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Stanley N. Salthe.
Evolving Hierarchical Systems: their structure and representation.
Columbia University Press. 1985

A bold effort to find a functional and transactional framework for synthetic evolutionary theory, Evolving Hierarchical Systems seeks to represent the order in nature by discriminating a hierarchical system and defining the logical boundaries of the concepts inherent in this system (such as time, causality, complexity, partitioning, scale, and polarity).

Salthe’s basic assumption is that the world is unlimitedly complex. Biology and some other sciences, such as geology and applied physics, have become entangled in this complexity with, the author writes, “as little ability to negotiate it as a fly in a spider’s web.” He argues that biological nature in particular is undercharacterized in our representations, and because of that so is the rest of nature.

The book first describes the principles of hierarchical structure and discusses the process of discovering the relevant aspects of the hierarchy of nature. It then brings in the concept of self-reference, and moves on to an interpretation and explanation of organic evolution in this framework. While Salthe’s focus is on biology, the outline of a hierarchy theory he presents is asserted to be a “philosophical machine” that can be applied as a hermeneutical tool to many fields of inquiry concerned with change in complex systems.

Felt by the author to also be a response to Jacques Monod’s Chance and Necessity, this book is a significant statement on the hierarchical organization of the surface of the earth. It is provocative reading not only for biologists but also for anthropologists, sociologists, geologists, and scientists interested in general systems research.

This book has a strong structural bias, in contrast to the process oriented approach of Allen and the other ecologists in this bibliography. Salthe introduces the notion of the Triadic, where there is a focus on 1) the system as both a whole above the levels below and 2) a part belonging to another level above, 3) not forgetting the level of the structure itself in between. While much biological hierarchy theory takes an anti-realist point view, or is at least reality-agnostic, wherein the ultimate reality of hierarchical arrangement is left moot, Salthe’s version of hierarchy theory is concerned with the ultimate reality of structure. The anti-realist view of structure is that it is imposed by the observer, and may or may not correspond to any ultimate reality. If structure does correspond to ultimate, external reality, we could never know that to be so. Salthe’s logic is consistent but always takes a structural and ontological position.

-- Timothy F. Allen

Stanley N. Salthe.
Development and Evolution: complexity and change in biology.
MIT Press. 1993

Development and Evolution surveys and illuminates the themes and controversies that are redefining the theory and philosophy of biology. It continues Stanley Salthe’s investigation of evolutionary theory, begun in his influential book Evolving Hierarchical Systems. Here Salthe attempts to reinitiate a theory of biology from the perspective of development rather than from that of evolution, recognizing the applicability of general systems thinking to biological and social phenomena and pointing toward a non-Darwinian and even a postmodern biology.

Salthe’s intent is nothing less than to provide, with this alternative paradigm, a position from which the deconstruction of the Baconian/Cartesian/Newtonian/Darwinian/Comtean tradition becomes possible, while at the same time suggesting in its place an organic view predicated upon Aristotelian and Hegelian antecedents. In the face of complexity, we must alter our view of the universe as inherently ordered and predictable; order develops, but at great cost.

Exploring the nature of change in a complex world, Salthe brings together in illuminating ways such disparate areas as hierarchy theory, information theory, and semiotics, as he seeks a mode of answering questions about the nature of complexity and about how we might derive information from the interactions of the parts of a contextualized developing system.