APS rejects both mechanistic reductionism and anti-mechanistic holism.
Mechanisms matter because biological organisation is realised through concrete causal processes. Metabolism, signalling, regulation, development, repair, breakdown, and other biological phenomena depend upon identifiable mechanisms.
Mechanisms become biologically intelligible through the organisational relations and biological explananda in which they participate.
Mechanisms therefore contribute to explanation without automatically exhausting it.
APS treats mechanisms as materially realised parts or processes of biological organisation whose explanatory contribution must be assessed relative to the explanandum, rather than as complete explanations of life in general.