Ecosystems as Polyphonic Readiness Fields: 5 Ecosystem Agency: What It Is, What It Is Not

Ecosystems are often described as “acting” — regulating, responding, recovering, collapsing.

From the relational-ontology perspective, we must be careful: these verbs are metaphors, not literal claims.

No ecosystem is an agent in the way a single organism is, nor does it hold meaning in the semiotic sense.

Yet there is something genuinely agentic in ecosystems. This post articulates what ecosystem agency is, what it is not, and how it migrates across species and scales.

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1. Ecosystems as Theories of Possibility

An ecosystem is not an object, not a “superorganism,” not a container of activities.

It is a system-as-theory: a structured set of potentialities for actualisation, distributed across species, environments, and temporal layers.

• The “ecosystem” emerges when multiple species enact overlapping readiness fields.

• Each species actualises part of the field, shaping possibilities for others.

• The field itself is a relational medium, not a bearer of intention.

In other words, the ecosystem is a network of perspectival cuts, not a single locus of action.

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2. Agency Without a Subject

Classical agency assumes a coherent subject capable of intention or choice.

Ecosystem agency violates every assumption of that model:

• It migrates across species.

• It emerges only from the alignment and constraint of multiple perspectival loci.

• It is distributed, not centered; patterned, not decided.

Example: A predator-prey-mutualist system produces temporal and spatial rhythms that regulate resource flow.

• No predator “plans” the system.

• No prey “negotiates” coherence.

• Yet the ecosystem exhibits patterns of constraint and facilitation that behave as if agentic.

Agency here is the observable actualisation of systemic potential, not intention or consciousness.

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3. Migration of Agency

Agency in ecosystems is not fixed. It migrates along readiness gradients:

• In a drought, plant responsiveness drives water availability patterns; herbivores shift activity windows; predators follow prey temporally.

• In a bloom, phytoplankton structure nutrients; grazers adjust reproduction; microbial decomposition responds.

The apparent “actor” changes as species act, react, and constrain each other.

Agency is a property of relational dynamics, not of any single species.

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4. Collapse and Resilience as Field Coherence

When we describe an ecosystem as “resilient” or “collapsed,” we must translate carefully:

• Collapse = a loss of coherence in the distributed readiness field; perspectival cuts no longer reinforce one another.

• Resilience = the capacity for realignment of cuts after perturbation; new actualisations restore coherence.

There is no ecosystem “decision” to resist change.

There is only the system’s capacity to sustain multi-perspectival alignment under shifting constraints.

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5. Maintaining the Semiotic Boundary

It is crucial to preserve the distinction between ecological value systems and symbolic meaning:

• Predators controlling prey populations = ecological value dynamics.

• No symbolic interpretation is embedded; no meaning is produced.

• Agency in this sense is readiness enacted, not semiosis.

This maintains strict adherence to the Hallidayan stratification:

• Ecological regulation occurs at the level of behaviour/coordination,

• Meaning occurs only in semiotic systems.

Any conflation introduces teleology or anthropomorphism. Avoid it.

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6. Summary: What Ecosystem Agency Is, What It Is Not

Aspect	What It Is	What It Is Not
Locus	Distributed across species and environmental structures	A single actor or organism
Mechanism	Mutual constraints actualising readiness	Conscious choice, intention
Dynamics	Migrates along temporal/spatial gradients	Fixed or localized
Outcome	Coherence, patterning, emergent rhythms	Meaningful “decisions”
Relation to value	Ecological regulation (fitness, persistence)	Semiotic meaning or interpretation

Ecosystem agency is real, measurable, and emergent, but it is always relational, never representational.

It is the orchestration of distributed readiness, not the orchestration of thought or meaning.