Biology repeatedly asks what is “really” fundamental: genes, organisms, ecosystems, information, or selection. APS argues that these disputes often confuse explanatory priority with ontological priority.
What becomes central in an explanation depends on the question being asked, the available methods, and the explanatory grammar being used. Genes may become explanatorily dominant in population genetics because gene frequencies are mathematically tractable. Organisms may become central in physiology because regulation is integrated at the organismal scale. Ecological relations may dominate in systems ecology because persistence depends on distributed interaction.
But explanatory usefulness does not establish metaphysical primacy.
APS therefore does not choose a privileged level of explanation. Genes, cells, organisms, populations, and ecosystems are not rivals competing for ontological supremacy. They are analytically distinct but organisationally interdependent expressions of viability-oriented, constraint-closed activity enacted across scale and time.
Scientific emphasis shifts as measurement technologies improve, mathematical tools mature, and new conceptual problems arise. What appears “fundamental” often reflects what can be modelled most effectively at a given historical moment. APS treats these shifts as changes in explanatory framing rather than changes in the ontology of life itself.
The framework therefore distinguishes:
- explanatory priority — what becomes central within a particular model or explanatory task;
- ontological priority — the organisational conditions that must exist for any biological explanation to apply at all.
APS locates this ontological condition not in a privileged component or level, but in the ongoing viability-oriented organisation of living systems.