The Collaborative International Dictionary
Heterarchy \Het"er*arch`y\, n. [Hetero- + -archy.]
The government of an alien. [Obs.]
--Bp. Hall.
Wiktionary
n. 1 (context uncountable English) The rule#Verb of an alien; rule from without; government by an extraterritorial power. 2 (context countable English) An example of this government. 3 A system of organization where the elements of the organization are unranked (non-hierarchical) or where they possess the potential to be ranked a number of different ways.Crumley, Carole L. (January 1995). "Heterarchy and the Analysis of Complex Societies" (PDF). Archeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association 6 (1): 1–5. doi:10.1525/ap3a.1995.6.1.1. Retrieved 26 February 2014.
Wikipedia
A heterarchy is a system of organization where the elements of the organization are unranked (non-hierarchical) or where they possess the potential to be ranked a number of different ways. Definitions of the term vary among the disciplines: in social and information sciences, heterarchies are networks of elements in which each element shares the same "horizontal" position of power and authority, each playing a theoretically equal role. But in biological taxonomy, the requisite features of heterarchy involve, for example, a species sharing, with a species in a different family, a common ancestor which it does not share with members of its own family. This is theoretically possible under principles of " horizontal gene transfer."
A heterarchy may be parallel to a hierarchy, subsumed to a hierarchy, or it may contain hierarchies; the two kinds of structure are not mutually exclusive. In fact, each level in a hierarchical system is composed of a potentially heterarchical group which contains its constituent elements.
The concept of heterarchy was first employed in a modern context by Warren McCulloch in 1945. As Carole L. Crumley has summarised, "[h]e examined alternative cognitive structure(s), the collective organization of which he termed heterarchy. He demonstrated that the human brain, while reasonably orderly was not organized hierarchically. This understanding revolutionized the neural study of the brain and solved major problems in the fields of artificial intelligence and computer design."
Usage examples of "heterarchy".
There are aspects of evolution that are perfectly continuous, and aspects that are quantized or discontinuous, and emphasizing exclusively one or the other leads to pathological heterarchy and pathological hierarchy, respectively.
QUALITATIVE DISTINCTIONS The fact that actualization hierarchies involve a ranking of increasing holistic capacityor even a ranking of valueis deeply disturbing to believers in extreme heterarchy, who categorically reject any sort of actual ranking or judgments whatsoever.
With very good and often noble reasons (many of which I heartily support), they point out that value ranking is a hierarchical judgment that all too often translates into social oppression and inequality, and that in today's world the more compassionate and just response is a radically egalitarian or pluralistic systema heterarchy of equal values.