Toward an autonomous metaphysics of biology based on practice 

Jorge Ramos

UNED, Madrid

Biology is an autonomous from physics (Mayr, 2004), intrinsically complex and methodologically pluralistic (Leonelli, 2019) science. I argue that this autonomy extends to its metaphysics. I propose basing it on its practices to account for its pluralism. Physics and its metaphysics do not exhaust the ontology revealed by biological practices, such as functions, organisms, or species.
I argue that metaphysical insight is acquired both from success and error in practice, not just from theory. Practices reveal real features of the living world because they are constrained by the world: they work with and within it. Their success helps predict accurately, intervene effectively, and correct mistakes over time. Failures, anomalies, or ineffective interventions specify how reality is not or cannot be. Thus, not only institutionalised science, but also historical, traditional, and indigenous practices, when empirically responsive, error-correctable, and iterative across generations, can be considered (Massimi, 2022; Ludwig et al., 2024; Ijatuyi et al., 2025).
Following Kaiser and Suarez’s approach (2025), I consider three illustrative, but not exhaustive, examples. Overlapping genes are stable, higher-level entities that cannot be fully accounted merely from physics. Bio-ontologies, while not providing metaphysical insight per se as formal artifacts (Lean, 2021), can capture real structures, not mere conventions, as a broadly used and refinement-prone practice, successful in cross-ontology communication. The proliferation of definitions of ‘life’ shows how contested research also reveals robust patterns without collapsing into a single theory.
Biology grants a genuine access to reality, but not because it reduces to physics. Disciplined engagement with the living world reveals structures physics alone cannot totally apprehend. Metaphysics of biology is not only an autonomous field, but also complements that of physics, enriching the image of reality we can get.

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