APS explains living systems as viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisations whose activity contributes to maintaining the conditions of their own persistence across time.
In broad terms, APS understands biological organisation through three interconnected explanatory dimensions:
- Agency = viability-oriented activity
- Process = continuity-through-transformation
- Scale = distributed organisation across interacting domains
Within this framework, biological phenomena are understood according to the role they play in organised persistence:
- agency concerns the viability-oriented activity through which living systems help sustain themselves
- process concerns the ongoing organisation and transformation through which continuity is maintained
- scale concerns the relationships through which persistence is coordinated across interacting spatial and temporal domains
- cognition concerns viability-oriented evaluation
- semiosis concerns differences that matter for persistence
- function concerns contributions to viability
- purpose concerns the viability-oriented organisation of biological activity
- evolution concerns the historical transformation of organised persistence
These are not separate explanatory domains. Together they describe complementary dimensions of the organisation through which living systems maintain, regenerate, and transform their own persistence across time.