Isn't it something of a yin and yang, where both egg/bottom up and chicken/top down, are both perspectives, that while they are two sides of the reality, cannot be defined in any singular sense, since the very process of definition/singularity, is top down.

Energy and information. Energy is centrifugal, while information is centripetal. Expanding out, as it is coalescing in.

Energy driving the wave, goes to the future, while the patterns generated, the fluctuations up and down, recede into the past.