Thus the complex fabric of social life can be dissected into a variety of hierarchic scaffoldings, as anatomists dissect muscles, nerves and other correlated structures from the pulpy mess. Without this attribute of dissectibility*, the concept of the hierarchy would have a degree ofarbitrariness. We are only justified to talk of trees if we are able to identify their nodes and branches. In the case of a government department or a business concern, dissection is easy: the branching tree-chart may actually hang on the office wall. The simplest type of chart (without cross-connections) will usually look something like this:
* Simon (op. dr.) speaks of 'decomposable' hierarchies, but 'dissectibility' seems preferable.
Let this represent a government department, such as the Home Office: then each holon -- each box -- in the second row will represent a branch of it: Immigration -- Scotland Yard -- Prison Commission, etc., and each box in the third row a subdepartment, etc. Now which are the criteria which justify 'dissecting' the Home Office in this and no other way? Or, to put it differently, how did the maker of the chart define his holons? He may have been shown a town map indicating Home Office buildings, and plans of each building; but that would not be enough, and sometimes even misleading, because some department may be housed in several buildings in different parts of the town, and several departments may share the same building. What defines each box as an entity is the function or task assigned to it -- the nature of the work which the people in each department do. There is, of course, in any efficient hierarchy a tendency to keep people working on the same task in the same room or building, and to that extent spatial distribution enters into the picture, but only to that extent. Office boys and telephones bridge the distances between functionally related desks -- as nerves and hormones do in the control hierarchies of the living organism.
There is not only cohesion within each holon, but also separation between different holons to lend precision to the chart. The people who work within a given department transact much more business with each other than with people in other departments. Moreover, when one department requests information or action from another department, this is not as a rule done by direct person-to-person contact, but through official channels, involving the heads of each department. In other words, the lines of control run along the branches of the tree up and down; there are no horizontal short cuts in an ideal control-hierarchy.
In other types of hierarchies the holons cannot be so easily defined by their 'function' or 'task'. We cannot define the 'function' of a family, clan or tribe. Nevertheless, as in the previous example, the members of each of these holons function together, cohere, interact, much more with each other than with members of other holons. And if business is to be transacted between two clans or tribes, it is again done via the chieftains or elders.* These ties of cohesion and boundaries of separation are both the result of shared traditions, such as the laws of kinship and the resulting codes of behaviour. In their ensemble they form a pattern of rule-governed behaviour. It is this pattern which lends the group stability and cohesion, and which defines it as a social holon, with an individuality of its own.
* Once these ties of cohesion begin to weaken and the boundaries of separation become blurred, the tribal hierarchy is decaying. The Indian frontier provinces provide a sad illustration of the consequences of a rash policy of 'de-tribalisation' without offering a substitute structure of values. Mutatis mutandis, the emotional instability of Western society and particularly of its youth, is obviously a consequence of the breakdown of the traditional hierarchic structures without as yet any alternative in sight. But the discussion of social pathology must be postponed to Part Three of this book.
We must distinguish, however, between the rules which govern individual behaviour and those which guide the activities of the group as a whole. The individual may even be unaware of the fact that his behaviour is rule-governed, and no more able to name the rules which guide his conduct than he is able to name those which guide his speech. The activities of the social holon, on the other hand, depend not only on the complex interactions between its parts, but also on its interaction as a whole with other holons on its own, higher level of the hierarchy; and these cannot be inferred from the lower level any more than the function of the nervous system can be inferred from the level of individual nerve cells, or the rules of syntax can be inferred from the rules of phonology. We can 'dissect' a complex whole into its composite holons of the second and third order, and so on, but we cannot 'reduce' it to a sum of its parts, nor predict its properties from those of its parts. The hierarchy concept of 'levels of organisation' in itself implies a rejection of the reductionist view that all phenomena of life (consciousness included) can be reduced to and explained by physico-chemical laws.
Thus a stable social holon has an individuality or 'profile' -- whether it is a Papuan tribe or a Treasury department. Every closely knit social body sharing a common territory and/or a code of explicit and implicit laws, customs and beliefs tends to preserve and assert its pattern -- or else it could not qualify as a stable holon. In a primitive society the tribe might be the highest unit of the shallow hierarchy, a more or less self-contained whole. But in a complex society, with its many-levelled hierarchies, it is equally essential that each holon -- whether an administrative department, a local government or the fire brigade -- should operate as an autonomous, self-contained unit; without division of labour and delegation of powers, according to the hierarchic schema, no society can function effectively.
Let us revert for a moment to our Home Office example, and let one 'box' be the Department of Immigration. In order to operate as a self-reliant unit, the department must be equipped with a set of instructions and regulations enabling it to take routine contingencies in its stride, without having to consult higher authority in each particular case. In other words, what enables the department to function in this efficient way, as an autonomous holon, is once more a set of fixed rules, its canon. But here again there will be cases where the rules can be interpreted in this way or that, and so leave room for more than one decision. Whatever the nature of a hierarchic organisation, its constituent holons are defined by fixed rules and flexible strategies.
In the present example, too, it is obvious that the individual codes which guide the conduct of the people who work in the department are not the same as the rules which determine the actions of the department. Mr Smith may be willing to grant a visa to an applicant on grounds of compassion, but the regulations say differently. And we find a further parallel to previous examples (p. 43). When the rules allow more than one course of action, the matter must be referred to the head of the department, who might find it advisable to appeal for a decision to a higher level of the hierarchy. And there again, strategic considerations of a higher order may arise -- such as the availability of housing, the colour problem, the labour situation. There may even be conflict between Home Offce policy and the Ministry of Economics. Once more we are moving in a regressing series (although in this case, of course, it is not an infinite regress).
To repeat: it is essential for the stability and efficient functioning of the body social that each of its sub-divisions should operate as an autonomous, self-reliant unit which, though subject to control from above, must have a degree of independence and take routine contingencies in its stride, without asking higher authority for instructions. Otherwise the communication channels would become overloaded, the whole system clogged up, the higher echelons would be kept occupied with petty detail and unable to concentrate on more important factors.
The Basic Polarity
However, the rules, or codes, which govern a social holon act not merely as negative constraints imposed on its actions, but also as positive precepts, maxims of conduct or moral imperatives. As a consequence, every holon will tend to persist in and assert its particular pattern of activity. This self-assertive tendency is a fundamental and universal characteristic of holons, which manifests itself on every level of the social hierar
chy (and, as we shall see, in every other type of hierarchy).
On the level of the individual, a certain amount of self-assertiveness -- ambition, initiative, competition -- is indispensable in a dynamic society. At the same time, of course, he is dependent on, and must be integrated into, his tribe or social group. If he is a well-adjusted person, the self-assertive tendency and its opposite, the integrative tendency, are more or less equally balanced; he lives, so long as things are normal, in a kind of dynamic equilibrium with his social environment. Under conditions of stress, however, the equilibrium is upset, leading to emotionally disordered behaviour.
No man is an island he is a holon. A Janus-faced entity who, looking inward, sees himself as a self-contained unique whole, looking outward as a dependent part. His self-assertive tendency is the dynamic manifestation of his unique , his autonomy and independence as a holon. Its equally universal antagonist, the integrative tendency, expresses his dependence on the larger whole to which he belongs: his 'part-ness'. The polarity of these two tendencies, or potentials, is one of the leitmotivs of the present theory. Empirically, it can be traced in all phenomena of life; theoretically, it is derived from the part-whole dichotomy inherent in the concept of the multi-layered hierarchy; its philosophical implications will be discussed in later chapters. For the time being let me repeat that the self-assertive tendency is the dynamic expression of the holon's wholeness, the integrative tendency, the dynamic expression of its partness.*
* In The Act of Creation I talked of self-assertive and 'participatory' tendencies; but 'integrative' appears to be the more appropriate term.
The manifestations of the two tendencies on different levels go by different names, but they are expressions of the same polarity running through the whole series. The self-assertive tendencies of the individual are known as 'rugged individualism', competitiveness, etc.; when we come to larger holons we speak of 'clannishhess', 'cliquishness', 'class-consciousness', 'esprit de corps', 'local patriotism', 'nationalism', etc. The integrative tendencies, on the other hand, are manifested in 'co-operativeness', 'disciplined behaviour', 'loyalty', 'self-effacement', 'devotion to duty', 'internationalism', and so on.
Note, however, that most of the terms referring to higher levels of the hierarchy are ambiguous. The loyalty of individuals towards their clan reflects their integrative tendencies; but it enables the clan as a whole to behave in an aggressive, self-assertive way. The obedience and devotion to duty of the members of the Nazi S.S. Guard kept the gas chambers going. 'Patriotism' is the virtue of subordinating private interests to the higher interests of the nation; 'nationalism' is a synonym for the militant expression of those higher interests. The infernal dialectic of this process is reflected throughout human history. It is not accidental; the disposition towards such disturbances is inherent in the part-whole polarisation of social hierarchies. It may be the unconscious reason why the Romans gave the god Janus such a prominent role in their Pantheon as the keeper of doorways, facing both inward and outward, and why they named the first month of the year after him. But it would be premature to go into this subject now; it will be one of our main preoccupations in Part Three of this volume.
For the time being we are only concerned with the normal, orderly functioning of the hierarchy, where each holon operates in accordance with its code of rules, without attempting to impose it on others, nor to lose its individuality by excessive subordination. It is only in times of stress that a holon may tend to get out of control, and its normal self-assertiveness changes into aggressiveness -- whether the holon is an individual, or a social class, or a whole nation. The reverse process occurs when the dependence of a holon on its superior controls is so strong that it loses its identity.
Readers versed in contemporary psychology will have gathered, even from this incomplete preliminary outline, that in the theory proposed here there is no place for such a thing as a destructive instinct; nor does it admit the reification of the sexual instinct as the only integrative force in human or animal society. Freud's Eros and Thanatos are relative late-comers on the stage of evolution: a host of creatures that multiply by fission (or budding) are ignorant of both.* In our view, Eros is an offspring of the integrative, destructive Thanatos of the self-assertive tendency, and Janus the ultimate ancestor of both -- the symbol of the dichotomy between partness and wholeness, which is imeparable from the open-ended hierarchies of life.
* For a discussion of Freudian metapsychology, see Insight and Outlook, Chapters XV, XVI.
Summary
Organisms and societies are multi-levelled hierarchies of semiautonomous sub-wholes branching into sub-wholes of a lower order, and so on. The term 'holon' has been introduced to refer to these intermediary entities which, relative to their subordinates in the hierarchy, function as self-contained wholes; relative to their superordinates as dependent parts. This dichotomy of 'wholeness' and 'partness', of autonomy and dependence, is inherent in the concept of hierarchic order, and is called here the 'Janus principle'. Its dynamic expression is the polarity of the Self-Assertive and Integrative Tendencies.
Hierarchies are 'dissectible' into their constituent branches, on which the holons form the 'nodes'. The number of levels which a hierarchy comprises is called its 'depth', and the number of holons on any given level its 'span'.
Holons are governed by fixed sets of rules and display more or less flexible strategies. The rules of conduct of a social holon are not reducible to the rules of conduct of its members.
The reader may find it helpful to consult from time to time Appendix I, which summarises the general characteristics of hierarchic systems as proposed in this and subsequent chapters.
IV
INDIVIDUALS AND DIVIDUALS
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it the right way did not become still more complicated. Poul Anderson
A Note about Diagrams
Before we turn from social organisation to biological organisms, I must briefly remark on various types of hierarchies and their diagrammatic representation.
There have been several attempts to classify hierarchies into categories, none of them entirely successful, because unavoidably the categories overlap. Thus one can broadly distinguish between 'structural' hierarchies, which emphasise the spatial aspect (anatomy, topology) of a system, and 'functional' hierarchies, which emphasise process in time. Evidently, structure and function cannot be separated, and represent complementary aspects of an indivisible spatio-temporal process; but it is often convenient to focus attention on one or the other aspect. All hierarchies have a 'part within part' character, but this is more easily recognised in 'structural' than in 'functional' hierarchies -- such as the skills of language and music which weave patterns within patterns in time.
In the type of administrative hierarchy we have just discussed, the tree diagram symbolises both structure and function -- the branches are lines of communication and control, the nodes or boxes each represent a group of physically real people (the department head, his assistants and secretaries). But if we chart in a similar way a military establishment, the tree will only represent the functional aspect, because, strictly speaking, the boxes on each level whether they are labelled 'battalion' or 'company' -- will contain only officers or N.C.O.s; the place for the other ranks which makes up the bulk of the battalion or company is in the bottom row of the chart. For our purposes this does not really matter, because what we are interested in is how the machinery is functioning, and the tree shows exactly that -- it is the officers and N.C.O.s who determine the operations of the holon as repositories of its fixed rules and makers of strategy. But people who are inclined to think in concrete images, rather than in abstract schemata, often find this rather confusing. If, however, we wanted to emphasise the structural aspect of an army, we might draw a diagram, such as Figure 4 below, which shows how platoons are 'encapsulated' into companies, companies into battalions, etc. But such structural diagrams are clumsy, and co
ntain less information than the branching tree.
Some authors put symbolic hierarchies (language, music, mathematics) into a separate category; but they might just as well be classified as 'functional hierarchies', as they are produced by human operations. A book consists of chapters, consisting of paragraphs, consisting of sentences, etc.; and a symphony can similarly be dissected into parts within parts. The hierarchic structure of the product reflects the hierarchic nature of the skills and subskills which brought it into being.
In a similar way, all classificatory hierarchies, unless they are purely descriptive, reflect the processes by which they came into being. Thus the species-genus-family-order-class-phylum classification of the animal kingdom is intended to reflect relations in evolutionary descent -- here the tree diagram represents the archetypal 'tree of life'. Similarly, the hierarchically subdivided subject-index in library catalogues reflects the hierarchic ordering of knowledge.
Lastly, phylogeny and ontogeny are developmental hierarchies in which the tree branches out along the axis of time, the different levels represent different stages of development, and the holons -- as we shall see -- reflect intermediary structures at these stages.