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John Dupré
Egenis, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
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JD, 0000-0002-7451-2127
This paper briefly describes process metaphysics, and argues that it is better
suited for describing life than the more standard thing, or substance, meta-
physics. It then explores the implications of process metaphysics for
Research conceptualizing evolution. After explaining what it is for an organism to
be a process, the paper takes up the Hull/Ghiselin thesis of species as indi-
Cite this article: Dupré J. 2017 The
viduals and explores the conditions under which a species or lineage could
metaphysics of evolution. Interface Focus 7: constitute an individual process. It is argued that only sexual species satisfy
20160148. these conditions, and that within sexual species the degree of organization
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2016.0148 varies. This, in turn, has important implications for species’ evolvability.
One important moral is that evolution will work differently in different
biological domains.
One contribution of 20 to a theme issue ‘New
trends in evolutionary biology: biological,
philosophical and social science perspectives’.
Subject Areas:
1. Introduction: why metaphysics?
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that aspires to provide the most gen-
biocomplexity
eral description of reality. Metaphysics aims to say what exists, but at a more
general and abstract level than that typical of practical science or, for that
Keywords: matter, everyday life. It may ask, for example, whether there is one kind of
process ontology, evolution, species, being, two (as Descartes believed), or many. It may ask about the relations
lineage, individual between very broad categories of entities. Now almost all biologists believe
that living beings are made of the same kind of material stuff as the non-
living; once, however, it was common to suppose that investigating life
Author for correspondence: involved investigating something in certain respects, at least, quite different
John Dupré from the vulgarly material. This, one might say, is an example of progress
e-mail: j.a.dupre@exeter.ac.uk in metaphysics.
The last example also illustrates that, though they may sincerely deny it,
scientists are almost inevitably committed to metaphysical opinions, and that
these make a difference to their work. A biologist not committed to the materi-
alist metaphysics mentioned in the last paragraph would not look for the
fundamental understanding of life in the properties of specific kinds of
matter. Metaphysics can be ignored but not escaped. In the words of theoretical
biologist and philosopher Joseph Henry Woodger, ‘physiologists [who] sup-
pose themselves to be above “metaphysics” [. . .] are only a very little above
it—being up to the neck in it’ [1, p. 246].
The metaphysics I am interested in is a naturalistic one, providing an ontol-
ogy, an account of what exists, ultimately grounded in our best science. I have
said that scientists cannot avoid metaphysical assumptions, but these need not
be explicit. Philosophical analysis of scientific work may help to expose these
assumptions. But philosophical reflection on scientific findings may also
point to an ontology different in important respects from that originally
assumed. One reason it may do so is that philosophical enquiry of this sort is
free to range over all domains of scientific enquiry. One motivation for ontologi-
cal enquiry is thus to explore the consistency of interpretation of scientific
results across the sciences or their subfields.
The metaphysical question with which this paper is concerned is an ancient
one, the debate whether the world is ultimately composed of things, perhaps
eternal and immutable things as was proposed by the Greek atomists, or
rather is everywhere in flux, as famously advocated by the Greek philosopher
& 2017 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original
author and source are credited.
Heraclitus. For process philosophers, enduring things, rather understood not through unchanging essential properties 2
than being the more or less unchanging furniture of the but through the causal continuity of the processes that main-
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world, are ‘never more than patterns of stability in a sea of tain the pattern. A process ontology for life starts with the
process’ [2]. idea that the Red Spot is a more useful paradigm for living
The ontology of things, following the revival of atomism systems than the mountain.
in the seventeenth century, has been the dominant metaphy- Two simple points should be sufficient to confirm the
sics for most of the history of modern science. It is closely appropriateness of the dynamic, processual perspective for
connected to a further position that underlies conceptions thinking of biological systems. Consider, as paradigm living
of scientific explanation, mechanicism. For mechanicism, the systems, organisms. The first, decisive reason for taking
way to understand or explain a phenomenon is to identify organisms to be processes is that they are open systems, far
the various constituent things that interact to generate the from thermodynamic equilibrium. It is an elementary fact
phenomenon. Arrangements of constituents with particular of physics that maintaining such a system will require con-
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generate the phenomenon. There is no doubt that this has thereby that it is a matter of great uncertainty what constitu-
been an enormously productive scientific strategy. Nonethe- tes the appropriate kind of coherent lineage. It is popularly
less, from a process perspective the mechanisms postulated supposed, reflecting the lasting influence of Ernst Mayr,
by such explanations must always be abstractions from the that species are interbreeding groups of organisms. But we
wider biological context, and this always poses potential need only note that the vast majority of species, and all
limits on their application. First, the constituents of a biologi- species for the first 80% or so of the history of life, are asexual
cal mechanism are themselves dynamic and more or less to see that this account is seriously limited. (Perhaps Mayr’s
transient entities. Mechanistic explanations will be successful rather dismissive attitude to microbes has helped to direct
only to the extent that the constituents identified are suffi- attention from this embarrassment to his so-called Biological
ciently stable on the timescale of the phenomenon under Species Concept.)
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are more or less well integrated, more or less clearly demar- the cells of which it is composed, so a species, qua individual,
cated. As Hull notes, ‘Most organisms do exhibit more must replace the organisms that are its parts. The Modern
internal organization than most species, but this difference Synthesis has understood this process of reproduction as, at
is one of degree, not kind. Most species do not exhibit the its core, replication, and this is a central point of criticism
internal organization common in vertebrate organisms, but for advocates of an extended, or more radically replaced,
the same can be said for plants as organisms. Most plants understanding of evolution. By replication here I mean
do not exhibit the internal organization common in vertebrate exact copying, as is generally understood to occur when a
organisms’. [17, p. 32]. DNA sequence serves as a template for an identical sequence.
My second proviso perhaps deviates more strongly from (For discussion of the distinction between reproduction and
the spirit of the species as individuals thesis. It is that replication, see [22].) The quasi-digital nature of this process
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continuity it marks, or the surrounding flows maintain a horizontal relations between the members of a species and
whirlpool. This is just the difference the niche construction they are connected only by their ancestry. But unless every
perspective signals from the extended phenotype. individual, or at least every individual with a minimal
If species are processes of this kind, then evolution is the novelty (e.g. a point mutation), is the ancestor of a new
change within such processes. Stabilization of a process is species there must be some horizontal connections that estab-
always limited, so some such change is to be expected, as lish a group of individuals as an appropriate set of ancestors
has been extensively discussed in accounts of drift. Where to found a species, and we appear to be launched on an infi-
does adaptive change come from? A trivial but sometimes nite regress. If there existed species-like processes prior to
obfuscated point is that it never comes from natural selection. sexual reproduction, these lacked any coherence or inte-
Selection cannot occur unless some other process provides gration that could qualify them as processual individuals
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spring’s development into directions that are adaptive in the social groups, more or less cooperative and more or less sig-
context of perceived environmental conditions. Wolf and nificant to the course of their lives. Humans belong
Wade [33] define maternal effects as a causal connection simultaneously to families, organizations, companies, clubs,
between some aspect of the mother’s genotype or phenotype, churches, political parties, etc., and thus the species is con-
and the phenotype of the offspring. Clearly the extended nected by a mass of criss-crossing and overlapping links
period of parental care in many vertebrate species provides and supra-organismic level entities.
many opportunities for such causal connections, and pro- This kind of social integration may be unique to humans,
cesses that allow parents to direct development in adaptive indeed even to modern humans in complex civilizations. It is
directions will be strongly selected. It seems likely a priori perhaps part of the reason why some (e.g. [38]) have thought
that such opportunities would be exploited, and the evidence that humans exemplify the very special kind of sociality
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cannot create anything. When theorists applaud the power of sation for the great losses in this respect due to slow
natural selection, what they are really doing is remarking on reproductive processes and small numbers of offspring.
the poverty of the sources of change with which selection has If the highly integrated species is indeed a vehicle for
to work, these being restricted to small random changes in greater evolvability, it is surely because it provides new
the genome. In the debate over the adequacy of the Modern sources of selectable variability. And indeed there are many
Synthesis, questions arise whether certain kinds of change familiar phenomena, already discussed above and in other
happen or not, notably changes with some inherent tendency essays in this volume, that offer to provide just this.
to be adaptive (Lamarckianism); and also whether kinds of First, integrated species appear to offer a much more
changes that are acknowledged to happen are available to favourable environment for the transition from intra-specific
evolution by natural selection. The latter question tends to competition to cooperation, as exemplified in the very high
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accounts of evolution. The Modern Synthesis, specifically, process thinkers, such as the mid-twentieth century organicists
may be more or less true for some kinds of species, but [43 –45] thought agency a quite general feature of organisms. If
quite inadequate for others. If species have evolved new some species are themselves living processes, might they
forms of evolvability, this is surely to be expected. Evolvabil- themselves have a kind of agency, inherent tendencies to
ity of many populations may just be a summative property of change (act) in ways that promote their survival? If we take
organism properties, but as species become integrated pro- seriously the claim that species are individuals then this is at
cesses it is plausible that evolvability might emerge as a least a possibility worth investigation.
specific capacity of lineages.
This leads me to a more speculative final thought. There is Data accessibility. This article has no additional data.
a philosophical tradition of seeing organisms as a kind of
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