In APS, continuity should not be confused with wholeness.
Holistic traditions often treat organisms as unified wholes whose identity persists because the whole remains intact. APS instead argues that biological identity is maintained through continuity-preserving organisation.
Living systems undergo constant material turnover, developmental transformation, ecological interaction, and organisational reconfiguration. What persists is not a fixed whole but an ongoing process of organised persistence.
Continuity therefore refers to the maintenance of viability-oriented organisation across change.
The explanatory question is not why a whole remains the same, but how continuity is maintained despite continual transformation.