastrula → Embryo → Fetus → Infant → Child → Adult
Each stage builds on previous, enables next

Evolutionary hierarchy:

Genetic variation → Individual selection → Species formation → Extinction → Ecosystem evolution
Operates across time scales: Generations → Millions of years

Cognitive hierarchies

Neural hierarchy:

Ion channels → Neurons → Columns → Regions → Networks → Whole brain
Information processing at each level

Perceptual hierarchy:

Photons → Retinal cells → Edge detection → Object recognition → Scene understanding → Meaning
Bottom-up processing building representations

Conceptual hierarchy:

Sensations → Perceptions → Concepts → Categories → Theories → Worldviews
Abstraction at each level

Linguistic hierarchy:

Phonemes → Morphemes → Words → Phrases → Sentences → Paragraphs → Narratives
Meaning emerges through levels

Memory hierarchy:

Sensory memory → Short-term memory → Working memory → Long-term memory → Semantic memory
Different timescales and capacities

Human hierarchies

Social organization

Family structures:

Individual → Nuclear family → Extended family → Clan → Tribe
Kinship organizing principle

Political hierarchies:

Individual → Household → Neighborhood → City → Region → Nation → International system
Governance at each level

Economic hierarchies:

Worker → Team → Department → Company → Industry → National economy → Global economy
Value creation and exchange at each level

Not always pyramidal: Modern networks often more distributed, but hierarchical structure remains in some form

Organizational structures

Corporate hierarchy:

Individual contributor → Team lead → Manager → Director → VP → C-suite → Board
Authority and responsibility at each level

Military hierarchy:

Private → Sergeant → Lieutenant → Captain → Major → Colonel → General
Command and control structure

Academic hierarchy:

Student → Graduate student → Postdoc → Assistant professor → Associate professor → Full professor
Expertise and seniority

Effectiveness depends on:

Appropriate autonomy at each level
Clear communication channels
Aligned goals across levels
Feedback between levels

Knowledge hierarchies

Data → Information → Knowledge → Wisdom:

Data: Raw facts
Information: Organized data
Knowledge: Understood information
Wisdom: Applied knowledge

Scientific hierarchy:

Observations → Hypotheses → Theories → Paradigms → Worldviews
Each level more abstract and comprehensive

Academic disciplines:

Mathematics (most fundamental/abstract)
Physics (applies math to matter/energy)
Chemistry (applies physics to atoms/molecules)
Biology (applies chemistry to life)
Psychology (applies biology to mind)
Sociology (applies psychology to groups)
More reductionist ← → More holistic

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

Physiological → Safety → Love/Belonging → Esteem → Self-actualization
Lower needs must be satisfied before higher ones emerge
Controversial but influential model

Properties of hierarchies

Emergence at each level

New properties appear:

Wetness emerges from H₂O molecules (not in individual molecules)
Life emerges from chemical reactions (not in molecules alone)
Consciousness emerges from neural networks (not in individual neurons)

Each level requires own explanatory framework:

Can’t explain life purely with physics
Can’t explain consciousness purely with chemistry
Can’t explain society purely with psychology
Need level-appropriate concepts

But: Lower levels constrain higher levels

Can’t have biology that violates physics
Can’t have psychology that violates biology
Lower levels set boundaries for what’s possible

Holons: Wholes and parts

Arthur Koestler’s insight: Every level is simultaneously:

A whole (integrated unit with its own properties)
A part (component of higher-level systems)

Examples:

A cell is a whole (complete living system) and a part (component of tissue)
You are a whole (integrated person) and a part (member of communities)
Earth is a whole (integrated planet) and a part (component of solar system)

Janus-faced nature: Each level looks down at parts it contains and up at wholes it belongs to

Implications:

No level is fundamental—it’s hierarchies all the way up and down
Context matters—entity’s properties depend on level of analysis
Both reductionism and holism are partial truths

Nested timescales

Each level operates at characteristic timescale:

Subatomic: 10⁻²⁴ seconds
Chemical reactions: Microseconds to seconds
Neural firing: Milliseconds
Heartbeat: ~1 second
Circadian rhythms: ~24 hours
Seasonal cycles: ~1 year
Human lifespan: ~80 years
Species duration: Millions of years
Stellar lifetimes: Billions of years

Higher levels often slower:

Cells divide in hours; organisms mature in years
Individual decisions in moments; culture changes over generations
Molecules react quickly; ecosystems evolve slowly

But not always: Avalanches, earthquakes, market crashes—large-scale events can be faster than small-scale processes

Span of control

How many units can one level above effectively manage?

Management theory: 5-9 direct reports typical

Too few: Micromanagement, inefficiency
Too many: Loss of control, communication breakdowns

Neural networks: Each neuron connects to ~7,000 others

Enables complex integration
Permits parallel processing

Social groups: Dunbar’s number (~150) for meaningful relationships

Group sizes often hierarchically structured: 5, 15, 50, 150, 500

Military units: Designed hierarchically for effective command

Squad (8-12) → Platoon (26-50) → Company (80-150) → Battalion (300-800)

Principle: Effective hierarchies balance span of control with depth of hierarchy

Problems with hierarchies

Rigidity and bureaucracy

Too rigid:

Slow to adapt
Information bottlenecks
Innovation suppressed
“That’s not my level’s job”

Bureaucratic pathologies:

Red tape and unnecessary complexity
Goal displacement (following rules becomes the goal)
Empire building (levels expanding for their own sake)
Information distortion across levels

Examples: Large corporations, government agencies, universities

Power concentration

Top-down control:

Those at top have disproportionate power
Can become authoritarian, extractive
Bottom levels disempowered
Resistance or resignation at lower levels

Historical examples:

Feudalism: Rigid social hierarchy
Caste systems: Hereditary hierarchy
Corporate exploitation: Economic hierarchy without accountability

Critique: Many hierarchies are about domination, not just organization

Communication barriers

Each level may:

Have different language/concepts
Have different priorities
Distort information (intentionally or not)
Create echo chambers

Telephone game effect: Information degrades across levels

Silo problem: Different branches of hierarchy don’t communicate horizontally

Reductionism vs. holism debates

Reductionism claims: Everything reduces to physics

Know the parts, know the whole
Higher levels are just convenient shorthand
“Real” causation only at lowest level

Holism claims: Wholes are irreducible

Can’t understand by studying parts alone
Higher levels have autonomous causation
“Real” meaning only at highest level

Both are extreme positions: Reality involves both bottom-up and top-down causation, requiring multi-level understanding

Alternatives and complements

Networks

Non-hierarchical organization:

Nodes connected peer-to-peer
No clear levels
Distributed rather than centralized

Examples:

Internet structure
Mycelial networks
Social networks
Blockchain systems

But: Even networks have hierarchy

Hub nodes vs. peripheral nodes
Power law distributions (scale-free networks)
Hidden hierarchies emerge

Often complementary: Networks within hierarchical levels

Heterarchies

Multiple organizing principles:

No single top
Context-dependent superiority
Circular relationships possible

Examples:

Brain: No single “command center”
Rock-paper-scissors: Circular dominance
Democratic societies: Multiple power centers

Useful when: Different types of authority needed for different functions

Holacracy

Organizational system:

Roles instead of jobs
Circles instead of departments
Distributed authority
Transparent rules

Attempts to: Retain structure benefits while avoiding hierarchy problems

Mixed results: Works for some organizations, too complex for others

The universal perspective

You are multi-level

Physically:

Particles → Atoms → Molecules → Cells → Organs → You → Communities → Biosphere → Cosmos
You exist at every level simultaneously

Temporally:

Millisecond reactions → Second-scale actions → Hour-scale activities → Daily rhythms → Yearly patterns → Lifetime arc → Generational impact
Operating across timescales

Socially:

Individual → Family → Friend groups → Communities → Nation → Humanity
Identity at each level

Conceptually:

Sensations → Thoughts → Beliefs → Worldview → Cultural paradigm
Nested meaning structures

You are not one level: You’re a multi-scale phenomenon—irreducible to any single level of description

Causation flows both ways

Bottom-up causation:

Your neurons enable your thoughts
Your genes influence your personality
Your economy shapes your opportunities

Top-down causation:

Your thoughts change your neural patterns (neuroplasticity)
Your decisions affect your gene expression (epigenetics)
Your values influence economic behavior

Circular causation: Higher and lower levels continuously influence each other

Implication: Simple reductionism fails—you need multi-level explanations

No privileged level

Reductionist temptation: “Really, it’s all just particles” Holist temptation: “Really, it’s all about the whole”

Truth: Every level is real

Particles are real
Molecules are real
Cells are real
You are real
Humanity is real
The universe is real

Different questions require different levels:

“Why did you eat?”
- Physics: Energy requirements
- Biology: Hunger signals
- Psychology: Emotional state
- Social: Cultural practices
- All true simultaneously

Ontological democracy: No level is more “real” than others—each reveals different aspects of reality

You participate in vast nested systems

You are:

A collection of subsystems (biological)
An individual (psychological)
A node in networks (social)
A member of communities (cultural)
A participant in ecosystems (ecological)
A temporary arrangement of cosmic matter (physical)

Each level matters:

Ignore your biology: Get sick
Ignore your psychology: Suffer
Ignore your relationships: Isolate
Ignore your culture: Lose context
Ignore your ecology: Degrade environment
Ignore your cosmic context: Lose perspective

Living well requires: Attending to all levels—integrating across scales

Living with hierarchies

Find your level

Not everyone needs to think at all scales all the time:

Some problems are local (fix your sleep schedule)
Some problems are systemic (reform institutions)
Some problems are global (climate change)
Some problems are existential (AI alignment)

Match your attention to appropriate level:

Individual wellbeing (personal level)
Community thriving (local level)
Institutional change (organizational level)
Species survival (global level)

But: Remember connections between levels—local actions have global implications, global patterns affect local life

Bridge levels

Translation needed:

Scientific concepts → Policy recommendations
Individual experiences → Aggregate data
Local knowledge → Systematic understanding
Abstract principles → Concrete actions

Bridge builders are essential:

Scientists who can communicate with public
Activists who connect personal and systemic
Artists who make abstract concrete
Teachers who link levels of complexity

Develop capacity to: Think at multiple levels and translate between them

Design better hierarchies

When creating hierarchical systems:

Minimize depth: Fewer levels means faster communication, less distortion

Distribute authority: Give lower levels autonomy within their domain

Enable feedback: Information must flow both up and down

Respect each level: Don’t micromanage from above, don’t ignore input from below

Maintain coherence: Align goals across levels while allowing local adaptation

Examples of well-designed hierarchies:

Healthy nervous system (distributed processing, integrated coordination)
Effective organizations (clear structure, empowered teams)
Federal systems (local autonomy, national coherence)

Integrate your levels

Personal practice:

Physical health: Tend to molecular, cellular, organ levels

Nutrition, exercise, sleep, medical care

Mental health: Tend to neural, cognitive, emotional levels

Meditation, therapy, learning, reflection

Social health: Tend to relationship, community, cultural levels

Connection, contribution, belonging

Existential health: Tend to meaning, purpose, cosmic levels

Values clarification, spiritual practice, big-picture thinking

Integration means: Not fragmenting yourself by level, but recognizing you’re one being across multiple scales

Conclusion: Nested wholeness

Hierarchies reveal reality’s fundamental structure: nested levels of organization, each real and important, together forming an integrated whole.

You are:

Contained: Within family, community, nation, species, biosphere, universe
Containing: Organs, cells, molecules, atoms, particles
Connected: To all levels above and below through causation and feedback
Emergent: More than the sum of your parts at every level

The universe is:

Not a pyramid with something at top or bottom
Not a flat network of equivalent elements
A multi-level, nested, interconnected hierarchy where each level is real and causally important

From universal perspective: You’re a holon—simultaneously whole and part, containing and contained, a fleeting eddy in cosmic flows yet fully real and meaningful at your scale.

The challenge: Live well at your level while remembering:

You depend on levels below (tend your biology)
You’re part of levels above (serve larger wholes)
All levels matter (integrate across scales)
Your actions ripple through hierarchies (take responsibility)

The insight: You’re not separate from the hierarchy—you’re a living expression of how the universe organizes complexity across scales, from quantum foam to cosmic expanse, all present in this moment of your awareness.

This is what it means to have universal perspective: seeing yourself simultaneously as particle, person, and pattern in the infinite nested wholeness of existence.

Further exploration

Books:

The Systems View of Life by Fritjof Capra and Pier Luigi Luisi
Holons and Hierarchy by Ken Wilber (integral theory)
Hierarchy in the Forest by Christopher Boehm (human evolution)
Hierarchy Theory by Howard Pattee (theoretical biology)
The Ghost in the Machine by Arthur Koestler (holons)

Related topics:

Emergence - How higher levels arise
Fractals - Self-similar patterns across scales
Networks - Alternative organizational pattern
[Systems thinking (upcoming)] /practices/systems-thinking - Thinking across levels

Practice:

Map the hierarchies you’re embedded in
Notice which level you typically think at
Practice shifting between scales
Observe how different levels interact in your life
Consider: Where do you fit in the nested wholeness?