Thanks for the link will take a look. Not familiar with the beating heart example but I do recall the example of the flock of birds. So will analyse that. If I

Thanks for the link will take a look. Not familiar with the beating heart example but I do recall the example of the flock of birds. So will analyse that. If I recall correctly the birds are a network, where each one would monitor the ones closest to them and react based on that? Which is monitoring and control. Just at a very micro level. Also note the more appropriate term used above was “recursive” rather than hierarchy. The behaviour of a flock of birds is referred to as a complex adaptive system, with emergent properties. It can be modelled quite accurately as a vsm. Put simply one needs control, monitoring, feedback and information flow to exist. This is needed at every level (hence recursive). Therefore rather than contradict my comment, your post is just a further expansion. A complex adaptive system, can itself be modelled as a vsm.