The Metaphysics of Development and Evolution: From Thing Ontology To Process Ontology

Article
Human
Development Received: May 23, 2023
Human Development 2023;67:233–256
Accepted: September 26, 2023
DOI: 10.1159/000534421 Published online: November 7, 2023
The Metaphysics of Development and

Evolution: From Thing Ontology to
Process Ontology
Downloaded from http://karger.com/hde/article-pdf/67/5-6/233/4171153/000534421.pdf by guest on 21 February 2024

Anne Sophie Meincke
Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Keywords A scientist’s metaphysical beliefs are not mere epiphenomena, but

Change · Development · Evolution · Process ontology · Process have a definite and ascertainable influence on the work he produces
Conrad Hal Waddington, 2017, p. 72
philosophy of biology
Abstract Introduction
This article discusses the metaphysics of development
and evolution. Which most fundamental assumptions The idea that metaphysics could assist rather than hinder
about the structure of reality underlie our thinking about the scientific study of life has only recently become re-
development and evolution? Against the backdrop of spectable again. After the ground-breaking advances of
major lines of thought in the history of western meta- molecular biology and genetics during the second half of the
physics, I argue that the characteristic disregard of de- 20th century led biologists and philosophers of biology alike
velopment in neo-Darwinist evolutionary theory is due to to dismiss traditional metaphysical investigations into the
an underlying view of reality in terms of things (thing
nature of life as unscientific and, hence, obsolete, there is
ontology) and that putting development back into evo-
lution, as intended by the Extended Evolutionary Syn-
now a growing realisation that metaphysics might do
thesis, requires understanding reality in terms of pro- something good for biology and, perhaps, science in general.
cesses (process ontology). I show how a metaphysical The spectrum of views ranges from somewhat reserved
paradigm shift from thing ontology to process ontology, rapprochements that confine metaphysics’ raison d’être to
and a philosophy of biology informed accordingly by its use as a conceptual toolbox for philosophy of science
process ontology (process biology), can advance our (French, 2018) to euphoric calls for adoption of particular
understanding of development and evolution. metaphysical ideas to foster scientific progress. All agree,
© 2023 The Author(s). however, that a constructive dialogue would be of mutual
Published by S. Karger AG, Basel
benefit for the disciplines involved (Meincke, 2020a;
Meincke & Dupré, 2021).
karger@karger.com © 2023 The Author(s). Correspondence to:

www.karger.com/hde Published by S. Karger AG, Basel Anne Sophie Meincke, anne.sophie.meincke @ univie.ac.at
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-

NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC) (http://www.
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commercial purposes requires written permission.
Kuhn (1970) has famously argued that scientists and the new paradigm talk past each other: “Though each
predictably turn towards philosophy in times of crisis. may hope to convert the other to his way of seeing science
Anomalous results of scientific investigation demand and its problems, neither may hope to prove his case. The
reflection on – and possibly revision of – the underlying competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle
paradigm. This paradigm comprises, besides an agree- that can be resolved by proofs” (Kuhn, 1970, p. 148). In
ment on values and methods, basic metaphysical as- such a situation, it may be wise to enter into a philo-
sumptions about reality. This is to say that metaphysics is at sophical reflection on the very foundations on which the
work in science also when it is not attended to explicitly. It respective paradigms rest, i.e., on the metaphysics
shapes the basic way a scientific enterprise proceeds: the involved.
questions formulated, the perspective from which these Very briefly put, this is what I will be doing in this paper.
questions are pursued, the methods applied. Obviously, I want to uncover the metaphysical paradigm shift at stake
different sets of metaphysical assumptions shape science in in the competition between the Modern Synthesis and the
different, possibly even incommensurable ways, as Kuhn Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. As I shall show, the
suggested. Yet, he insisted that science does make progress, former relies on what I call thing ontology: the idea that the
implying that some paradigms are better than others. We world, most fundamentally, is populated by things, i.e., by

may conclude from this that the same, then, is true also of entities for the identity of which change is not essential. The
metaphysics: some metaphysical assumptions are better latter, on the other hand, makes best sense within a process
than others. ontological framework, which gives the ontological priority
It is fair to say that evolutionary biology finds itself in a to processes, i.e., to entities for the identity of which change
state of crisis. Received views of evolution have come under is essential (with the term “entity” in both cases serving as a
attack for their one-sided focus on genes as evolutionary placeholder for whatever it is that satisfies the definition).
agents. According to these views, commonly subsumed Explicitly adopting process ontology, I will argue, would
under the heading “Modern (Evolutionary) Synthesis,” strengthen the case for the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis
evolutionary change amounts to heritable change in gene and, more generally, improve our understanding of de-
frequencies in populations, which is thought to be produced velopment and evolution.
primarily by natural selection acting upon random genetic As it happens, there is a new movement in the phi-
mutations (with genetic drift and cumulative effects of losophy of biology that takes itself to be inspired by
[nearly] neutral genetic mutations being further relevant process ontology: so-called process philosophy of biology
factors). However, in the light of new data in particular from or, short, process biology (Dupré, 2012, 2020, 2021;
developmental biology, evolutionary change no longer al- Meincke, 2018c, 2019a, 2019c, 2021, 2022a, 2022b, 2022c,
ways seems best explained by random genetic mutations, if 2023c; Nicholson & Dupré, 2018). The key claim of
at all. At the very least, there seem to be more causes, most process biology is that organisms are processes rather
importantly, the individual development of organisms and than things or substances; and this claim is motivated by
its interactions with the environment. Of course, conceiving the intention to capture the all-pervasive dynamicity of
of development as a major driver of evolutionary change biological reality: “[A] scientific metaphysics of biology
only makes sense if development is more than the automatic ought to do justice to the all-pervasive dynamicity of
unwinding of a predetermined, fixed genetic “programme.” biological reality. [. . .] Life [. . .] is a process and so are
Proponents of what has become known as the “Extended living beings: processes rather than things or substances”
Evolutionary Synthesis” accordingly stress the genuinely (Meincke, 2022a, p. 432). Or as Dupré & Nicholson
creative nature of development (Laland et al., 2014), echoing (2018, p. 3) put it: “[T]he world – at least insofar as
parallel claims made by evolutionary developmental biol- living beings are concerned – is made up not of sub-
ogists (Gilbert, 2006, 2019; Moczek, 2023). stantial particles or things, but of processes. It is dynamic
There is currently no agreement on whether the Ex- through and through.” The process view is beginning to
tended Evolutionary Synthesis, as its name suggests, is gain traction also among biologists (Gilbert & Epel, 2009,
indeed a mere extension of the original Synthesis (Richards pp. 403–420, 2017; Jaeger & Monk, 2015). Furthermore,
& Pigliucci, 2020), or whether it rather presents a “dis- developmental science has recently seen a similar push
tinctively different framework for understanding evolu- towards what is called relationalism as a new scientific
tion” (Laland et al., 2015, p. 3). The latter would explain the paradigm or metatheory that “includes process, activity,
occasional communicative breakdown between the two dialectic change, emergence, and necessary organization
parties. It is characteristic of historical situations of par- as fundamental defining categories” (Overton, 2013,
adigm shifts, Kuhn observed, that the advocates of the old p. 98; see also Lerner, 2011; Lerner & Overton, 2017).
234 Human Development 2023;67:233–256 Meincke

DOI: 10.1159/000534421
Relationalism and kindred metatheories in develop- fundamentally, matter is engaged in continuous sub-
mental science, such as interactivism (Bickhard, 2009), stantial transformation by way of the four elements – fire,
explicitly draw on process ontology. water, earth, and air – continuously changing into one
Here, I will focus on the philosophy of biology and ask another. Each such change amounts to the “death” of the
how process ontology can constructively inform respective one and the “birth” of the other element, i.e., to a radical
debates on development and evolution. This will require kind of change involving the instantiation of contraries.
clarifying the notion of process ontology. Historically, Passages from Heraclitus’s writings that appear to grant
process ontology has always been overshadowed, if not ontological priority to fire over the other elements are best
marginalised, by its adversary, thing ontology. Systemati- understood not as expressions of material monism but as
cally, both are interrelated in that they devise opposing invoking fire as a symbol of change to emphasise that “the
strategies to conceptualize change and its relation to process of change is more real than the material sub-
identity. The notion of process ontology can therefore be stances that undergo change” (Graham, 2021, ch. 3). The
elucidated only in conjunction with that of thing ontology, same features – radical change and the “war” of
and I will do so by tracing the broad developments of both opposites – apply to higher levels of reality, as shown by
through the history of western metaphysics. Heraclitus’s probably most famous (putative) statement

Understanding the history of the antagonism between that one cannot step into the same river twice (we will
process and thing ontology will help us identify their come back to this). For Heraclitus, “everything flows”
respective metamorphoses in contemporary philosophy (“πάντα ῥεῖ”). The cosmos is in motion and becoming
of biology, something that indeed turns out to be critical from tip to toe.
when it comes to applying process ontology to biology in However, Heraclitus had a rather powerful adversary:
general and to development and evolution in particular. Parmenides of Elea (first half of the 5th century BC).
Applying process ontology to biology is the programme Parmenides argued for exactly the opposite of Her-
of process biology, and – in the light of history – we will aclitus’s view: for the thesis that nothing moves or
find that not every self-proclaimed version of process changes. There is no motion, no becoming; instead, ev-
biology actually can count as such, just as much as not erything is stationary and unchanging being. For Parme-
every processual sounding claim about development and nides, there cannot be any becoming or change because
evolution in fact invokes process ontology, properly (I becoming or change involves nonbeing – something comes
contend) understood as an ontology that takes processes into being from nonbeing – and nonbeing, according to
to be ontologically fundamental. Parmenides, does not exist: Being is; nonbeing is not (ἔστι
It is against this backdrop of disguised thing onto- γὰρ εἶναι, μηδεν δ′oὐκ ἔστιν [Parmenides, 2009, Poem,
logical patterns of thought still permeating both devel- fragment 6]). Thus, the very concept of change, Parmenides
opmental and evolutionary theory that we can start thinks, is incoherent and, hence, the appearance of change is
working towards a concrete alternative processual ap- illusory. Those who, trusting sensory experience, choose the
proach. However, while I will give some hints as to what “way of opinion” fall prey to it and mistake illusion for
this could look like, the aim of this paper is not to deliver a reality. In contrast, those who follow the “way of conviction”
fully developed process theory of development and as devised by pure reason understand that nonbeing cannot
evolution, but only to lay the foundations for such a be known because being and knowing are the same. They
theory by advancing the necessary conceptual framework. will therefore recognise being as one unchanging, non-
Given the metaphysical paradigm shift involved – from generated, indestructible, coherent, and unified whole – a
thing ontology to process ontology – this objective may sphere.
seem ambitious enough. The fight between the pro change and contra change
stances has been going on in western metaphysics ever
since up until today, with the contra change party (“the
Process Ontology versus Thing Ontology: A Refresher no-changers”) having the upper hand (over the
in History “changers”). Parmenides’s students, the so-called Eleatics,
launched a concerted campaign against the supposed
The Origins of the Antagonism: Heraclitus and illusion of change. The most prominent among them is
Parmenides Zeno of Elea. By means of a series of paradoxes, he
The first process philosopher on record in the western purports to show that the assumption of motion and
sphere was Heraclitus from Ephesos (5th century BC). change leads to contradictions, from which he then infers
According to him, reality is dynamic at all levels. Most that motion and change cannot be real. Well known is the
Metaphysics of Development and Evolution Human Development 2023;67:233–256 235

DOI: 10.1159/000534421
paradox of Achilles who allegedly is unable to overtake a lump of bronze’s potential to be moulded into a
the tortoise that started ahead of him on account of the statue, or a body’s potential to be alive). It defines what
infinite number of points in space separating him from kind of thing a given substance is.
the tortoise. This entails that, thanks to its form, every substance
possesses a set of immutable properties: essential prop-
Compromises: Atomism and Aristotle’s Substance erties it cannot lose without ceasing to exist. Only so-
Ontology called accidental properties it can change, i.e., gain or lose,
An attempt to find a compromise between Heraclitus’ while retaining its identity. Thus, if Socrates were to see
and Parmenides’ stances on change was atomism. Re- the hairdresser to have his hair dyed, he would still exist
nowned proponents were Leukippos and Democritus afterwards – he would just look different. But if Socrates
(both 5th century BC). Based on the materialist pre- suddenly started barking and walking on four legs, this
sumption that everything results from natural laws, the would mean, Aristotle thinks, that it is actually not
atomists held that all that exists are tiny indivisible Socrates but a numerically distinct entity – a dog – doing
particles, so-called atoms. Bodies are aggregates of atoms these things. Socrates would have ceased to exist because
and change consists in the differences between ar- his essence – that he is a bipedal rational animal – would

rangements of atoms. For atoms actually move – which is have been destroyed.
the Heraclitean element in the theory – while, however, Unlike Parmenides and the atomists, Aristotle be-
not changing themselves – this is the Parmenidean part: lieves becoming and going out of existence are real. The
atoms are Parmenidean objects. Thus, atomism seems to house in which Socrates lives did not exist before it was
explain change without invoking the supposedly unin- built; and Socrates himself did not exist before he was
telligible notion of nonbeing. Atoms neither come to be conceived and born. Yet, Aristotle concedes to Par-
nor do they go out of existence. Our senses are right about menides and the atomists that whatever comes into
the existence of motion and change; but they are wrong existence does so not from nothing. Substantial change
insofar as they suggest the existence of becoming and does not involve being emerging from nonbeing. In-
destruction. stead, just as in accidental change the substance – for
Atomism leaves open the question of how atoms bond instance, Socrates – persists through the change, so
together to form objects. In fact, one might wonder if, in does in substantial change matter persist through the
the atomist picture of reality, there are any objects at all change: the matter the substance is made of and which
other than the atoms themselves. Objects, we tend to itself is hylomorphically constituted, such as the bricks
think, are not mere aggregates of things; they possess used to build Socrates’s house. This is true even for
coherence and unity. Atomism fails to tell us how such living substances, whose bodies neither predate nor
coherence and unity could come about. outlive them. Here, some less structured, lower level
Aristotle provided an answer to this question that matter underlies the change: the matter that is trans-
effectively refuted atomism, thereby offering an alter- formed into Socrates’s body through the living form,
native middle ground between Heraclitus and Par- i.e., through Socrates’s soul.
menides. According to Aristotle, the world is populated For Aristotle, everything is ultimately made up of
by so-called substances. A substance (oὐσία) is a different proportions of the four elements, where
concrete particular that is neatly bounded and onto- changes of these proportions are themselves supported
logically independent of anything else. Examples are a by an even more fundamental material substrate: so-
house, a rock, a bronze statue, Socrates and Socrates’s called prime matter (Aristotle, 2004, Metaphysics, VII.3
dog. More specifically, Aristotle defends what is known 1029a20-26). Qua pure potentiality, prime matter lacks
as hylomorphism, i.e., the idea that a substance is a any essential properties; it is completely indeterminate,
composite of matter and form (see especially Aristotle, thus being capable of assuming any form. Importantly,
2018, Physics, Book I, and 2004, Metaphysics, Book prime matter is also eternal. It must be; otherwise the
VII). A substance is not a mere aggregate of things, question would arise what underlies its coming- or
let alone atomic things. It is rather unified by its form, ceasing-to-be, and so on ad infinitum. Thus, Aristotle’s
be it the shape given by an artist to a lump of bronze or hierarchical vision of reality, although more welcoming
be it the soul as the organising principle in the case of towards change than the atomists’ and even more so
Socrates, Socrates’s dog and other living substances. Parmenides’ vision, still rests upon a changeless
The form imposes structure on matter, thereby actu- foundation. For there cannot be any change without an
alising certain potentialities inherent in matter (such as unchanging substratum.

DOI: 10.1159/000534421
Contemporary Versions of Thing Ontology: that there is some kind of continuity relation (“unity
Substratum Theory, Bundle Theory, and relation”) that links the different spatiotemporal parts.
Four-Dimensionalism Quine (1960, 1986) and Lewis (1986) have offered ac-
Aristotle’s theory of substance lives on in contempo- counts in this spirit – also known as four-dimensionalism
rary substratum theories of objecthood. According to (see also Sider, 2001). Lewis in particular has argued that
these, an object (or concrete particular) is made up of its only this so-called perdurance account of persistence
properties and an underlying substratum, comparable to allows to evade the looming contradiction inherent in
a bundle of balloons tied to a rug. This corresponds with change, namely that one and the same entity has different
the way we speak: we attribute properties to a thing that intrinsic properties (so-called problem of temporary
bears them (e.g., “The rug is green, soft and rectangular.”). intrinsics). Change appears to be incompatible with
So, the properties and the thing that bears them are numerical identity, which, according to Leibniz’s Law,
distinct, which implies that we can apprehend the bearer requires identity of intrinsic properties.
independently of its attributes. The substratum’s identity Four-dimensionalism has continued to fascinate an-
is independent of the properties attributed to it, which is alytic metaphysicians ever since – despite its serious
why it is often called a “bare particular” (Benovsky, 2008; problems. Thus, we must accept that change is in prin-

Sider, 2006). We can then conceptualise change as a ciple no different from spatial variation. Being sad today
change of the composition of the bundle of properties, the and happy tomorrow, according to four-dimensionalism,
balloons, while holding fixed our rug, the bare particular. means having a sad temporal part and a happy temporal
Unfortunately, the concept of a bare particular is in- part, which just is like having a nose-shaped spatial part
coherent: it is something that has no properties while and a leg-shaped spatial part. But, more serious even, it is
bearing properties; and likewise: it is something that does not clear of whose variation we are speaking. The binding
not change while bearing change (Geach, 1979, p. 46f.). relations are notoriously weak and fail to turn the four-
We could try to avoid this problem by switching to dimensional entity into anything more than a mereo-
another type of theory of objecthood discussed in con- logical sum. But then, if all we have is different things with
temporary analytic metaphysics: the bundle theory. This different properties (Lewis, 1986, p. 204), what does
theory claims that objects are constituted exclusively by actually change? Recall our bundle of balloons. A jux-
the properties attributed to them; there is no underlying taposition of a red, a blue, a green, and a yellow balloon
substratum. We keep the balloons but get rid of the rug. does not make up an object, and so there simply is
Objects are bundles of properties – an idea that can be nothing of which we could say that “it” changes from red
traced back to David Hume. However, we run again into to blue, from blue to green, and from green to yellow. It is
problems here: Bundles are subject to so-called mereo- not clear how putting a time-index on each balloon is
logical essentialism: their identity is defined by their el- supposed to solve this problem. In fact, just as little as
ements. Take one of these balloons away and you have a anything changes does anything persist through
different bundle. In other words, whereas the substratum time – this running counter perdurantism’s claim to be a
theory gives us a self-contradictory, incoherent account of theory of persistence (Meincke, 2019b).
change, the bundle theory eliminates the possibility of
change altogether. On top of this, the problem already General Features of Thing Ontology and the True
faced by atomism returns: how do the properties bond Heraclitus
together? Is there a single object at all? Whoever has tried Our brief walk through the history of counter-
to handle a bundle of balloons knows how little it behaves reactions to Heraclitus reveals a shared pattern: appeal
like an object. to things as the ontologically primary building blocks of
Now, we could attempt to address these issues by reality. A thing in the technical sense that I deploy here is
imagining our bundle of properties to be stretched out not an entity for whose identity change is not essential – a
only in space but also in time, with time being strictly thing need not change in order to exist. Setting aside
analogous to space. The bundle is thus conceived of as a Parmenides’s special notion of being as one undivided
four-dimensional object extended across a particular whole, we have found that two kinds of things are typ-
region of spacetime. Then we chop it up into different ically invoked: (i) complex things (“substances”) or (ii)
spacetime chunks or slices each of which is a different elementary things (atoms, properties, events, matters of
bundle of properties, and we claim that the object fact). These two kinds of thing correspond with two
“changes” in the sense of having different spatiotemporal versions of thing ontology: (i) substance ontology and (ii)
parts with different properties. Furthermore, we postulate atomism/(neo-)Humean ontologies (Meincke, 2018c,

DOI: 10.1159/000534421
2019b, 2019c, 2020b, 2021, 2022a). Both versions con- ultimately for all change, including so-called substantial
sider change and process as parasitic on the identity of change (which, in his analysis, turns out to be the al-
things: either it is assumed that change is borne by an teration of [prime] matter). To speak in Aristotle’s terms,
unchanging bearer (a substance or substratum, possibly for Bergson, in contrast, all change is substantial change.
also prime matter) or change is reconceptualised as This, however, does not mean that there is no identity. On
variation between different things (atoms or different the contrary, change, according to Bergson, “is the most
temporal parts of a four-dimensional object). In each substantial and durable thing possible” (Bergson, 1946,
case, it is change that presumably requires explanation, p. 177). And it is exactly because of the “substantiality of
whereas the identity of the thing is taken for granted. This change” (Bergson, 1946, p. 175) that change does not
reflects the underlying conviction that change and need a substratum.
identity are incompatible. Therefore, change is down- How is it that we usually overlook both the ontological
graded or in effect eliminated altogether (Meincke, priority and the ontological robustness of change?
2019b). Bergson gives an interesting and rather compelling ex-
Thing ontology is driven by a deeply entrenched fear of planation. He thinks the reason lies in our tendency to
change. Thing ontologists suspect that if one does away spatialise time. Instead of realising that time is duration

with things, as process ontologists propose, the world (durée), i.e., an indivisible continuation of change and
turns into a chaotic place without structure. However, movement, we treat time like space, i.e., as infinitely
this assumption is the result of misrepresentation, or even divisible.
deliberate slander. Here is how Plato paraphrases Her- The contemporary metaphysical doctrine of four-
aclitus’s doctrine: Heraclitus taught “that all things pass dimensionalism is a striking manifestation of this ten-
and nothing stays, and comparing existing things to the dency: it programmatically treats time like space. Four-
flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the dimensional spacetime does not move and lends itself to
same river” (Plato, 1997, Cratylus 402a). But what being cut up into an infinite number of immobile slices or
Heraclitus actually said was: “On those stepping into portions. However, as Zeno’s paradoxes show, it is im-
rivers staying the same other and other waters flow” possible to reconstruct change and movement from a
(Graham, 2021, ch. 3.1). Processes change and, through series of unchanging things: if time were to coincide with
changing, remain the same over time. Change is a con- the infinitely divisible space lying between Achilles and
stituent of the identity of processes – which would the tortoise, Achilles could not even dream of overtaking
thereby possibly qualify as what metaphysicians call the tortoise. “If movement is not everything, it is nothing;
“continuants”: entities that continue to exist through time and if to begin with we have supposed that immobility
while changing (Meincke, 2022a, forthcoming a). There is can be a reality, movement will slip through our fingers
thus certainly identity in the Heraclitean universe; when we think we have it” (Bergson, 1946, p. 171f.).
however, not as something pre-given and primitive, but According to Bergson, the attempt to reconstruct the
as the result of continuous interaction of processes. dynamic continuity between these hypothetical immo-
Accordingly, identity is never static but rather inherently bilities by basing them on an unchanging substratum is
dynamic. no less bound to fail: “this immobile substratum of im-
mobility, being incapable of possessing any of the attri-
Modern Versions of Process Ontology: Bergson and butes we know – since all are changes – recedes as we try
Whitehead to approach it: it is as elusive as the phantom of change it
A modern version of process ontology that shares was called upon to fix” (Bergson, 1946, p. 184). Bergson
many features with Heraclitus’s original vision was de- concludes that it is in fact immobility that is not real.
veloped by Bergson (1946, 1998, 2004). Bergson insists What appears to be immobile amounts actually to a
that change – contrary to what language and perception relative stability of movements, comparable to two trains
seem to suggest – does not require an unchanging sub- travelling on parallel tracks in the same direction at the
stratum: “There are changes, but there are underneath the same speed (Bergson, 1946, p. 169). Time is movement,
change no things which change: change has no need of and “movement is reality itself” (1946, p. 169; see
support. There are movements, but there is no inert or Meincke, 2022b).
invariable object which moves: movement does not imply The name most commonly associated with process
a mobile” (Bergson, 1946, p. 173). Change is never mere philosophy is of course Alfred North Whitehead thanks
alteration, i.e., the superficial “accidental” qualitative to his book Process and Reality (1978). There he claims:
change of an unchangeable core, as Aristotle tried to show “[T]he actual world is a process, and [. . .] the process is

DOI: 10.1159/000534421
the becoming of actual entities” (Whitehead, 1978, p. 22) As indicated by my definition of process, for the
What Whitehead calls “actual entities” (or also “actual process ontologist, change is not only compatible with,
occasions”) are completed processes and, that is, events, but in fact constitutive of identity. Identity, accordingly, is
which implies that their being cannot be understood to be understood not as a given but as a product: a
without taking into account how they became what they product of processes and their interactions. It is itself
are. Being is to be explained in terms of becoming. More genuinely processual and never static. This is not to say
specifically, Whitehead distinguishes two kinds of be- that processes cannot be stable over time – indeed, their
coming or “fluency.” On the one hand, there is the mi- stability is what facilitates tracking them, as self-identical
croscopic process of a “concrescence” of feelings into a entities, through time and space. We must not confuse
unified experience, which is the actual entity (Whitehead stability and stasis, the latter being an (alleged) absence of
endorsed panexperientialism: whatever exists is at least movement and change, the former being a dynamic
minimally experiential). On the other hand, there is the equilibrium of movements and changes. Process identity
macroscopic process of “transition” in which an actual is stability over certain periods of time and relative to
occasion, as a fully determinate existent, becomes a da- certain time scales. In each case, it is stability, not change,
tum or element for the becoming of another actual oc- what requires explanation.

casion (Whitehead, 1978, p. 210). We thus end up with a A process ontology need not deny the existence of
dynamic universe of interdependent experiential events. things, understood in some weaker sense. One could, for
Whitehead accordingly called his process philosophy also instance, decide to call “things” those processes that are
a “philosophy of organism.” particularly stable at a time scale relevant in a particular
context and/or particularly stable in particular relevant
General Features of Process Ontology respects. Perhaps one could also imagine that processes
Drawing on the historical models provided by Her- produce things, that things supervene upon processes or
aclitus, Bergson, and Whitehead, we can characterise that things are the precipitates of processes [the latter
process ontology as an ontology that takes processes to be view has been proposed by Simons (2018)]. However, in
ontologically fundamental (see also Rescher, 1996). A any case, i.e., even if things are assumed as entities on-
process, as I technically define it, is an entity for whose tologically distinct from processes, processes – being
identity change is essential (“entity” here to be under- what, in some sense or another, brings things
stood in the most neutral way as a placeholder for about – remain ontologically primary. Reality, for the
whatever satisfies the definition): a process must process ontologist, is fundamentally processual.
change – and move – in order to exist, as opposed to a
thing (in the technical sense defined earlier), which may
but need not change, or which, actually (as we have found Process Ontology Applied to Biology: Process
in our discussion of both historical and contemporary Philosophy of Biology
versions of thing ontology), must not change (at least not
in certain ways) if it is to continue existing. Being qua We are now ready to turn to process biology. What
becoming, as understood by Whitehead, is a process, and exactly is it? Very briefly put, process philosophy of bi-
so is time qua duration, as understood by Bergson. ology is process ontology applied to the biological do-
Besides such, as it were, primordial, metaphysical main, i.e., to life and the living. While this sounds
processes like being and time, there are arguably more straightforward, there is more to the story. Just as there
mundane processes, those that populate our everyday are different versions of process ontology – I highlighted
lifeworld, those that constitute nature, and so on. Her- here only three, those of Heraclitus, Bergson, and
aclitus’s river is an example, the Alpes’ deglaciation and Whitehead – so are there different versions of process
Peter’s riding a bike to his grandmother’s home might be philosophy of biology. Thus, it is worth mentioning that
others, not to forget Peter and his grandmother them- while some authors take a Whiteheadian stance on bi-
selves. Processes may come in all shapes and sizes – they ology (Koutroufinis, 2014; Koutroufinis & Araujo, 2023),
may be material, immaterial, simple, complex, dependent, most contributions to what is known as process biology
independent, etc. The generic definition of a process do explicitly not draw on Whitehead (see, e.g., Dupré &
provided above, that is, may be satisfied by different Nicholson, 2018, p. 7; Meincke, 2018c, p. 373). Process
categories of entity, which then would constitute different biology is far from homogenous. This is often overlooked,
kinds of process, distinguished by ontological features especially by critics. To be clear: to say that there are
which a given process ontology may describe further. different versions of process biology is not to say that any

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theory that somehow incorporates processes in the ex- The parts of mechanisms must have a kind of robustness and
planation of biological phenomena is therefore to be reality apart from their place within that mechanism. It should in
principle be possible to take the part out of the mechanism and
regarded a process philosophy of biology. In fact, some of consider its properties in another context (Glennan, 1996, p. 53).
what is currently advertised as process biology is actually
no process biology. Against the historical background just But there’s a problem: what works for machines might
presented, it is easy to see why. not work for organisms. Where are the robust parts
whose identity is context-independent in, say, meta-
New Mechanism bolism? Metabolism appears to qualify as “mechanism” in
Let’s have a look, for example, at so-called New the MDC-sense: “Mechanisms are entities and activities
Mechanism, a movement in the philosophy of biology organized such that they are productive of regular
popular since the turn of the 21st century. The New changes from start or set-up to finish or termination
Mechanists’ agenda is to understand the complexity of conditions.” Intuitively, one would identify the cell’s
living systems by identifying mechanisms. What are membrane boundaries as “entities” as opposed to the
mechanisms? As Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden and “activities” of exchange of matter and energy they engage
Carl Craver (commonly abbreviated as “MDC”) in their in. However, this is much less straightforward if one

landmark 2000 paper put it: “Mechanisms are entities considers properly what metabolism is. To wit, a cell’s
and activities organized such that they are productive of membrane boundaries through which an exchange of
regular changes from start or set-up to finish or ter- matter and energy with the environment takes place
mination conditions” (Machamer et al., 2000, p. 3). facilitate the bounded dynamics of a metabolic network
Other New Mechanists speak of “parts” and their which then produces the metabolites that constitute the
“interactions” (Glennan, 2002) or of “component membrane boundaries. Thus, while the membrane
parts” and “component operations” (Bechtel & boundaries prima facie may appear robust, they are in fact
Abrahamsen, 2005). All emphasise the need to as- totally dependent on the context: they both contribute to
sume activities/interactions/operations as a distinct and result from the process of metabolism. The metab-
ontological constituent of mechanisms, on a par with olites do not even exist long enough to be called robust,
entities/parts/component parts. This is motivated by let alone can one have any without metabolism. The only
the conviction that mechanisms are genuinely active: thing that could be called robust is the dynamic and self-
“Mechanisms do things. They are active and so ought to recursive organisation of metabolism itself (see also Jonas,
be described in terms of the activities of their entities, 2001, esp. chapter 5).
not merely in terms of changes in their properties”
(Machamer et al., 2000, p. 5). Activities/interactions/ Autopoiesis and Biological Autonomy
operations are therefore sometimes identified with Maturana & Varela (1980) have described this kind of
“processes” as assumed by declared process biologists interdependent processual organisation under the title
(Illari & Williamson, 2013), suggesting that New “autopoiesis” which translates to “self-production” or
Mechanism was compatible with process biology – or “self-constitution” (Meincke, 2019a). According to Ma-
perhaps even identical. Is this true? turana & Varela, any system exhibiting autopoietic or-
Mechanistic explanation, as Bill Bechtel and Robert ganisation counts as a living system – no matter what its
Richardson first pointed out in their 1993-book Dis- matter is. An autopoietic system
covering Complexity (2nd ed. 2010), works by de-
is organized (defined as unity) as a network of processes of
composition and localisation: a living system is de- production of components such that these components:
composed into its structural parts, and the sub-tasks (i) continuously regenerate and realize the network that pro-
performed by the parts are located; the guiding as- duces them, and
sumption being that by putting it all back together, one (ii) constitute the system as a distinguishable unity in the domain
gets an explanation of the overall phenomenon just as in which they exist (Varela, 1997, p. 75; see also Maturana &
Varela, 1980, p. 78f.).
with a machine: “the behavior of the machine is a
consequence of the parts and their organization” There are material components only as part of the
(Bechtel & Richardson, 2010, p. 17). This implies that network of processes of production of components;
the parts of a mechanism are identifiable independently hence, one can never isolate them as thing-like “entities”
of the mechanism in which they are found, and, from “activities” other than by conceptual abstraction –
i.e., independently of the activities in which they are any attempt to do so in concreto would result in the
involved. Stuart Glennan, another mechanist, explains: components’ destruction. Likewise, it is inappropriate to

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think that dynamicity in organisms reduces to the ac- needs from the top down. There is a dynamic causal
tivities of entities, as the New Mechanists believe. The interdependence within and across levels of organisation;
assumption that there cannot be any activity without a and because of that, reductionist approaches, such as the
thing performing it – that processes always need things as one advocated for by the New Mechanists, are bound to
their bearers – is, as we have seen earlier, a key as- fail (besides New Mechanism not being a process account
sumption of thing ontology; but it is refuted by the fact because it regards processes as dependent on thing-like
that, at least in dynamical systems such as organisms, we “entities” rather than as fundamental). One cannot build
only get “entities” – i.e., relatively stable structures – organisms from “parts” or “components” like a house
thanks to processes. An organism as a whole is an or- from bricks because what material parts an organism has
ganisation of processes. depends on its overall processual organisation,
Recently, a more refined version of the autopoiesis including – and, arguably, most fundamentally – its
theory has been proposed by Alvaro Moreno and col- metabolic organisation (Dupré & Nicholson, 2018,
leagues under the title of biological autonomy (Arnellos et p. 28ff.; Meincke, 2018c, 2019a, 2021, 2022b, 2023b,
al., 2014; Barandiaran & Moreno, 2008; Moreno & forthcoming b).
Mossio, 2015). Biological autonomy is defined as a liv- Biological identity, then, both is processual and has

ing system’s ability to actively maintain itself, and it has organisational depth: biological identity is a matter of
two different dimensions: (i) the constitutive dimension, ongoing stabilisation efforts at all organisational levels.
also called “basic autonomy,” which is the system’s As such, it comes in degrees, as opposed to strict and
metabolic self-constitution or autopoiesis; and (ii) the primitive substance identity, which is an all-or-nothing
interactive dimension: the system’s adaptive interaction affair. Yet, this processual identity is more robust than
with the environment (“agency”). The interactive di- the stitched-together identity of a four-dimensional
mension, while being entailed in autopoiesis, deserves bundle of things ever could be. Metaphysically, we
recognition in its own right given the fact that it, evo- may say: Organisms are processes that are
lutionarily, has stepwise been decoupled from the basic continuants – processual continuants (Meincke, 2018c,
processes of metabolic self-constitution. Agency in a 2021, 2022a, forthcoming a). This is quite a heretic
more interesting and robust sense for a living system claim given that, traditionally, so-called continuants
means to maintain its self-constitution through inter- were equated with substances; but, as we have seen, the
actively promoting favourable environmental conditions, concept of processual continuants was already envis-
in particular by means of bodily behaviour. aged by Heraclitus and, as I have argued elsewhere
(Meincke, 2022a), also by Bergson. The special meta-
Autopoietic Interactive Self-Stabilisation: My Own physical status enjoyed by organisms, and the
Version of Process Biology robustness it implies, has to do with the fact that
My own version of process biology builds on the organisms enact their own identity, that they are – at
conceptions of autopoiesis and biological autonomy, least minimally – agents (Meincke, 2022b, 2023c,
while also being inspired, especially with respect to the forthcoming a).
general ontological foundations, by elements in Bergson In lieu of a comprehensive presentation (for which
(1946, 1998, 2004) and Jonas (2001). I take it that or- there is no space here), my version of process biology may
ganisms, ontologically speaking, are higher-order auto- be characterised by the following seven key claims:
poietic processes that stabilise themselves through con- 1. Biological organisation is autopoietic interactive self-
stant interaction with surrounding processes. There is no stabilisation;
organism beyond this process of autopoietic interactive 2. Biological causality is multi-directional, working both
self-stabilisation. Just think about it: if the organism stops from the bottom up, and from the top down;
metabolising, i.e., exchanging matter and energy with the 3. Biological identity is processual and inherently tem-
environment, it can no longer maintain its delicate sta- poral; complex rather than primitive; and gradable, yet
bility far from thermodynamic equilibrium and ceases to robust;
exist. Change is all-pervasive; there is no unchanging core 4. Biological time is internal, indivisible, directional and
or substrate. irreversible;
That organisms are higher-order processes means that 5. Biological subjectivity is a basic feeling of existence and
there are lower level processes on which organisms, qua rooted in the self/world distinction brought about by
higher-order processes, depend from the bottom up and organisms through autopoietic interactive self-
which they, at the same time, modulate according to their stabilisation;

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6. Biological agency is the sensorimotor mode of auto- subject that passes through these stages. It is easier to simply
poietic interactive self-stabilisation; drop the requirement that persistence is identity over time, and
instead to construe it as a mereological relationship among the
7. Biological freedom is entailed by biological agency and stages themselves. But this means discarding the category of
consists in the choice between possibilities in the face substance as the paradigm for individuality in favour of the
of attraction/repulsion. weaker and more flexible category of process [. . .]. I defend the
These seven key claims can guide us when we now try view that processes lack the categorical features of numerical
to determine how a process biology that deserves its identity over time, persisting instead by having temporal parts
name – a process philosophy of biology that is committed [. . .] (DiFrisco, 2018, p. 79).
to process ontology properly understood – should aim to Is this really what process biologists think, or should
conceptualise development – and how it shouldn’t. think? No. It is false packaging. The packaging says
“process”; but it is no actual process inside.
DiFrisco deploys what one could call the “4D-trick”: in
Towards a Process Biology of Development:
order to avoid violation of Leibniz’s Law (according to
Challenges and Suggestions which numerical identity requires identity of properties),
attribute the troublesome different properties not to the

The Problem same thing but to different things which themselves do
What is development? Here is what Dupré and not change and which you then label “parts” of some
Nicholson, in their “Manifesto for a Processual Philos- bigger four-dimensional thing. DiFrisco, following the
ophy of Biology” (2018), say: “[A]ll organisms undergo a example of Quine and others, addresses this bigger four-
characteristic series of morphological and behavioural dimensional thing – here the mereological sum of de-
changes over the course of their lifetime” (Dupré & velopmental stages – as a “process.” However, as also
Nicholson, 2018, p. 18). Development refers to a par- powerfully argued by Bergson, a juxtaposition or ag-
ticular type of change: the change of an individual or- gregate of static things is not a process, i.e., an entity for
ganism during what is called its ontogeny, literally whose identity change is essential. Such an aggregate does
meaning the coming-to-be of an organism, its growth to not need to change in order to persist any more than a
maturity. Ontogeny forms a part of an organism’s life bundle of balloons needs to change in order to persist. For
cycle, the sequence of life stages that an organism un- the same reason, it fails to form a unified entity. In
dergoes from birth to reproduction ending with the contrast, biological processes, especially those that are
production of the offspring. The stages of a life cycle,
organisms, do possess an identity, which, as we have
however, can differ radically from one
found, was already emphasised by Heraclitus.
another – potentially calling into question that we are
While denying numerical identity to processes, Di-
really dealing with one and the same individual here.
Frisco is, however, prepared to grant them causal co-
Consider animals that undergo metamorphosis, such
hesion, i.e., some sort of demarcation through an in-
as butterflies or frogs. A chrysalis looks and behaves
teraction gradient such that the interactions among the
rather differently from the caterpillar that preceded it; it
entity’s parts are stronger than the interactions with the
does not move, it does not eat, it just sits somewhere,
environment (DiFrisco, 2018, p. 84). He even declares
hosting, however, dramatic changes in body structure
that the cohesion of biological processes, such as the
happening inside. The same holds true for the adult
cohesion of a living cell, “occurs by means of the recursive
butterfly as compared to both the chrysalis and the
organization of chemical reactions whereby the material
caterpillar: it flies, it mates, it feeds on nectar, none of
constraints on the dynamics of these cells (e.g., mem-
which can be seen in pupal and larval stage of devel-
branes, enzymes) are continually regenerated by those
opment, let alone in the embryonic stage. Development,
dynamics” (DiFrisco, 2018, p. 84). But if this is the case,
hence, poses the challenge to reconcile identity with
i.e., if a living cell is a unified, autopoietic network of
change.
interdependent processes, how could this ever go together
with the four-dimensionalist understanding DiFrisco
Suggestion #1: Temporal Parts proposes for processes?
James DiFrisco has made a suggestion as to how to What this understanding gives us are at best static
handle this problem. He says: snapshots of an ongoing process of (supposedly) in-
[Q]ualitative variation between successive stages in the life of a teractively bringing about causal cohesion – a process
biological system can make it difficult to specify an identical whose complex multi-level organisational structure is

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fundamentally at odds with the one-dimensional, linear (Steward, 2020, 49ff.). So, according to Steward, the
atomism of four-dimensionalism. To the extent that substance ontologist need not deny that organisms
these snapshots are assumed to be ontologically basic, change, also drastically change, in the course of their
i.e., to compose a process ontologically rather than just development. On the contrary, these changes exactly
being products of conceptual analysis, DiFrisco’s view provide a criterion of identity insofar as they are char-
falls short of being a version of process biology. Process acteristic of all members of a species. That a butterfly
biology, properly understood, is committed to process starts out as a larva, then turns into a chrysalis, before
ontology, which, as we have seen, is an ontology ac- continuing life as a flying insect – i.e., its particular “form”
cording to which processes are ontologically of change – is what makes a butterfly a butterfly.
fundamental – and this appears not to be the case here. A The mention of “form” in this context is significant.
piece of thing ontology is being sold to us as process Steward appeals to a (neo-) Aristotelian version of
ontology. substance ontology. According to Aristotle, in the case of
living beings, which are the paradigmatic substances for
Suggestion #2: Patterns of Change/Principle of him, form amounts to “a principle of change and of
Activity staying unchanged” (Aristotle, 2018, Physics I, 192b8-12)

When it comes to the question of identity in devel- and as such grounds an organism’s diachronic identity.
opment, it could seem as if substance ontology had a Only living substances, Aristotle thinks, have a principle
point – or at any rate, it seems like this to Dupré & of change in themselves – their soul; whereas non-living
Nicholson. They say: “[O]ne could attempt to retain the substances need to be moved and changed from without.
commitment to substance ontology by arguing that, The metaphysician David Wiggins calls this a “principle
despite the developmental transformations that organ- of activity”: “a distinctive source of development and
isms undergo, they nevertheless remain the same change” that is expressed by sortal terms, such as cat, dog,
thing – or substance – throughout.” However, they insist tree, etc. (Wiggins, 2012, p. 8; see also Wiggins, 2016,
that substance ontology is actually not up to the task of p. 272). Indeed, neo-Aristotelians love to point out on this
making sense of development: basis how sympathetic they are towards processes.
Now, there is a sense in which Dupré and Nicholson
The problem with this line of argument is that it is surprisingly
difficult to specify what stays the same throughout the life cycle
are still right about the substance ontologist being
of an organism. [. . .] when we consider a fertilized egg, an committed to the idea that at least some properties or
embryo, a tadpole, a froglet, and an adult frog, it is not clear property stays the same throughout an organism’s life-
what properties they [the different stages] all share beyond time: the property of having a particular principle of
being temporal stages of the same individual process. In fact, activity or form. The substance ontologist, of course, will
there may well be no interesting properties shared by all (Dupré be quick to point out that form is not a property like any
& Nicholson 2018, p. 19).
other; it is rather the property that brings the organism
Is this a successful way to attack substance ontological into being. So, there is an essentialist assumption here
takes on development? No, it is not. Helen Steward, a which one might want to reject, it is just a more so-
prominent contemporary advocate of substance ontol- phisticated one than that targeted by Dupré & Nich-
ogy, has an easy time with refuting this attack. Steward olson’s argument.
simply rejects the idea that substance identity must be One may want to reject essentialism while actually
grounded in some “interesting” property predicable of the holding on to the idea of identity. In fact, unlike DiFrisco,
developing organism throughout the life cycle. She Dupré & Nicholson do want to keep identity. They agree
suggests an alternative approach: with the substance ontologist that development does not
[F]or living organisms, what supplies the ground of identity are undermine identity (which would indeed sort of go
facts not about the maintenance of static properties throughout against the very idea of development – there needs to be
the various processes of alteration and transformation, but something that develops), in the sense that the butterfly
rather facts about the regular structure and nature of the life cycle is one numerically self-identical process and not
changes themselves, which those organisms tend to undergo different processes. In my view, what they should have
(Steward, 2020, p. 49f.).
criticised about the substance ontologist’s take on de-
More specifically, Steward suggests two criteria of velopment is not an alleged inability to accommodate
identity: “(i) the spatiotemporal continuity of the material drastic changes, but rather that organismal identity is
elements involved in the changes; and (ii) the consistency conceptualised as something primitive and unchanging
of the form of these changes” across species members that underlies the change happening during development.

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Let’s get clear about the ontological role the substance’s Strikingly gendered as it is, this story has continued to
so-called form or principle of activity plays. The form or shape western theorising about reproduction. Although
principle of activity determines what kinds of changes a with the discovery of female gametes it has become clear
substance can undergo, and in what kinds of activities it that, at least in mammals, the paternal and the maternal
can engage, in accordance with its identity. But, note, this organism each contribute half of the genetic makeup of
is a one-way dependence relation. Form or principle of the foetus, it is still common to regard the female womb as
activity, respectively, is not themselves determined by a mere container for the embryo (Meincke, 2022c; see also
change or activity. Therefore, they also do not change Gilbert, 2023). The embryo is believed to develop largely
themselves. A substance’s identity is primitively and independently of external circumstances by virtue of its
unchangeably given with its form. Change and activity essential form, entelechy or intrinsic active potential
come second. In other words, identity precedes change (Meincke, 2015, 2018b, 2022c). This deeply engrained
and activity, rather than resulting from it, as the process Aristotelian legacy is especially manifest in ongoing de-
ontologist wants to have it (Meincke, 2019c). Steward’s bates on the moral status of human embryos. Massimo
and Wiggins’s proposals thus bear all the marks of thing Reichlin, for instance, claims:
ontology: change is grounded in something unchanging,

[T]he embryo’s development does not depend on external
in an organism’s identity-constitutive form. causes, rather on an inherent teleology that only demands
certain environmental factors to be displayed: the embryo has
Unchanging Forms? Essentialism Then as Now in itself the potential for full personhood, and does not receive it
Grounding development in an unchanging form from the outside (Reichlin, 1997, p. 7).
comes at the price of explanatory disappointment. Contemporary anti-abortionists typically locate the
Development – and movement in general – is for Aristotle alleged potential towards personhood in the human
the actualisation of a potential or entelechy determined by a embryo’s genes. Thus, Alfonso Goméz-Lobo declares:
living substance’s form or soul. It is like winding up a clock, “All living things have within themselves an active po-
which then runs until the momentum is used up. This tentiality that scientists today view as encoded in their
corresponds with the literal meaning of the word “devel- genome.” (Gómez-Lobo, 2005, p. 106) and “[P]erson-
opment”: unrolling, unfolding of something that is already hood is a function of our DNA” (Gómez-Lobo, 2007,
there. So, if we ask: “Why does a frog egg or butterfly egg p. 333). Genes are treated as fixed essences that determine
develop into a frog or butterfly?”, all we get as an answer is phenotypic characters with little or no contribution by
this: “A frog egg or butterfly egg develops into a frog or a environmental factors. Any ultimate explanations of
butterfly because this development is predefined by the form developmental outcomes are considered to be genetic
of a frog or a butterfly, respectively, including the char- explanations.
acteristic stages of the development.” There is no expla-
nation of why these developments follow particular
trajectories, and of why they differ from one another. As to Towards a Process View of Development
the latter, Aristotle simply tells us: “A frog develops and I will come back to the role of genes as heirs of Aris-
moves differently than a butterfly because it has a frog soul totelian essences and exponents of a modern variant of thing
rather than a butterfly soul.” Why do organisms have the ontology in the following section. For now, let me outline
form or soul they have? How do these forms come to exist? briefly what a (proper) processual account of development,
Well, forms, according to Aristotle, do not come into as opposed to both four-dimensionalist and neo-Aristotelian
existence; they are eternal and unchangeable. And animal approaches, would look like and how it is supported by
organisms have the form or soul they have because they scientific findings. The idea here is not to present a fully
inherit it from their fathers, as Aristotle explains as part of his developed view but only to highlight key points and to
hylomorphist theory of the generation of living substances. indicate directions for further thought, thereby taking
The form, Aristotle thought, is contained in the male semen. guidance from the seven aforementioned aspects of my
Once the male semen is placed in a female womb, it sup- version of a process view of life and living beings.
posedly creates from menstrual blood present in the womb
an embryo, which then – thanks to and in accordance with 1) Biological Organisation: No Development
its form – develops by itself into a recognisable exemplar of without Environment
its species, receiving from the female no more than nour- We meanwhile know that development does not work
ishing matter in the form of menstrual blood (Aristotle, as advocates of a species-specific principle of activity or
1963, De Generatione Animalium, books I–II). intrinsic active potential imagine. Instead, available

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empirical evidence corroborates the process view of bi- Within a process framework to emphasise – contra
ological organisation as orchestrated autopoietic inter- mechanist approaches – the action of downward cau-
active self-stabilisation: there is no development without sation (see also Meincke, 2018c, p. 371f., forthcoming b;
environment (Moczek, 2015). Mammalian embryogen- Dupré & Nicholson, 2018, p. 27; Dupré, 2021, p. 7ff.;
esis is highly dependent on extrinsic, successively gen- Jonas, 2001, p. 79ff.) is therefore exactly not to endorse
erated information, such as positional information, the traditional myth of a primitive form (be it an Aris-
maternal hormonal and cytoplasmatic information and totelian soul or the genome) that develops an organism all
on epigenetic information (Meincke, 2015, 2018b). The by itself without any help from outside. On the contrary,
Containment View of pregnancy is false – mother and biological form is processually constituted during
foetus form what I call a “hypercomplex process” that is development-through interactions at all levels of orga-
in a process of asymmetric bifurcation (Meincke, 2022c). nisation and working from the bottom up just as much as
Interaction with the environment is pivotal to em- from the top down (Meincke, 2018c, forthcoming a;
bryogenesis also in other taxa. For instance, avian em- Pezzulo & Levin, 2016).
bryogenesis is dependent on temperature, humidity and
on the eggs being turned. There is also so-called devel- 3) Biological Identity: The Ongoing Effort and

opmental symbiosis: the ubiquitous phenomenon that Creativity of Development
organisms (both plants and animals) are constructed, in Its multi-directional, context-sensitive causality proves
part, by the interactions that occur between a host and its development to be the product of ongoing concerted
persistent symbiotic microorganisms. Organisms are effort, something predicted by a process view of biological
therefore best understood as multi-species composites, identity: what is being produced did not already exist
so-called holobionts (Gilbert, 2023a; Chiu & Gilbert, beforehand – “potentially” – in some minimal form, be it
2015; Gilbert et al., 2012). Furthermore, during both an Aristotelian form, a homunculus or a “genetic pro-
the embryonic and the juvenile phase, development is gramme.” Instead, development is a genuinely creative
influenced by nutrition, parental care and the ecological process, a process of strong emergence (Goodwin, 2001;
niche in which the developing organism lives. There is Meincke, forthcoming b; see also Witherington, 2011),
just no way for an organism to develop without being with different players taking part in it. The possible di-
dynamically entangled with myriads of surrounding rections this co-creation can take are as diverse as the
processes of various kinds and origin. Autopoiesis is possibilities for interactions of the partners involved.
interactive (Meincke, 2019a), it takes place embedded in Over evolutionary time, organisms have managed to
sympoiesis (Clarke & Gilbert, 2022; Gilbert, 2023b; canalise their development along particular trajectories
Haraway, 2016) or, as I would prefer to say, in a sym- through hereditary mechanisms. This cross-generational
poietic interactive space. stability serves the purpose of maximising the chances of
survival for subsequent generations by maintaining those
phenotypic characteristics that proved beneficial in the
2) Biological Causality: Downward Causation
past. Genes are part of this internalised species memory,
Autopoietic interactive self-stabilisation involves, as
though perhaps not the most important part; patterns of
we have seen, a dynamic causal interdependence between
bioelectric signalling seem to be just as important (Levin,
the whole organism and its parts. In accordance with this,
2021) (see also point 5 below). However, (to repeat) this
we find that also in development causation does not travel
does not mean that the outcome of developmental
in one direction only, namely, as within the predominant
processes is “predetermined,” as illustrated impressively
mechanistic paradigm is mostly assumed, from the genes
by unpredicted morphological novelties emerging from
to higher levels of organisation. Quite the contrary, genes
targeted manipulation. The morphospace of life is bigger
themselves need a very specific environment in order to
than the life forms evolution has (so far) produced
do anything at all. As the systems biologist Denis Noble
(Clawson & Levin, 2022; Davies & Levin, 2023). The
puts it:
relative cross-generational stability of phenotypes that we
[G]enes by themselves are dead. It is only in a fertilised egg cell, see is the result of ongoing interactive efforts, which
with all the proteins, lipids, and other cellular machinery in- remain open to change.
herited from the mother, that the process of reading the ge-
Essentialism, Aristotelian and genetic, is unable to
nome to initiate development can get going. [. . .] Even at the
very beginning of the life of a new organism, there is make sense of the plasticity of life and the genuine
“downward causation” involving [. . .] higher levels triggering creativity of development. Just as much does it struggle to
and influencing actions at the lower levels (Noble, 2006, p. 45f.). explain why organisms age and die. From a process

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perspective, the common focus on an organism’s mature Ernst Haeckel and Gavin de Beer). In addition to the
form as telos and final result of development is inade- absolute timing of developmental events their ordering,
quate. Development does not stop with maturity: ageing directionality and speed are critical too (Busby &
(senescence) and dying are developmental stages too. The Steventon, 2021, p. 1).
process view takes the entire life cycle into account,
conceiving of it as one continuous process whose dy- 5) Biological Subjectivity: Development Involves
namics are driven by a complex network of intrinsic and Basal Cognition
extrinsic factors. Organisms, as conceived by my Process View, are (at
least minimal) biological subjects as a result of their
4) Biological Time: Timing Is Critical in processual organisation. Interactive self-stabilisation
Development means a constant effort to maintain integrity contra
One of these factors is time. Biological time, according “the equalizing forces of physical sameness all around”
to my process view, is internal to organisms, indivisible in (Jonas, 2001, p. 84). Biological identity, as a stability far
a Bergsonian sense, directional and irreversible. What from thermodynamical equilibrium, is always at risk of
does this mean and why does it matter? To start with, falling prey to entropy. Paradoxically, the only way for a

biological time is something that organisms, through living process to prevent collapsing and being assimilated
their inner workings, bring about, rather than being an to surrounding processes is to interact with these very
external container in which organisms are located. In a surrounding processes, by exchanging matter and energy
sense, there is no time for inanimate things other than with them so that entropy within is decreased by de-
“abstract” or “mathematical time,” as (Bergson, 1988, creasing it without (metabolism). It is through this
p. 21 and p. 9) says. Inanimate things can be disassembled paradox that a biological self emerges: a perspective from
and reassembled without any harm to their identity within on a world without, from which it demarcates itself
(Bergson, 1988, p. 8), whereas for a living process its past as much as it depends for its existence on this world. The
continuously shapes its present as it moves towards the self-world relationship is, as Jonas puts it, one of “needful
future. “Duration is the continuous progress of the past freedom”; biological identity is “internal identity” (Jonas,
which gnaws into the future and which swells as it ad- 2001; Meincke, 2018c, 2022b, 2023c) [which becomes
vances” (Bergson, 1988, p. 4) and: “Wherever anything more articulate and sophisticated in humans as “personal
lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is identity” (Meincke, 2019c, 2021, 2022b, 2023a)].
being inscribed” (Bergson, 1988, p. 16). In other words, Characterised by need and effort, biological subjec-
unlike inanimate things, biological processes have a tivity is essentially affective (Meincke, 2023c). Biological
history: they age, thus being unable to “go through the selves are driven and drive themselves towards the ful-
same state twice” (Bergson, 1988, p. 5). The arrow of filment of their needs (Heidegger, 1995; Meincke, 2023b);
biological time is stretched out irreversibly between birth they care about the world to the extent that they care
and death of an organism (see also Jonas, 2001, p. 86; and about their survival. Cognition in living beings (as we
Meincke, 2023a, on Heidegger’s (1962) parallel obser- know them) is a means towards achieving this end and as
vation concerning human persons). such embedded in affectivity. This is underpinned by
From a process perspective it comes as no surprise that current research on basal cognition, which “includes the
the timing of environmental clues and their synchroni- fundamental processes and mechanisms that enabled
sation with the organism’s internal temporal profile of organisms to track some environmental states and act
developmental processes is indeed key to development. appropriately to ensure survival (finding food, avoiding
Scientists speak of intrinsic and extrinsic “timer mech- danger) and reproduction long before nervous systems,
anisms” that “work together to reproducibly time de- much less central nervous systems, evolved” (Lyon et al.,
velopmental events in the embryos of a given species” 2021, p. 4; see also Baluška & Levin, 2016; Lyon, 2015;
(Busby & Steventon, 2021, p. 12). For example, in Piedra & Frohlich, forthcoming; Smith-Ferguson &
mammalian embryogenesis it matters when and for how Beekman, 2020). Basal cognition is intertwined with
long the embryo is exposed to morphogens. Moreover, we valence: “the biological impetus of attraction or repulsion
know that changes in developmental timing of events to a state of affairs based on an assessment of value
relative to an ancestral form can give rise to new species relative to an individual’s goal structure” (Lyon and
by changing the morphology. This has, for instance, been Kuchling, 2021, p. 2). Valence is the ““building block”
shown for emu versus chicken wing development (and of affect” (Lyon and Kuchling, 2021, p. 5; see also
has been discussed under the title of “heterochrony” since Meincke, 2022b, 2023c).

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The creativity at work in development (see point 3 7) Biological Freedom: The Plasticity of
above) must be understood against this background. It is Development
an instance of affectively driven cognition. How do cells My process view of life regards freedom as an implication
“know” what to build and how? The answer given by of agency. To act means to choose between possibilities,
biologist Michael Levin and colleagues is: collectives of however limited these possibilities may be in number and
cells display swarm intelligence. Cognition is not hard- however rudimentary or primitive the character of choice
wired to a specific body architecture, e.g., to a brain sitting may be. Importantly, choice need not be rational; it can
in a skull. On the contrary, the development of a par- be – and both most fundamentally and most commonly
ticular body architecture is itself guided by cognition. is – (purely) affective in nature. Biological freedom, thus,
Cells act together drawing on memory that is stored not comes in degrees just as biological agency does, depending
in the genes but in the patterns of the bioelectric signals on three main factors: (i) the more possibilities there are to
by which cells communicate with one another (Clawson choose from, (ii) the more control the agent has about their
& Levin, 2022; Levin, 2014a, 2014b, 2019, 2021; Levin & choice, and (iii) the longer the response can be delayed, the
Dennett, 2020; Levin & Yuste, 2022). higher is the degree of freedom of agency. The function is in
each case the same, namely to ensure a flexible and thus

6) Biological Agency: Organisms Enact Their maximally adaptive response to environmental cues as
Development opposed to rigid hard-wired reflex mechanisms. Plasticity,
To say that in development cells act together in intel- therefore, is the characteristic that runs through all degrees
ligent ways is to say that they are agents. Biological identity of freedom of agency.
is agential at all levels of organisation. As indicated in the This includes developmental plasticity, which, I con-
previous section, I consider agency to be entailed by the tend, is enacted by the behavioural plasticity of cells
basic organisational structure of interactive self-stabilisation exhibited in plastic interactive networks. As agents, cells
that is constitutive of organisms, just as subjectivity is in a developing organism make choices between different
entailed by it (see also Meincke, 2022b). Indeed, both bi- possibilities in the face of environmental factors, as de-
ological agency and biological subjectivity are two sides of picted by Conrad Hal Waddington’s well-known epige-
the same coin: only a being that must act in order to persist netic landscape (Waddington, 1940, 1957). According to
has needs whose satisfaction or frustration feels like Waddington, cell fates are settled during development in
something to it; and only a being that has needs whose a so-called process of canalisation just as marbles roll
satisfaction or frustration feels like something to it is driven down a particular valley (see also Waddington, 1942).
to act upon these needs. Ultimately, this interdependence is This explains why development is both robust and highly
itself rooted in the purposiveness of living organisation plastic. While a cell, as Huang (2012, p. 7) puts it, is
(Meincke, 2023b, 2023c; Jonas, 2001). typically subject to an “intrinsic downward force imposed
This view is in stark contrast to the view prevalent in by the interactions hard-wired in the network,” it may
metaphysics and the philosophy of mind since Descartes “jump” out of a basin of attraction over a sufficiently low
that agency is an intellectualist skill reserved to humans. hill into a neighbouring valley (attractor)” in response to
However, an inclusive biological notion of agency is gene expression noise or random external events.
supported by emerging scholarship in the philosophy of The structure of the epigenetic landscape can be
biology (Arnellos & Moreno, 2015; Meincke 2018a, manipulated. Michael Levin and colleagues have shown,
2022b; Moreno & Mossio 2015; Sultan et al. 2022; Walsh in a number of rather mind-blowing experiments, that
2015; but see Potter & Mitchell, forthcoming, for some manipulation of bioelectrical patterns of cell signalling in
caveats). It is increasingly also invoked to explain the salamander, frog, and planarian flatworm embryos
efficiency of developmental processes. Thus, Levin & prompts the development of entirely novel anatomies
Yuste (2022) “call on biologists to embrace the inten- (Davies & Levin, 2023; Levin, 2021). Levin speaks of
tional stance: treating circuits and cells as problem- “somatic plasticity” (Levin, 2019, 2021). Also under
solving agents.” Development, according to them, is a “normal” circumstances (i.e., without targeted experi-
goal-directed process enacted by intelligent agents. Cell mental manipulation), the epigenetic landscape may
collectives, Davies & Levin (2023, p. 46) argue, ought to be change its topography through processes of genetic as-
modelled as “as agential materials, with their own goals, similation, as Waddington (1953, 1959) has argued.
agendas and powers of problem-solving” to make better Note the striking parallel with what one could call, in
sense of cell cooperation in development and to devise the context of a process theory of the human person
new therapeutical intervention techniques. (Meincke, 2018c, 2019c, 2023a), the epigenetic landscape

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of personalities. Whether through psychotherapeutic necks to reach leaves high in trees, they would strengthen
intervention or prompted by life-changing events, we are and gradually lengthen their necks. These giraffes would
able to leave well-trodden pathways of behaviour, feeling then have offspring with slightly longer necks.
and thinking and to create new ones. Biological freedom Fifty years later Charles Darwin, in his ground-
encompasses all levels of organisation, from the primitive breaking book on The Origin of Species by Means of
plasticity of cells to the sophisticated plasticity of human Natural Selection (Darwin, 1859) presented a different
minds. explanation of the transmutation of species: so-called
descent with modification. Darwin proposed that all
present-day species have descended from a common
Towards a Process Biology of Evolution: Challenges ancestor through branching – much like branches sprout
and Suggestions from the trunk of a tree. More specifically, new species
arise through a gradual accumulation of inheritable
The Problem variation within populations. However, not just any
What about evolution? How can process ontology help heritable variations but only those heritable variations
us understand evolution? Putting the question like this accumulate, according to Darwin, which are most fa-

suggests that evolution so far has not been vourable to survival within the environment of a pop-
understood – or, at least, not been understood well ulation. Just as breeders select individual plants or ani-
enough. That this is indeed the case is being claimed by mals for certain desirable traits to reproduce, so nature
ecological developmental theorists and proponents of the selects those individuals that are the fittest in the ongoing
Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. We shall see that this struggle for existence. Natural selection thus explains
claim is true to the extent that the received view of both the emergence of new species and the adaptation of
evolution, the Modern Synthesis, relies on thing ontology. species to their environments.
Admittedly, this diagnosis may cause surprise. Is a thing Darwin managed to convince his contemporaries of
ontological view of evolution not a contradictio in ad- the existence of evolution. However, people remained
jecto? Thing ontology, we have found, is a view of reality sceptical about natural selection as the driving force of
which, driven by a fear of change, emphasises sameness evolution. This scepticism had to do with the fact that
and permanence. Evolution, however, abounds with Darwin could not explain how the variations, on which
change. Species change over time, new species emerge, natural selection was supposed to act, came about, and
others become extinct. Evolutionary theory as such how inheritance actually works. For Darwin, it was
started out by questioning the Aristotelian world view, on enough to know from observation and experiment that
which species are fixed and eternal. And with the dis- breeders were able to select certain variations and pro-
covery of evolutionary change arose the challenge to duce huge differences in many generations of selection.
account for this change. But Darwin’s contemporaries were not satisfied with this.
A big step towards the understanding of heredity was
Evolutionary Theory: A Bit of History made with the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel’s work in
To get a better grasp of current debates, it is worth 1900. Mendel hypothesised that there are units of he-
recapitulating the most important steps in the history of redity (he called them “factors”), which come in pairs, are
evolutionary theory. As is well known, the first to defend segregated in the gametes and randomly recombined in
the so-called transmutation of species in form of a reproduction while retaining their identity through this
comprehensive theory of evolution was the French bot- process. For multiple reasons, Mendel’s work was per-
anist and zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. Species, he ceived as incompatible with Darwin’s theory of evolution
argued against Aristotelian essentialism in several writ- (most importantly, the tension between Mendel’s com-
ings (Lamarck, 1802, 1809, 1815–22), do not have im- mitment to particulate inheritance and saltationalism and
mutable essences but change over time. He also offered Darwin’s endorsement of blended inheritance and of
explanations as to how this change comes about (mainly gradualism was believed to be irresolvable). This delayed
by postulating a complexifying and an adaptive force). In the further development of evolutionary theory.
particular, Lamarck formulated the idea that character- It took another 50 years until finally Darwin’s theory of
istics organisms acquire through their interactions with evolution and Mendel’s theory of inheritance could be
the environment are heritable, so-called soft inheritance. reconciled (thanks, among many other things, to the
Thus (to recall his famous example), when giraffes, discovery that purported mutants actually simply were
triggered by environmental conditions, stretch their recombinant genotypes, leading to an appreciation of the

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potential of variability inherent in sexual recombination). p. 254). The evolution of organisms results from the strive
This is known as the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. It for endless self-replication – for “immortality” – of selfish
was developed 1930–1950 by scientists of different dis- genes (Dawkins, 2016, e.g., p. 44f.).
ciplines. The key claim is: evolution occurs through
“gradual, cumulative change in gene frequencies in
Modern Synthesis: Disappearing Change and a
populations, brought about by selection acting on the
variation among individuals that results from random Thing Ontology of Genes
Given these key assumptions, the Modern Synthesis
gene mutation and recombination” (Jablonka & Lamb,
faces a problem of disappearing change. If inheritance
2020, p. 2). The ideas of gradual, cumulative change and
of natural selection go back to Darwin, whereas the focus happens only through self-replication of genes, with no
input from the environment, how can there be any
on gene frequencies in populations and the idea of
evolutionary change? Proponents of the Modern Syn-
random gene mutation and recombination are Mendelian
in spirit. thesis appeal, as mentioned, to random gene mutation
and recombination as sources of variations for natural
selection to work on. These mechanisms, however, imply
Missing Lamarck: The Central Dogma

Whose ideas, however, are strikingly absent from the strikingly weak and contorted notions of change.
Recombination, as viewed by Dobzhansky, Dawkins,
Modern Synthesis are those of Lamarck: the Modern
and others, equals the shuffling around of themselves
Synthesis does not include environment-induced varia-
tion as a source of evolution. This is in line with the so- unchanging things – just like the shuffling around of
Leukippos’s and Democritus’s atoms. Atomism, we have
called Central Dogma of Molecular Biology, which was
seen, is unable to account of the unity and, thus, existence
formulated by Francis Crick in a famous lecture given in
1957 (Crick, 1958; see also Crick, 1970) after he had of complex objects. It thereby also excludes the occur-
rence of any true novelties. All there is at any point in
discovered the double helix structure of DNA together
space and time is the very same things assembled dif-
with James Watson. Crick (1958) described the two-step
process, in which DNA is transcribed into RNA, and ferently. Change remains superficial, parasitic upon the
unchanging identity of atoms – or genes, respectively.
RNA is then translated into the proteins that build the
Unless – and here the Modern Synthesis transcends the
cell, as unidirectional: genetic information flows from the
DNA to proteins but not vice versa. Adaptive changes bounds of atomism – something goes wrong, that is, a
gene mutates resulting from errors in DNA replication or
undergone by an individual during its lifetime thus
other DNA damage.
cannot be coded into heritable information.
The Central Dogma (basically a biochemical re- The assumption that genuine change can happen only
by accident or, more accurately, by mistake is an im-
formulation of the so-called Weismann barrier, i.e., the
pressive proof of how deep thing ontology’s fear of change
idea first put forward by August Weismann (1892) that
hereditary information exclusively travels from the goes. To be sure, viewed from a metaphysical perspective,
the key commitments of the Modern Synthesis align with
germline to the soma) facilitated the view that what
thing ontology, with genes functioning as things in the
matters in evolution and biological life in general is genes,
not organisms. Thus, Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the technical sense introduced above of entities whose
identity does not depend on (and may even be incom-
architects of the Modern Synthesis, identifies heredity
patible with) change. Genes are seen as things with
with the self-reproduction of genes and declares organ-
isms to be a mere “by-product” thereof: virtually immutable essences which they confer on their
vehicles (organisms). This is manifest in three widely
Heredity is [. . .] self-reproduction. The units of heredity [. . .] shared beliefs about genes, which are nicely summarised
are corpuscles of macromolecular dimension, called genes. The by Kostas Kampourakis in his 2017 book Making Sense of
chief, if not the only, function of every gene is to build a copy of
itself out of the food materials; the organism [. . .] is a by-
Genes:
product of this process of gene self-synthesis (Dobzhansky, • Genetic essentialism: genes are fixed entities, which are
1958, p. 21). transferred unchanged across generations and which are the
essences of what we are by specifying characters from which
Similarly, British biologist Richard Dawkins, in his
their existence can be inferred.
1976 book The Selfish Gene, explains that organisms are • Genetic determinism: genes invariably determine characters,
“vehicles” of “replicators,” i.e., of genes as the funda- so that the outcomes are just a little, or not at all, affected by
mental units of natural selection (Dawkins, 2016, e.g., changes in the environments in which individuals live.

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• Genetic reductionism: genes provide the ultimate explanation Development drives evolution insofar as it is shaped by
for characters, and so the best approach to explain these is by environmental factors, whether these be abiotic or biotic,
studying phenomena at the level of genes (Kampourakis,
agential, social, or cultural (for more details, also see Chiu,
2017, p. 6).
2022). Novel phenotypes frequently are environmentally
Dawkins is aware of the fact that biologists tradi- induced (West-Eberhard, 2003, 2019), not least as a result
tionally deemed the dependence relation between genes of organisms’ own active modification of the environ-
and organisms to be the other way around: “The in- ment (Piaget, 1978; Lewontin, 2000; Odling-Smee et al.,
dividual organism came first in the biologist’s con- 2003; Laland et al., 2016; Chiu, 2019; Aaby & Desmond,
sciousness, while the replicators – now known as genes 2021).
– were seen as part of the machinery used by individual Note the stark contrast to the view of development as
organisms” (Dawkins, 2016, p. 343). But he insists that an intrinsic process isolated from and not to be affected
this traditional view, according to which organisms use by the environment, as to be found in traditional (neo-)
genes rather than genes use organisms, is illusory and Aristotelian substance ontology and modern thing on-
turns upside down the true reality of life. Therefore, he tology of genes alike. Indeed, the rehabilitation of La-
invites us to make “the mental effort to turn biology the marck’s concept of an inheritance of acquired characters

right way up again, and to remind ourselves that the (see also Danchin et al., 2019) prompts the question of
replicators come first, in importance as well as in whether the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis is not
history” (ibid.). merely an “extension” of the Modern Synthesis but a
There is, however, a growing number of scholars who “substantial revision” (Jablonka & Lamb, 2020, p. 1). This
think that what proponents of the Modern Synthesis like question is subject of ongoing controversy (see, e.g.
Dawkins dismiss as being upside down is exactly right. Laland et al., 2014, 2015; Wray et al., 2014; Richards &
Thus, geneticists Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb claim Pigliucci, 2020).
that more recent scientific discoveries about inheritance My hypothesis is that what is ultimately at stake in the
require us to move away from gene-centrism and to competition between the Modern Synthesis and the
return “to an earlier, development- and organism-ori- Extended Evolutionary Synthesis is metaphysics.
ented view” (Jablonka & Lamb, 2020, p. 1). In other Switching from the Modern Synthesis to the Extended
words, we need to turn the right way up again what the Evolutionary Synthesis amounts to a Kuhnian paradigm
Modern Synthesis turned upside down: the order of shift, namely from a thing ontological to a process on-
priority between organisms and their genes. tological framework. The Extended Evolutionary Syn-
thesis, I contend, requires a process ontological frame-
Overcoming Gene-Centrism: The Extended work in order for its key tenets to make sense. Or put
Evolutionary Synthesis differently, if the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,
One of the ventures to spell out the theoretical im- compared to the Modern Synthesis, delivers the more
plications of this move is called the “Extended (Evolu- convincing account of evolutionary change (a matter
tionary) Synthesis”. What is “extended” about the “ex- ultimately to be decided by biologists on the basis of
tended synthesis”? Briefly put, the claim is that there is empirical evidence), and then this is facilitated by pre-
more to heredity than genes – there are other “inheritance ceding process ontological assumptions. Accordingly, our
systems” (to use Jablonka & Lamb’s term), which need to task now is to explicate those assumptions. What does it
be included in our theory of evolution. According to mean to think of evolution in process ontological terms?
Jablonka & Lamb (2014, 2020), evolution happens in (at
least) four dimensions, via genetic, epigenetic, behav- Species as Processes
ioural, and symbolic means. Kevin Laland, director of the Evolution is the evolution of new species. Species,
recently completed research project “Putting the Ex- therefore, cannot be natural kinds with fixed essences, as
tended Evolutionary Synthesis to the Test,” stresses in Aristotle thought. What species are then, if not natural
particular the importance of developmental processes: kinds or classes, i.e., groups of entities subject to universal
laws, is a matter of ongoing debate. However, since the
In the EES [Extended Evolutionary Synthesis], developmental seminal contributions by Ghiselin (1974) and Hull
processes, operating through developmental bias, inclusive
inheritance and niche construction, share responsibility for the
(1978), most philosophers of biology have come to
direction and rate of evolution, the origin of character variation view species as individuals. The reason is that in order for
and organism-environment complementarity (Laland et al., species to be units of selection, they must be spatio-
2015, p. 1). temporally continuous, which is not the case with classes.

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Organisms, accordingly, are regarded as parts rather brought into existence and being sustained through the
members of species; that is, a part-whole relationship efforts of individual organisms insofar as these organisms
instead of a class-member relationship is invoked. work towards their own persistence and reproduction.
But there is a problem: How can an individual be made Lineages are chains of life cycles of individual organisms.
up of discrete and independent parts? Dupré & Nicholson If anybody acts here, it is organisms, not lineages
(2018) argue that a process view of species can solve this (whether lineages of organisms or lineages of species).
problem. Species, they explain, are in fact lineages and, To say that lineages evolve is in effect to say that there
that is, temporally extended processes. If so, we may try to is, as Maturana and Varela put it, a history of change in
establish the identity of species lineages via postulating sequentially realised autopoiesis. To be sure, the auto-
causal links between temporal stages: poietic organisation (or biological autonomy, or auto-
Causal relations between the temporal stages of a lineage, and poietic interactive self-stabilisation) is the same in every
between the spatial parts of these temporal stages, are re- living system; however, the ways it is realised are subject
sponsible for providing that lineage with whatever integrity it to change:
has as an individual process (Dupré & Nicholson, 2018, p. 35).
[E]volution is the history of change in the realization of an

While it is certainly right to conceive of species in invariant organization embodied in independent unities se-
temporal rather than merely spatial terms, the question quentially generated through reproductive steps, in which the
remains whether the particular approach taken by Dupré particular structural realization of each unity arises as a
modification of the preceding one (or ones), which thus
& Nicholson aligns with the spirit of a process account of constitutes both its sequential and historical antecedent
evolution envisaged here. This is because their proposal (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 103).
seems to suggest that species lineages are four-
dimensional spacetime worms. However, assuming For Maturana and Varela it is therefore clear that
there is such a process as a lineage, we as process on- ontogeny and evolution must be sharply distinguished:
tologists must think of it as being indivisible and dy- Ontogeny and evolution are completely different phenomena,
namic, not as being composed of itself unchanging parts, both in their outlook and in their consequences. In ontogeny, as
which only ex post are bound together. Four- the history of transformation of a unity, the identity of the
unity, in whatever space it may exist, is never interrupted. In
dimensionalism, we have learnt from process philoso- evolution, as a process of historical change, there is a succession
phers such as Bergson, will not give us a true under- of identities generated through sequential reproduction which
standing of process and change, let alone provide us with constitute a historical network, and that which changes
a robust enough notion of identity or “integrity.” (evolves), the pattern of realization of the successively gener-
But the problems do not end here. For in what sense ated unities, exists in a different domain than the unities that
embody it (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 104).
could one reasonably claim a lineage process to exist at
all? Dupré & Nicholson make a rather strong and, to my
mind, puzzling point: Towards a Process View of Evolution
Taking into account the proviso that ontogeny and
It would seem that, just as organisms persist by renewing the evolution belong to different domains, what would our
cells that compose them through constant metabolic turnover, process view of evolution be, broadly speaking? To start
so lineages persist by replacing the organisms that make them
up through continuous cycles of reproduction (Dupré & with, we should conceive of evolution as a higher-order
Nicholson 2018, p. 35). dynamical process embodied and enacted by individual
processes of different, albeit lower, levels of organisation.
This seems to attribute some kind of active self- Evolution, lacking an identical subject (as Maturana and
perpetuation to lineages, based on an analogy with the Varela rightly observed), refers to the relational change
metabolic self-perpetuation of organisms. I do not think between sequential individual processes of autopoietic
this analogy holds. Ontologically speaking, species line- interactive self-stabilisation. It is, as it were, a “meta-meta
ages are nothing over and above the organism lineages of change,” made up from individual changes in the real-
which they consist. Conceptually it makes sense, of isation of the kind of change that is autopoietic interactive
course, to conceive of speciation as a process involving self-stabilisation.
species as individuals, if only because it simplifies things. A key question for evolutionary theory is at what level
However, the true individuals that realise any such or levels of biological organisation natural selection
process of speciation are individual organisms as they works. What are the so-called units of selection? Given
descend from one another. Thus, to the extent that the dynamic entanglement of biological processes both
species lineages can be said to exist at all, they are both within and beyond hierarchies, I surmise that there are

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multi-level units of selection. The most important is that version of process biology: through their processual or-
of organisms qua holobionts; however, also cells within ganisation, i.e., autopoietic interactive self-stabilisation,
organisms or groups of organisms are relevant drivers of their multi-directional causality, their processual identity,
evolution to the extent that they exhibit agency. How their temporality, their subjectivity, their agency and their
these factors relate to one another is a complex matter natural freedom. As we have seen, these seven aspects are
and needs to be assessed individually for any given cases. also critical for the development of organisms as a major
Given the critical role of organism-environment inter- source of evolutionary change. Development and evo-
actions, we ought to consider ecosystems to be subject to lution intersect in the processuality of organisms.
natural selection too.
Species, on the other hand, are not to be included in the
list of units of selection because they fall short of con- Conclusions
stituting entities in a sufficiently strong ontological sense.
Species, or species lineages, are conceptual divisions of a Let’s sum up.
continuum of chains of life cycles of organisms or, to use We started with an excursion into the history of
Bergson’s phrase, “mental views of an indivisible process” western metaphysics, in order to distinguish process

(Bergson, 1998, p. 29) (Bergson thought this to be true for ontology from its powerful opponent, thing ontology.
all elements in the domain of life; I disagree with him on Thing ontology, we found, is committed, in one way or
this point). To repeat, if species can be said to exist at all, another, to essentialism and is biased against change. This
they in any case lack agency and cannot bring about bias need not take the extreme form of wholesale denial of
evolutionary change by themselves. Strictly – and, that is, change and movement, as espoused by Parmenides and
ontologically – speaking, it is not species but such-and- his Eleatic followers. It is equally manifest in the atomists’
such specified organisms, or groups of such-and-such endeavour to restrict change to a reconfiguration of
specified organisms, that compete with one another for themselves unchanging atoms and in Aristotle’s con-
survival in a given ecological niche. viction that there cannot be any change without an
Likewise, I doubt that genes are units of selection. In unchanging substratum. The same holds for present-day
accordance with the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, a versions of thing ontology: bundle theory and four-
process view ought to regard genes as a means used by dimensionalism, which are descendants of atomism, on
organisms to survive individually and to facilitate con- the one hand and substratum theory, which follows in the
tinuation of the lineage: as a means of cross-generational footsteps of Aristotle’s substance ontology, on the other
stabilisation. Genes are the (deep-seated) memory of the hand. In contrast, process ontology, as first proposed by
lineage that shapes individual processes of development Heraclitus and prominently elaborated by Bergson and
but can to some extent be deployed flexibly as is seen fit in Whitehead, takes reality to be irreducibly dynamic, which
a given environment and situation; genes must not be is to say that processes, not things, are ontologically
reified into essences. Speaking of reification, natural se- fundamental. An important implication of this, we have
lection should not be reified either. There is no invisible seen, is that change, rather than being a threat to identity
breeder walking around, selecting some individuals for (as suspected by the thing ontologists), is in fact con-
breeding, while dismissing others. It is just organisms stitutive of identity.
doing stuff that either does or does not contribute to their Against the historical background, it was possible to
fitness. distinguish genuine versions of process philosophy of
Ultimately this means that evolution is as it is because biology from putative ones. New Mechanism, while as-
organisms, including their constitutive parts, are as they suming both so-called entities (things) and activities
are and behave as they do, taking additionally into ac- (processes) as ingredients of mechanisms, still regards
count geological conditions on Earth as well as generic processes as dependent on things, thus revealing itself to
physical constraints acting upon development (Goodwin, be a version of thing ontology. Process biology proper
2001; Newman et al., 2006). Organisms bring about the must acknowledge that it is just the other way around: any
changes on which (as evolutionary biologists like to say) identifiable parts of a mechanism or living system are
“natural selection acts,” or which (as we should perhaps dependent on the processual organisation to which they
better say) make up, over evolutionary time, the change belong and to which they themselves contribute, being, in
that is called evolutionary change. Organisms bring about fact, themselves processes, just slower ones. Both the
these changes in at least the seven ways highlighted earlier autopoiesis theory of life and the more recent theory of
as key characteristics of living systems according to my biological autonomy aim to capture this interdependent

DOI: 10.1159/000534421
(“circular”) processual organisation. So does, too, my own a plausible theory of evolution must put development
version of process biology that centres around the notion back into evolution, thereby putting organisms back in
of autopoietic interactive self-stabilisation and meta- power, too. Here, I have argued that such a move indeed
physically construes organisms as processual calls for a fundamental paradigm shift: from a meta-
continuants. physics that views reality in terms of things to a meta-
When it comes to ontological conceptions of devel- physics that views reality in terms of processes. I also have
opment, I argued that four-dimensionalist proposals sketched how a process ontological framework can im-
which construe development as a series of numerically prove our understanding of both development and
distinct stages linked through mereological relations, if to evolution. This, I hope, will encourage future work to-
be taken seriously in ontological terms, cannot rightfully wards a fully developed process view of development and
claim to belong to process biology because four- evolution, besides sparking further dialogue between
dimensionalism puts things first: atomic and them- metaphysics and biology more generally.
selves unchanging stages or temporal parts. Just as much,
however, should we stay clear of substance ontological
accounts of development given their commitment to Acknowledgments

essentialism and primitive identity, which leads to a view
of development as the environment-independent real- This paper was first presented on June 2, 2022, in a keynote talk
at the 2022 meeting of the Jean Piaget Society, “Putting Devel-
isation of an intrinsic active potential, possibly located in opment Back Into Evolution,” in Philadelphia, PA, USA. I thank
the developing embryo’s genes. In response, I have the organisers, Robert Lickliter, David Moore and David With-
outlined the central tenets of an alternative process ac- erington, for inviting me and the audience for stimulating dis-
count of development. Looking at seven key cussion. I am also indebted to Don Frohlich, Scott Gilbert, Dan
aspects – organisation, causality, identity, time, subjec- McShea and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on
earlier versions of this paper.
tivity, agency, freedom – I have shown how a process
perspective makes development comprehensible as being
environment-dependent, both upward- and downward
Statement of Ethics
causal, creative, intrinsically temporal, minimally cog-
nitive, enacted and plastic, this in line with recent sci- No ethical approval was required for the preparation of this
entific findings. manuscript, as no human or animal subjects were used.
Finally, we turned to evolution and discussed theo-
retical proposals, both historical and present, of how to
account for evolutionary change. We found that the Conflict of Interest Statement
appeal to genetic recombination alone won’t do the job,
something unsurprising in the light our earlier critique of The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.
atomism. Interestingly enough, neo-Darwinism incor-
porates, at the same time, a (neo-) Aristotelian heritage,
by positing genes as unchanging essences that provide a Funding Sources
blueprint for development. Given these strong thing
This research was funded in whole by the Austrian Science
ontological roots, the neo-Darwinist idea that genuine Fund (FWF), grant agreement number #V714-G30 (“Bio-Agency
change may occur only as a random mistake, i.e., in the and Natural Freedom,” PI: Anne Sophie Meincke).
form of gene mutation, makes sense, without thereby
becoming any more convincing. The alternative approach
is to start with the assumption that change is not an Author Contributions
exception but the default, by invoking a process onto-
logical framework. In this vein, I have offered a recon- Anne Sophie Meincke conceived the ideas, reviewed literature,
ceptualization of evolution as a higher-order process of and wrote the entire manuscript.
historical change of the ways autopoietic interactive self-
stabilisation is realised by individual organisms.
From a process perspective, there is no question about Data Availability Statement
how evolutionary change is possible. Change is the daily No empirical study was conducted for this article. Any data
bread of life. Development is a particular type of or- referred to can be found in or via the literature cited. Further
ganismal change, one that is especially productive. Surely, enquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

DOI: 10.1159/000534421
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DOI: 10.1159/000534421

The Metaphysics of Development and Evolution: From Thing Ontology To Process Ontology

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The Metaphysics of Development and

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Keywords A scientist’s metaphysical beliefs are not mere epiphenomena, but

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