Throughout the history of biology, different thinkers have proposed different answers to the question of what makes living systems distinctive.
- Aristotle emphasised organised activity.
- Kant emphasised reciprocal organisation and natural purpose.
- Schrödinger emphasised energy and thermodynamic order.
- Jonas emphasised metabolism and self-maintenance.
- Rosen emphasised relational organisation.
- Autopoiesis emphasised self-production.
- Kauffman emphasised self-organisation.
- Deacon emphasised constraint and meaning.
- Autonomy theory emphasised self-maintaining organisation.
Each proposal identifies an important aspect of living systems. Rather than treating these traditions as simply competing definitions, APS interprets them as alternative explanatory grammars that illuminate different dimensions of living organisation.
The history of life theories is therefore not merely a search for the correct definition of life. It is a search for the conceptual framework through which life becomes intelligible. APS builds on this history by proposing organised persistence as a framework capable of integrating many of the insights contained within earlier traditions.