" Just as functions within computer science, ecosystems must become first-class citizens in biology. First-class functions are not merely sequences of steps, but genuine entities, which can be passed as arguments to and from other functions in the same manner as other data types. Languages that support this concept have a fundamentally greater expressive power than those that relegate functions to the status of 'second-class citizens' relative to first-class 'data' objects. Biology needs an analogous expressive power in order to refer properly to the role of ecosystems as carriers of fundamental patterns, and as entities parallel to and in some ways superseding organisms. "

― , The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere