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.

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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.