The hierarchy of individual and accretive processes

Two processes

1. **Local** individual processes of design or construction
	* conceive, design, build single center from start to finish
	* locally complete, self-contained
	* controlled and continuous sequence
	* has completion date
2. **Accretive** process forming larger structure
	* add, modify, accumulate centers to make larger centers
		* gradually contribute to create a much larger whole
	* initiated independently by different people
	* spread out in time and place
	* no finite beginning or end
3. **Repair and maintenance** (example: forest)
	* creative-accretive process within a part of an existing organism
		* local version of the accretive process
		* happening internally within an individual organism

A hierarchy of both creation and accretion

Every process is * a process of creation at one level, and * part of a larger process of accretion at another level.

Every act of formation is * both local and global, * both creative/complete and accretive/incomplete.

-> The secret

Whether in a major metropolis, in a city, in a village, or in the countryside, generated living structures are made by the interaction of two kinds of process going on side by side:
(1) There are individual processes of design or construction, each one a locally complete, self-contained type of creative process in which a single center — one building, one shop, one room, one garden — of some scope is thought of, conceived, designed, and built, from start to finish. A local process of creation creates one complete center, large or small, from conception to completion. It is done in a controlled and continuous sequence, which happens in one (approximately) continuous time sequence. It does have a completion date.
(2) There is an accretive process which forms the larger structure, piece by piece. Centers — streets, buildings, shops, bridges, gardens — are added, or modified, and accumulated in such a way as to make larger centers — streets, neighborhoods, and so on. Accretive processes of creation are spread out in time and place, and are initiated independently by many different people. The acts of accretion gradually contribute to create a much larger whole, but this overall process generally has no finite beginning or end, and no completion date.

I can see these processes also in my note-taking and knowledge management framework: reading an article or book is more like the first kind of process, which is relatively linear and does come to an end. But building your knowledge base and digital garden over time is definitely more like the second kind.

In both the forest and the city, the process of accretion is made up of thousands of processes of local, individual growth, and in both cases it is capable of generating a successful, living result. Any definition of living process, must take both kinds of process into account.

It seems there is also a question of viewpoint — on which level of scale do I look at this? An individual tree in the forest can be seen as both being created from a process with beginning and end, but then — looking at that process in more detail — it is also more like an accretion made up of many more smaller processes within the cells of the tree…?

If one looks critically at the distinction between the two basic kinds of acts, accretive and local, one sees an unavoidable fuzziness. In a forest we can see, for example, that there is also a third kind of process in which a single organism, after its initial creation, is also itself continually being replenished and repaired. That repair and maintenance process is, once again, an accretive process in which certain new cells (or stems, or leaves, or roots, or twigs) are created within the larger existing whole in order to keep it alive. But this creative-accretive process is now happening within some part of an existing organism, not in the forest at large. It is a local version of the accretive process, happening internally within an individual organism.

Every biological event that occurs in the forest is both an individual process of creation (at one level) and also part of a globally accretive process (with respect to some larger growing whole).
[…] Every process is a process of creation at one level, and part of a larger process of accretion at another level. Something is built locally (room, building, doorway), and that something also helps to play a small part in the establishment and in the (much slower) creation and maintenance of a larger whole (neighborhood, garden, street).

This is the nature of all living process in the built environment. At every scale, every act of formation is both local and global, both creative/complete and accretive/incomplete.

In any living process at all, there is a hierarchy of these two kinds of processes going on. […]
This hierarchy of center-formation, in one form or another, creates everything in the world. The only important question we must ask, if we are focusing on living process and on the capacity of a process to generate living structure, is whether these processes add up, whether there arises some coherent living order? That depends, in large part, on the extent to which the smaller processes contribute well to the formation of the larger wholes, whether each individual center is conceived, shaped, and built well according to its contribution to the invention and creation of the larger wholes in which it plays a part.

#book/The Nature of Order/2 The process of creating life/7 The fundamental differentiating process#