Organizational levels analysis: a key to understanding processes in natural systems

Recent research conducted on a hypothetical four-parameter system generated by two stochastic processes has shown that errors of interpretation are likely to result when the relative importance of an underlying generating process is inferred from the analysis of an emergent pattern of a natural system. This paper presents an approach which substantially reduces that error for the hypothetical system, taken as an analog for a natural system. This approach is based on recognition of the organizational levels composing the system and utilizes observations on structure at a lower organizational level to resolve the properties of the generating processes at the lower level. The resulting knowledge of those underlying structures and the processes which created them are then used to determine the relative importance of those processes in affecting the emergent pattern of the system at a higher organizational level. It is concluded that in order to understand the role of a process in a natural system, measurements of system structure must be performed at a frequency which isolates the process from the other processes in the system.