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Hierarchy

A hierarchy (from Greek: ἱεραρχία, hierarkhia, 'rule of a high priest', from hierarkhes, 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important concept in a wide variety of fields, such as architecture, philosophy, design, mathematics, computer science, organizational theory, systems theory, systematic biology, and the social sciences (especially political science).

For other uses, see Hierarchy (disambiguation).

A hierarchy can link entities either directly or indirectly, and either vertically or diagonally. The only direct links in a hierarchy, insofar as they are hierarchical, are to one's immediate superior or to one of one's subordinates, although a system that is largely hierarchical can also incorporate alternative hierarchies. Hierarchical links can extend "vertically" upwards or downwards via multiple links in the same direction, following a path. All parts of the hierarchy that are not linked vertically to one another nevertheless can be "horizontally" linked through a path by traveling up the hierarchy to find a common direct or indirect superior, and then down again. This is akin to two co-workers or colleagues; each reports to a common superior, but they have the same relative amount of authority. Organizational forms exist that are both alternative and complementary to hierarchy. Heterarchy is one such form.

: one entity (e.g., a person, department or concept or element of arrangement or member of a set)

Object

: the entire set of objects that are being arranged hierarchically (e.g., an administration)

System

: another word for "system" from on-line analytical processing (e.g. cubes)

Dimension

: an (element or object) at any (level or rank) in a (class-system, taxonomy or dimension)

Member

Terms about Positioning

Rank

Terms about Placement

Hierarch

Terms about Nature

Attribute

Etymology[edit]

Possibly the first use of the English word hierarchy cited by the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1881, when it was used in reference to the three orders of three angels as depicted by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (5th–6th centuries). Pseudo-Dionysius used the related Greek word (ἱεραρχία, hierarchia) both in reference to the celestial hierarchy and the ecclesiastical hierarchy.[3] The Greek term hierarchia means 'rule of a high priest',[4] from hierarches (ἱεράρχης, 'president of sacred rites, high-priest')[5] and that from hiereus (ἱερεύς, 'priest')[6] and arche (ἀρχή, 'first place or power, rule').[7] Dionysius is credited with first use of it as an abstract noun.


Since hierarchical churches, such as the Roman Catholic (see Catholic Church hierarchy) and Eastern Orthodox churches, had tables of organization that were "hierarchical" in the modern sense of the word (traditionally with God as the pinnacle or head of the hierarchy), the term came to refer to similar organizational methods in secular settings.

Visual hierarchy[edit]

In the design field, mainly graphic design, successful layouts and formatting of the content on documents are heavily dependent on the rules of visual hierarchy. Visual hierarchy is also important for proper organization of files on computers.


An example of visually representing hierarchy is through nested clusters. Nested clusters represent hierarchical relationships using layers of information. The child element is within the parent element, such as in a Venn diagram. This structure is most effective in representing simple hierarchical relationships. For example, when directing someone to open a file on a computer desktop, one may first direct them towards the main folder, then the subfolders within the main folder. They will keep opening files within the folders until the designated file is located.


For more complicated hierarchies, the stair structure represents hierarchical relationships through the use of visual stacking. Visually imagine the top of a downward staircase beginning at the left and descending on the right. Child elements are towards the bottom of the stairs and parent elements are at the top. This structure represents hierarchical relationships through the use of visual stacking.

Chakras

Theravada Buddhism

Astrology

Degrees of communion between various Christian churches

UFO religions

Command hierarchy of the Ashtar Galactic Command flying saucer fleet

Japanese Buddhism

Christianity

Devils

Hells

Catholicism (Nine Levels of Hell)

Religions in society

(organizational hierarchies are listed under "")

Power- or authority-based

Is-a

Hypernymy

Has-a

Holonymy

Ahl, Valerie; (1996). Hierarchy Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-08481-1.

Allen, Timothy F. H.

; Taylor, Peter D. (1983). Cryptographic solution to a multilevel security problem (PDF). Advances in Cryptology – Proceedings of CRYPTO '82. New York: Plenum Publishing Corporation. pp. 237–249. ISBN 0-306-41366-3. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2002-12-29.

Akl, Selim G.

Carbone, June; Cahn, Naomi (2013). . Nevada Law Journal. 13 (2). William S. Boyd School of Law: 6.

"Is marriage for rich men?"

Ckurshumova, Wenzislava (2007). (PhD thesis). University of Toronto. Section B. hdl:1807/118234. ISBN 978-0-494-27682-2.

Regulatory hierarchies in auxin signal transduction and vascular tissue development

Galindo, Cipriano; Fernández-Madrigal, Juan-Antonio (2007). Kacprzyk, Janusz (ed.). Multiple Abstraction Hierarchies for Mobile Robot Operation in Large Environments. Studies in Computational Intelligence. Berlin: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.  978-3-540-72688-3.

ISBN

(1992). "Gender, Metaphor and the Definition of Economics". Economics and Philosophy. 8 (1): 103–25. doi:10.1017/S026626710000050X. S2CID 146493891.

Nelson, Julie

Pumain, Denise (2006). Hierarchy in Natural and Social Sciences. New York, New York: . ISBN 978-1-4020-4126-6.

Springer-Verlag

(2000). Les représentations hiérarchiques en philosophie (in French). Paris: Desclee de Brouwer.

Rosenbaum, A.

Improving classification models when a class hierarchy is available

Media related to Hierarchy at Wikimedia Commons

(archived 7 February 2002)

Principles and annotated bibliography of hierarchy theory

— S.N. Salthe (archived 21 July 2006)

Summary of the Principles of Hierarchy Theory