Life Beyond Human Boundaries – Sabina Leonelli

François Papale, W. Ford Doolittle, and S. Andrew Inkpen Abstract We argue that there is an explanatory or epistemic value in assuming that “It’s the song not the singer(s)” or ITSNTS is an example of process, rather than thing or substance, epistemology and that process ontology as in Nicholson and Dupré is the preferred way to go. We see this as one way to defeat the Platonic claim that ITSNTS is immaterial but affects, causally, the world of “things”.

6.1 Introduction We argue that the evolution of multispecies consortia is better explained as the evolution of processes, rather than of things or substances. This was the point of the “It’s the song, not the singer(s)” (ITSNTS) theory that two of us elaborated in 2018 (Doolittle & Inkpen, 2018), and which originated in 2010 (Doolittle & Zhaxy- bayeva, 2010). And if we’re correct, this reveals an explanatory or epistemic benefit of a process philosophy for evolutionary biology. In this chapter, we’d like to go some way towards that revelation by explaining our thinking and defending it against a common objection to ITSNTS.

We should make clear at the outset, though, that none of us is a metaphysician and our concerns here are with process philosophy as an epistemic (explanatory) project. We’re not concerned with the question of whether the world is made up of F. Papale Department of Philosophy, Université McGill, Montréal, Canada e-mail: [email protected] W. F. Doolittle (B) Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada e-mail: [email protected] Department of Philosophy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada S.

A. Inkpen Department of Philosophy, Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2026 S. Leonelli et al. (eds.), Life Beyond Human Boundaries: John Dupré’s Philosophy and the Interdisciplinary Study of the Life Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-26977-5_6 F. Papale et al. only processes or only things, nor with which is ontologically prior. Like Brunet (2024), we can see how both positions could be fruitful for understanding different living phenomena.

We are therefore concerned only with showing how a process- philosophy perspective on some evolutionary and ecological phenomena is fruitful, epistemically. Given that the content of process philosophy varies among its proponents (Dupré & Nicholson, 2018), we need to be clear about how we use these terms, which we take to be mostly in line with commonsense and common parlance in either discipline.

Life Beyond Human Boundaries: John Dupré’s Philosophy and the Interdisciplinary Study of the Life Sciences Sabina Leonelli · Celso Neto · Stephan Guttinger Editors Life Beyond Human Boundaries: John Dupré’s Philosophy and the Interdisciplinary Study of the Life Sciences Editors Sabina Leonelli School of Social Sciences and Technology Technical University of Munich München, Bayern, Germany Stephan Guttinger Centre for the Study of Life Sciences University of Exeter Exeter, UK Celso Neto Centre for the Study of Life Sciences University of Exeter Exeter, UK ISBN 978-3-032-26976-8 ISBN 978-3-032-26977-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-26977-5 This work was supported by University of Exeter and Technical University of Munich.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2026. This book is an open access publication. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribu- tion and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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