In a recent paper,¹ Belgian cyberneticist and evolutionary theorist Francis Heylighen makes an interesting observation. He points out that all of the most influential recent attempts to revise the theory of evolution rely on two ideas: relationality and agency. 

Whether it’s self-organization, systems biology, coevolution, synergy, symbiogenesis, niche construction, teleonomy, evo-devo, multilevel selection, or the major evolutionary transitions theory — all of them invoke (a) autonomous action and (b) interactions within systems that are not merely the sum of their parts. 

Heylighen draws what (at first) seems to be a very radical conclusion from this: That perhaps “relational agency” should be seen as the fundamental basis of biology — or even of reality as whole. 

“Simply formulated,” Heylighen writes, “this is an approach that sees the world as a network of interacting agencies rather than as a collection of independent objects subjected to external forces.”

In other words: actions (and specifically, interactions) rather than things, are the basic building blocks of the universe. 

“Against Parmenides, we may conclude that at all levels, from particles to stars, change (‘Becoming’) is more fundamental than permanence (‘Being’),” Heylighen writes. 

He argues that the science is showing that we need to abandon the objects-based worldview that goes all the way back to Plato and Aristotle. Following the philosopher David Abram, he argues that we need to return to something more akin to the animistic worldview of hunter-gatherer societies, in which even rocks and rivers were seen as inspirited agents. 

If this seems a bit supernaturalistic, or even mystical, Heylighen does lean into that impression. He seems to want the reader to see his thesis as something earthshakingly radical: critiquing the very foundations of modern science and philosophy, challenging sacred cows and fundamental structures of thought passed down to us from Greek philosophy, calling Being Itself into question…

What Exactly Does That Mean? 

I wish Heylighen’s thesis were as interesting as it seems to be at first glance. It almost is. If he would just go a bit further, it might be. But when it comes down to it, it seems like Heylighen isn’t willing to genuinely challenge Richard Dawkins, much less Aristotle. I’m afraid to say reading Heylighen gives me the strong impression of what you might call “calculated iconoclasm” — dramatically smashing icons, but avoiding the ones that might really get him in trouble. Which, of course, isn’t really iconoclasm. 

First — when Heylighen talks of “agency” he is not using a robust philosophical definition, which would imply free will and therefore mind. It turns out that for Heylighen, “agency” just means an innate tendency towards one state rather than another state. So, a river has agency because it tends to flow towards the sea. A rock has agency because it tends to hold together in one piece. An organism has agency because it tends to move, consume nutrients, and reproduce. 

Well, it’s hard to argue that organisms, rivers, and even rocks don’t tend towards certain states. It’s also an entirely uninteresting proposition. I doubt even Aristotle would disagree. 

When Heylighen gets down to defining his terms, it’s clear that he isn’t saying much of anything at all. For example, he says that the simplest way to understand his concept of relational agency may be the conditional action rule: “given some condition X, an action will take place that produces the new condition Y.” When he explains what a “condition” is, he has to do linguistic gymnastics to avoid including any “things” or “objects” in the definition (because that would defeat the whole point). He says: “Conditions here are any states of affairs whose presence can be distinguished from their absence.” 

That’s not much of a definition. “State of affairs” and “conditions” mean the same thing, and the last half of the sentence is a long way of saying basically nothing. You might as well say: “Things here are defined as any things that are distinguishable from nothing.” It’s empty fluff. It’s tautological, and the reason it has to be tautological is that Heylighen can’t actually say anything without having the disavowed “objects” sneak into his definition somewhere. Then he would be undone. 

He could, if he were willing to be more radical, have talked about — let’s see — “pure action,” or “Movement Itself” (as C. S. Lewis would say), existing out there in Platonic space, independent of any particular subject or object, that suddenly took on flesh when our universe sprang into being… or something like that. 

But he’s not that radical. Heylighen is willing to challenge the idea of being itself, but he doesn’t seem to be willing to challenge materialism. 

The Sacredest of Cows

Which isn’t surprising. If you’re trying to be an elite thought-leader in scientific circles, there’s not as much social and professional cost to challenging Being Itself as there is to challenging materialism. 

Of course, that may be just because a challenge to Being Itself is entirely non-threatening, since it’s hard to challenge Being Itself and still actually say anything. At any rate, a challenge to Being Itself is certainly innocuous if you aren’t willing to question materialism first; as long as the universe is still just matter and energy and empty space, who really cares if “becoming” is more fundamental than “being”? Neither exists in the materialist’s universe, because neither is material. In the materialist’s universe, “becoming” and “being” are just words, and that’s all that Heylighen’s distinction amounts to: just words, describing the same old naturalistic model of the cosmos. 

Because Heylighen is (apparently) a scientific materialist at heart, his critiques of the old model can never go quite far enough to actually represent a departure from the model. To the best of my understanding, he’s just insisting on using different terminology. So, to take one example, he makes a lot of noise about rejecting Dawkins’s “selfish gene” model of evolution — but it’s hard to imagine Dawkins actually disagreeing with any concrete claim he makes about biology. There isn’t really much to disagree with.

As far as I can tell, the closest Heylighen comes to actually claiming anything (not “anything new,” just anything) is when he mentions some of the famously disconcerting discoveries of quantum physics, such as the fact that a particle must be observed in order to collapse into a stable state. 

These are indeed some pretty earth-shaking revelations, but Heylighen does not explore the philosophical implications of the discoveries in any depth. He cites them as evidence that “change” is more foundational to reality than “Being,” but it’s not clear why that must be the case. For one thing, Heylighen also doesn’t address the fact that “being” is actually implied in the very experiments he cites. If interaction between the observer and the particle is necessary to give the particle a stable form, there is, notwithstanding, an observer and a (undefined) particle at the beginning of the process, isn’t there?

Indeed, he doesn’t answer the deeper question of what there is to change if you don’t have Being first. (And if you’re trying to challenge the primacy of Being, that’s a pretty fundamental question to answer, isn’t it?) Nor does he touch on the thorny question of whether “change” (or “Becoming”) itself exists, that is, has being (which would then make “Being” more fundamental than “change,” again). 

It’s a shame there isn’t more substance or clarity to Heylighen’s argument, because he’s right that the dominant view of the universe in contemporary science should be challenged. But to seriously challenge it, you have to be willing to believe in things other than space and matter and energy. Mind, free will/agency, intangible qualities, non-physical “ideals” such as Being and Change and Movement and Love … that sort of theory could bring a truly radical shift from the current model — not this playing around with words. 

Originality and Truth

Fortunately, there are genuinely iconoclastic thinkers, such as William Dembski, who also reject the “objects sitting in space” model and are working to construct alternative models of the universe. But, in contrast, a lot of these would-be evolutionary revisionists really seem to be more interested in sounding edgy. And as C. S. Lewis pointed out, prioritizing that usually fails to even make you edgy: 

[N]o man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring two pence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom.

Why is that? I think it’s because to care about being radical or important or revolutionary is to care about what other people think, and anyone who is focused on what other people think will be unable to have a truly original idea because he is afraid of seeming stupid (or old-fashioned or out-of-touch or wrongheaded or ridiculous or dangerous or tame). 

On the other hand, people who don’t think much about other people’s opinions often stumble across truly earth-shaking ideas, and then present their findings in a very humble and unassuming way. Perhaps someone will do this soon in evolutionary biology. 

Perhaps they already have. There is, after all, a simpler take-away from Heylighen’s (genuinely astute) observation that all major attempts to revise evolutionary theory involve agency and relationship. It could be that it’s impossible to understand life without invoking agency simply because living things were designed by an agent. And it could be that that the elements of life are “relational” — more than a sum of their parts — simply because living things were planned as wholes, not as parts. 

Well, don’t expect that theory to be received with fireworks and applause. It’s very unfashionable — not edgy in the least. 

Notes

1. “Relational Agency: A New Ontology for Coevolving Systems,” in Evolution “On Purpose”: Teleonomy in Living Systems (MIT Press, 2023).