Reification (fallacy of misplaced concreteness)

Biological Parallel

"The ecosystem" doesn't make decisions—individual organisms responding to local chemical gradients create aggregate patterns we label "succession." There's no immune system command center issuing orders; distributed white blood cells follow chemotactic signals and contact-dependent activation. Reifying these patterns obscures the actual mechanism: millions of local interactions following simple rules, not coordinated strategy from an abstracted entity.