APS and the Social Sciences: How Social Systems Organise Viability Across Scales

Abstract

APS (Agency–Process–Scale) provides a unifying explanatory grammar for the social sciences by reframing individuals, institutions, and cultures as processes of organised persistence. It resolves long-standing tensions between agency and structure, micro and macro explanation, and meaning and mechanism by grounding social phenomena in viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation.

Why has no single framework unified the social sciences?

Economics explains behaviour through individual choice. Sociology emphasises institutions and structure. Anthropology focuses on culture and meaning. Each captures something real—but they often appear theoretically incompatible.

The problem lies not in the phenomena, but in the explanatory grammar used to interpret them.

APS begins from a different question:

What must be true for social systems to persist at all?

By shifting attention from competing causes to conditions of persistence, APS reorganises the explanatory landscape of the social sciences.

This extension should be understood as an analytical test rather than a generalisation. APS does not assume that social systems are biological in a literal sense, but examines whether they exhibit forms of organised persistence that satisfy the conditions identified in biological systems.

Beyond Individuals and Structures

Much of social theory is organised around a familiar opposition:

Individual agency vs social structure
Micro vs macro explanation

APS dissolves this contrast.

Individuals and structures are not competing explanatory primitives. They are interdependent processes within multiscale organisation.

Individuals are biologically grounded agents
Institutions stabilise patterns of interaction
Cultures extend coordination across time

Each exists only through the ongoing activity that sustains it.

Key shift:
Social systems are not collections of entities but organised processes that maintain the conditions of their own persistence. The conditions under which such organisation can be identified are developed in The Explanatory Geometry of Biology — How APS Organises Biological Explanation.

APS Box — Hierarchy vs Scale

Biological systems are often described using hierarchical language:

lower and higher levels
simple and complex forms
or upward-building layers of organisation

APS treats such descriptions primarily as explanatory conveniences rather than as literal features of biological reality.

In place of hierarchy, APS uses the concept of scale.

Living systems are organised across continuously interacting spatial and temporal scales, linked through processes of scale-coupling and reciprocal organisational dependence. Molecular, physiological, behavioural, ecological, and evolutionary processes are not separate ontological layers but dynamically integrated aspects of continuous biological organisation.

APS therefore rejects the idea that biological explanation must proceed:

from lower to higher levels
from more fundamental to less fundamental domains
or through unidirectional chains of causation

Instead, biological organisation is understood through reciprocal relations distributed across interacting scales.

APS also distinguishes scale from resolution.

Scale refers to the spatiotemporal organisation of biological activity itself. Resolution refers to the granularity at which that organisation is described or analysed. What appear as “levels” often reflect differences in explanatory resolution rather than discrete layers of reality.

This shift matters because hierarchical language can unintentionally imply:

privileged explanatory domains
ontological stratification
or one-way causal determination

APS instead understands living systems as dynamically organised, scale-coupled processes sustained through reciprocal organisational relations.

Key Point. Biological organisation varies across interacting scales, not through ranked ontological levels or hierarchical layers of reality.

Agency Across Scales

APS reframes agency as distributed across scales.

Agency is not confined to intention or choice. It is the capacity of organised systems to sustain and modulate their own activity relative to viability.

Organisms maintain themselves through viability-oriented activity
Social systems stabilise coordination across groups
Institutions regulate and reshape the conditions of action

Agency becomes a property of organisation across scales.

Institutions, Norms, and Culture

Within the APS account of social systems, three interdependent processes organise persistence:

Norms regulate activity in real time
Institutions stabilise constraint structures
Culture extends persistence across time

These are not separate levels, but coordinated dimensions of multiscale organisation.

Together, they organise the persistence of social systems across time and scale. These components—norms, institutions, culture, and economic organisation—can be understood as distinct but interdependent dimensions of organised persistence across social systems.

Figure: In APS, norms, institutions, culture, and economic organisation are distinct but interdependent dimensions of organised persistence across social systems.

APS connects social meaning directly to biological normativity.

In organisms, viability distinguishes what sustains or degrades persistence
In social systems, norms and institutions stabilise coordinated activity

Meaning is grounded in what matters for the continuation of organised activity.

APS treats scale as fundamental.

Individual interactions unfold in real time
Institutions stabilise coordination
Culture extends patterns across generations

Higher-scale organisation constrains local activity, while local activity reproduces higher-scale organisation.

APS does not replace existing disciplines. It reorganises how they connect.

Economics becomes the organisation of viability conditions
Sociology integrates structure and agency
Anthropology situates meaning within organisation
Political science analyses stabilised coordination systems

Conclusion: A Framework for Integration

APS provides a unified explanatory grammar for social systems.

Social systems are organised processes of persistence
Agency is distributed across scales
Norms regulate activity
Institutions stabilise constraints
Culture extends persistence across time

This framework also supports domain-specific extensions, such as the analysis of economic systems as processes that organise viability conditions across scales.

For a philosophical analysis of the scope and limits of extending APS beyond biology, see APS as Philosophy: A Viability-Oriented Account of Biological Reality.

Key Points

APS reframes social science around organised persistence
Norms regulate activity, institutions stabilise constraints, culture extends persistence
Agency is distributed across scales
Meaning and normativity are grounded in organisation
APS integrates social and biological explanation