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This book is a venture in the metaphysics of science, the exploration of the most basic features of the world implied or presupposed by science. One of its main aims is to demonstrate the fundamental importance of such an investigation. Getting this very general picture right makes a real difference to whether we do the science well and understand properly what it tells us. The particular metaphysical thesis that motivates this book is that the world—at least insofar as living beings are concerned—is made up not of substantial particles or things, as philosophers have overwhelmingly supposed, but of processes. It is dynamic through and through. This thesis, we believe, has profound consequences.

More specifically, we propose that the living world is a hierarchy of processes, stabilized and actively maintained at different timescales. We can think of this hierarchy in broadly mereological terms: molecules, cells, organs, organisms, populations, and so on. Although the members of this hierarchy are usually thought of as things, we contend that they are more appropriately understood as processes. A question that arises for any process, as we shall discuss in more detail below, is what enables it to persist. The processes in this hierarchy not only compose one another but also provide conditions for the persistence of other members, both larger and smaller. So, if we take for example a liver, we see that it provides enabling conditions for the persistence of the organism of which it is a part, but also for the hepatocytes that compose it. Outside a very specialized laboratory, a hepatocyte can persist only in a liver. And reciprocally, in order to persist, a liver …