The concept of dynamical hierarchies presents a formal framework to define organizational principles at the level of structure and control in the design of complex, object - based systems.
In a general notion objects may be denoted as encapsulated data structures holding its own state, communicational I/O to other objects, and an update functional having the object state and the object - object communication data as arguments.
The systems time evolution within the object state space may now guide towards novel organizational elements (collections of objects) which exhibit observables (emergent properties) not definable at the level of the individual objects.
This process of 'generating' higher order structures with novel properties ultimately leads to a structure where all hierarchy levels are dynamically interconnected by both, up- and down ward causalities, forming a unique organizational element, a dynamical hierarchy.
Three major issues favor the concept of dynamical hierarchies in a system
design process:
This framework of dynamical hierarchies in structure and control can
be used to characterize and design molecular self - assembly processes
towards novel applications in Molecular Materials Design.