Evolutionary discourse is usually populated by entities:
- genes
- organisms
- populations
- environments
These are treated as the basic units that:
- interact
- persist
- change over time
But this entity-based framing is not the only way to describe what is going on.
In fact, it may be the least fundamental.
0. The Default Ontology: A World of Things
The standard picture assumes:
evolution is the interaction of discrete entities undergoing processes
On this view:
- entities are primary
- processes are what entities do
- change is the result of interactions between entities
This is intuitive, but it carries an implicit commitment:
that “things” exist prior to the patterns they participate in
1. Flipping the Order: From Entities to Distributions
An alternative framing begins not with entities, but with:
distributions of variation
Instead of asking:
what are the entities doing?
we ask:
how is variation distributed across instances, and how does that distribution change?
In this view:
- what we call “genes” are loci within a distribution of replicable sequences
- what we call “organisms” are relatively stable configurations within a distribution of coordinated processes
- what we call “populations” are statistical groupings of variants across time and space
Entities become:
stabilised patterns within distributions, not primitives
2. Processes Without Things Doing Them
If we remove entities as primary, what happens to processes?
Processes no longer belong to objects.
Instead, they are:
transformations within distributions over time
So rather than:
entities undergoing processes
we have:
distributions evolving through changes in their internal structure
This shift removes the need to treat processes as actions performed by objects.
Processes become:
descriptions of how distributions change
3. The Gene Revisited (Without Entity Status)
Consider the gene again, as introduced in The Selfish Gene.
Traditionally:
- a gene is treated as an entity that replicates
- that entity is embedded in an organism
- and subject to selection pressures
But in a distributional framing:
- “genes” are not primary entities
- they are recurring patterns within a space of possible sequences
- their persistence is a property of how those patterns are distributed across replication events
What we call a gene is:
a region of stability within a broader distribution of variation
Not a thing that persists, but:
a pattern that persists across instances
4. Organisms as Stabilised Configurations
Similarly, what we call organisms are:
- not fundamental units
- but clusters of coordinated processes that recur with sufficient stability to be tracked as units
From earlier discussion in The Organism as Aftereffect, the organism is:
an inferred boundary around a relatively coherent region of interacting processes
In distributional terms, an organism is:
a locally stable attractor within a space of possible configurations
Not an entity that undergoes evolution, but:
a pattern that appears within evolving distributions
5. Populations as the Primary Locus of Description
In this reframing, populations are no longer collections of entities.
They are:
the distribution itself
What evolves is not individuals, but:
the statistical structure of variation across instances
So evolution becomes:
a change in the distribution of configurations over time
This is closer to a statistical description than an object-based one.
6. Selection Reframed (Again, but Final Form)
With entities removed as primitives, “selection” also changes character.
There is no selector.
No mechanism acting on objects.
Instead:
selection is the observed shift in a distribution toward regions associated with greater persistence
It is not an operation performed on entities.
It is:
a pattern of reweighting within a distribution
Selection is therefore not something that happens to things.
It is:
what a distribution looks like as it changes under constraints
7. Causation Without Entities
Earlier we removed forces.
Now we remove entities.
What remains of causation?
Causation becomes:
the structured transformation of distributions under constraints of persistence and variation
No objects are required to carry causal power.
No agents are required to initiate change.
Causation is not something transmitted between things.
It is:
the way distributions evolve given their internal structure and constraints
8. Why Entity-Based Thinking Persists
Entity-based thinking persists because it:
- aligns with perception (we encounter bounded objects)
- simplifies communication (nouns are efficient)
- supports narrative structure (actors, actions, outcomes)
But these are pragmatic advantages, not ontological necessities.
At the level of explanation, entities can obscure more than they reveal.
They encourage us to ask:
- what are the things doing?when a more precise question would be:
- how is the distribution structured, and how does it change?
9. What Replaces Entities
If entities are not fundamental, what takes their place?
Not other entities.
But:
distributions, constraints, and patterns of persistence across variation
These are not objects.
They are:
- statistical structures
- relational configurations
- dynamically maintained regularities
They describe how “things” appear, persist, and change—without requiring that “things” be primary.
10. The Final Shift in Perspective
Across this series, a consistent transformation has occurred:
- Genes → not agents, but patterns within distributions
- Organisms → not controllers, but stabilised configurations
- Selection → not a process with a selector, but a pattern of differential persistence
- Forces → not drivers, but metaphorical overlays on constraints
- Entities → not primitives, but abstractions over recurring structure
What remains is a shift from:
a world of interacting things
to:
a world of evolving distributions of variation under constraint
Closing Statement
Evolution does not require entities as its foundation.
Entities are one way of describing what we observe when distributions stabilise into recognisable patterns.
But they are not the starting point.
They are:
the outcome of a particular way of carving up continuity into discrete units
When that carving is relaxed, what emerges is not a void, but a different kind of intelligibility:
one in which persistence, variation, and constraint replace objects, agents, and forces as the primary explanatory terms.
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