Ontology rests on the idea that reality is not perfectly uniform – that it has discontinuities. To develop a sense of these “contours”, hierarchy theory provides a crude and attractive account that makes for a good beginning.
Lest we forget, you too are a system pervaded by hierarchies. Like all other systems, the human observer has a surface that defines discontinuities in information flow.
The mechanisms that afford the hierarchy its position as the central architectural principle in complexity can be understood at greater depth with reference to the signal/boundary framework by John H Holland.
