General principles of biological hierarchical systems

The hierarchy theory of evolution is ontologically committed to the existence of inherent nested hierarchies in nature and attempts to explain natural phenomena as a product of complex dynamics of biological systems in the context of scaling. The hierarchy theory of evolution adopts a model of two interconnected systems, corresponding to the dynamic and the informational aspects of life: (1) the economic, or ecological, compositional nested hierarchy that captures for dynamic interactions of entities within and across levels through upward and downward causation and (2) the genealogical, or reproductive, nested compositional hierarchy, which reflects the historical nature of biological systems stemming from the unidirectional control of information flow. Most generally, the economic and genealogical hierarchies represent, respectively, the spatial and temporal dimensions of the organic realm. Importantly, drawing an explicit distinction between the two types of hierarchies allows for elucidating causal relationships between them.