1 Evolution as Instantiation and Realisation: A Relational Ontology of Biological Potential
In traditional evolutionary theory, genes are often treated as material units of inheritance, subject to replication, variation, and selection. But in our relational model, we begin by reframing genes not as things but as structured biological potential: possibilities for life to take form.
This potential exists at two interconnected levels. First, there is the species potential: the full range of genomic possibilities that belong to a species. Second, there is the organism potential: an individuated configuration of that species potential in a specific genome. Each organism carries an instance of the species' potential—a unique but related actualisation of the wider system.
This is where we apply the dimension of individuation. Species potential is a shared, collective potential, while organism potential is an individuated subset of it. Every new genome is a variation—a novel instance—produced by processes such as recombination and mutation, yet constrained by the overall architecture of species potential.
The move from species potential to organism genome is a process of instantiation. This is not a material process in itself, but a structural one: it is the actualisation of potential as a particular instance. Each genome is not a random collection of genes but a specific pathway through the probabilistic landscape of species potential.
But life does not stop at the genome. What emerges is a phenotype—the observable structure and physiological organisation of the organism. The phenotype is the expression of the genotype. Here we bring in a third key dimension: realisation. While instantiation relates potential to instance, realisation relates content to expression. In this framework, the genotype is content, and the phenotype is its expression.
Importantly, the phenotype includes the physiological and neurological architectures that condition an organism’s behavioural potential—structures through which the genotype can be expressed in contextually responsive ways. Behaviour itself, however, emerges from dynamic interactions with the environment and is not fully determined by genotype alone.
So: the genotype is an instance of potential (instantiation), and the phenotype is the expression of that instance (realisation). This gives us a precise structural distinction: instantiation accounts for variation, while realisation accounts for form.
Now consider evolution. Evolution is the change over time in which instances get actualised—i.e., which genomic configurations are replicated from generation to generation. Selection acts on the phenotype, but in doing so it shifts the probabilities of what gets instantiated in the next generation. Over time, this alters the profile of species potential: some configurations become more likely, others less so. Evolution, then, is a dynamic modulation of potential via the frequencies of its instantiations.
This perspective avoids treating evolution as the movement of physical things and instead construes it as a transformation in the relational space of biological potential. Organisms are not isolated entities but instances within a dynamic field. They are structured outcomes of a system whose probabilities are continuously being reshaped by feedback from the realised forms that succeed or fail.
Such a model is not merely metaphorical. It provides a structural language for understanding biological emergence without reducing it to mechanisms alone. It allows us to view life as a layered process of individuation, instantiation, and realisation—each layer nested within the others, and all dynamically evolving across time.
In this framework, evolution is not just change. It is a systemic reconfiguration of potential through the selective actualisation and expression of living form.
2 Evolution as a Transformation in the Relational Space of Biological Potential
When we say that evolution is a transformation in the relational space of biological potential, we are reimagining evolutionary change not as the movement or mutation of physical units (like discrete genes), but as a systemic shift in the structure of possibilities that life can take.
In this view, biological potential is the structured space of possibilities for life forms within a given species. It is not a random or unbounded set, but an organised potential constrained by the biochemical, developmental, and evolutionary history of the lineage. This potential includes the combinations of genes and regulatory mechanisms that can be instantiated as viable organisms.
The relational space is the system of dependencies and correlations within that potential—how certain gene combinations tend to co-occur, how particular developmental pathways constrain others, and how traits emerge as composites of many interacting factors. It is not a flat space but a highly contoured one, shaped by the relationships among genes, their expressions, and the organism’s interaction with its environment.
Now, when selection acts, it doesn’t simply eliminate “bad” organisms and preserve “good” ones. It shifts the probabilities of which parts of the species potential are more likely to be instantiated in future generations. Over time, this process changes the shape of the relational space itself. Some regions of the space become densely populated—frequent instantiations of certain configurations—while others become sparse or inaccessible.
So rather than seeing evolution as a series of outcomes (this creature survived, that one didn’t), we see it as a transformation of the structure of the possible. The relational space of biological potential becomes reweighted and reshaped, like a landscape whose contours are eroded and reformed by the ongoing pressures of environmental interaction and selective feedback.
In this way, evolution is not just about lineage or descent; it is about the dynamic reorganisation of what is possible. The actualised forms (phenotypes) feed back into the system, reshaping the contours of potential that determine what can be actualised next. Evolution is thus a process of learning at the level of the species: a recursive adaptation of potential through selective instantiation and realisation.
3 Beyond Survival: Evolution as the Reshaping of Potential
In conventional narratives, evolution is often framed in terms of survival: traits that increase an organism's fitness are preserved, while those that hinder it are lost. But if we take a step back and look through the lens of relational ontology, a deeper structure begins to emerge—one in which evolution is not merely a history of traits, but a transformation of the possible itself.
Every species contains a structured set of biological possibilities—its species potential. This potential is not a list of traits, but a multidimensional relational space: a network of genetic, developmental, and epigenetic pathways that define how life might take form. The organism, with its genome, is an instantiated instance of that potential. Its traits—its physiology, morphology, even its behavioural propensities—are the result of the realisation of this instance as a living, acting body.
From this perspective, evolution is not simply the selection of one trait over another. It is the modulation of biological potential through selective feedback. As phenotypes succeed or fail in given environments, the probability landscape of species potential is reshaped. Certain configurations become more likely to be instantiated, while others recede into improbability. Over many generations, the structure of what is possible itself shifts.
This is why we speak of evolution as a transformation in the relational space of biological potential. It is not just a matter of change, but of systemic reorganisation. The field of possibility is not static; it evolves. And crucially, it evolves through feedback from its own instantiations. Organisms are not mere outputs of the system—they are also inputs. The forms that succeed leave traces in the field, subtly reweighting the system of potential that governs what can follow.
This model helps us move beyond the metaphor of nature as a blind selector. Evolution becomes intelligible as a relational process: a recursive dialogue between the instantiated and the potential, in which each generation not only inherits, but reshapes the ground from which life emerges.
Such a perspective has implications far beyond biology. It invites us to see all living systems—not just organisms, but cultures, languages, technologies—as fields of potential dynamically restructured through the actualisations they produce. And in that light, evolution is not a march of winners, but a continual reconfiguration of what life can become.
4 Ecosystems as Dynamic Fields of Biological Potential
If evolution is a transformation in the relational space of biological potential, then ecosystems can be seen as the higher-order contexts in which such transformations are co-actualised. Just as an organism’s genome is an instantiation of species potential, the ecosystem is a dynamic configuration of co-instantiated potentials across many species. It is not a static container of life but a structured field of interacting actualities and potentials—a relational ecology of instantiations, shaped and reshaped through mutual selection.
In this view, each organism participates in the ecosystem not merely as an isolated actor but as an instance of species potential whose phenotype, behaviour, and reproduction feed back into the collective field. Predator and prey, plant and pollinator, parasite and host—all are relational roles instantiated within overlapping ecological niches. These niches themselves are not fixed locations but probabilistic contours of potential interaction: sites where certain configurations of life tend to succeed.
What evolves, then, is not only the species but the very relational landscape of interaction. A new trait in one species may instantiate a change in the probabilities of survival or reproduction in others, cascading through the system. Selection pressures are not externally imposed but internally emergent: they arise from the interaction of realised forms, feeding back to reshape what potentials are likely to be actualised in future generations.
This makes the ecosystem a site of distributed transformation: an evolving field in which biological potentials at every level—gene, genome, organism, population—are modulated by the success or failure of their realisations in a dynamic web of relations. The boundaries between organism and environment begin to blur; what matters is not the entity but the unfolding relation. Ecosystems, then, are not static backdrops but metamorphic contexts: relational spaces whose internal dynamics sculpt the arc of biological emergence.
5 Systemic Framing: Ecosystems as Relational Fields of Biological Instantiation
We begin with the notion of biological potential—the structured possibilities for life to take form. At the level of a species, this is species potential: the total configuration space of genomic and phenotypic variation. Each organism instantiates a subset of this: an organism potential actualised in a particular genome, and expressed as a phenotype. But no organism exists in isolation. It co-actualises its potential within a relational field: the ecosystem.
To model this, we apply our three dimensions:
1. Individuation
The biological potential of a species is distributed across individuals: each genome is an individuated actualisation of shared potential.
But species themselves are individuated within ecosystems. That is, each species represents a locus of biological potential that is relationally defined by its ecological roles (e.g., predator, decomposer, symbiont).
So the ecosystem individuates potentials at two levels: intra-species (organism from species) and inter-species (species from biosphere).
2. Instantiation
Every organism that emerges is an instantiation of organism potential.
But at a higher scale, every population distribution across an ecosystem is also an instantiation—of the ecological possibilities latent in that ecosystem’s current configuration.
For example, a dense predator population constrains the instantiation of prey phenotypes (e.g., slower individuals may not reach reproductive age), while simultaneously selecting for evasive traits—modulating the ecosystem’s actualised distribution.
3. Realisation
The genotype is realised in the phenotype, but the phenotype itself is realised ecologically through interaction.
Realisation at the ecosystem level is behavioural and systemic: it includes how phenotypes function in relation to one another and to abiotic factors (temperature, terrain, nutrient cycles).
The realised forms of multiple species jointly condition the expression of others—making ecosystem-level realisation inherently multi-stratal and recursive.
Transformation in the Relational Space
What this gives us is a dynamic model in which the ecosystem is not merely a stage but a co-evolving field of biological instantiations. As phenotypes succeed or fail, the relational field is reshaped—not by external force but by systemic feedback. Selection operates not as a filter, but as a reweighing of the probability landscape: certain genomic and phenotypic pathways become more or less likely to be instantiated depending on the realised outcomes of interaction.
Thus, ecosystem dynamics are transformations in the relational space of biological potential:
Not only do organisms evolve, but so do the conditions of their evolution.
Selection is not merely acting on individuals but through their relational configurations.
The ecosystem itself becomes a system of distributed instantiation: an emergent pattern of feedback between potential and expression.
In the beginning, there is not the organism, nor even the gene, but the possibility of life: structured biological potential, like a hidden melody in the fabric of matter. This potential is no mere abstraction—it is the deep architecture from which forms emerge, cohere, and diverge. Evolution is not just the shaping of bodies, but the modulation of this potential through time. And nowhere is this more visible, more astonishing, than in the dance of the ecosystem.
Each species carries within it a map of potential: a system of possibilities from which individual organisms are instantiated. These are not replicas, but variations—each genome a distinct pathway through the probabilities of species potential. The process of individuation ensures that no two instantiations are the same. Mutation, recombination, and inheritance act not as random forces, but as engines of difference, turning the wheel of variation within a shared biological field.
But species themselves are also individuated. They emerge as distinct expressions of ecological roles—predator, pollinator, decomposer—not as static categories, but as relational nodes in a web of interdependence. The ecosystem is not a container of species, but a dynamic field in which species potentials interact, overlap, and constrain one another. Each species is both a locus of its own potential and a condition for the realisation of others.
In this field, instantiation becomes systemic. The appearance of an organism is not a singular event, but part of a distributed unfolding. A population of foxes instantiates not only fox potential, but also the latent configurations of prey species, of plant life, of microbial networks. The success or failure of one phenotype reshapes the probabilities of countless others. As ecological interactions play out, they select which genomic and behavioural pathways are likely to be instantiated next. This is not external selection acting on fixed entities, but recursive feedback within a relational space.
The phenotype, the visible expression of the genotype, is realised not in isolation but through this very interaction. A beak shape is not just the outcome of a gene—it is the outcome of feeding on seeds of a certain hardness, which are themselves the outcome of plant strategies, which in turn are influenced by the beaks that harvest them. Realisation is ecological: it is the dance of expression across species and scales.
So ecosystems are not just networks of material exchange. They are arenas of unfolding potential—fields of possibility that shift and adapt as their constituent forms succeed or fail. Evolution here is not the march of progress, but a transformation in the relational space of biological potential. What can be instantiated tomorrow depends on what was instantiated today. And what is realised today reshapes the very field from which tomorrow's life will emerge.
This view invites us into a new mythology of nature. Life is not a competition of isolated beings, but a co-creative process—a relational spiral of actualisation and expression. The world is alive not just in its organisms, but in the field of becoming that links them. To protect an ecosystem, then, is not merely to preserve what is, but to safeguard what could be—the hidden melodies not yet sung, the possible lives not yet lived, the sacred unfolding of potential in all its forms.
No comments:
Post a Comment