Biological explanation often relies on concepts such as emergence, information, design, and cognition to describe complex organisation and system-wide behaviour. These terms capture real features of living systems, but they are frequently used as explanatory placeholders: they mark phenomena without specifying the organisational conditions that produce and sustain them.
APS clarifies these concepts by grounding them in viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation. Rather than treating them as explanatory primitives, it shows how they arise from the structured organisation of activity in living systems.
- Emergence refers to the reorganisation of constraint-closed systems across scale and time
- Information reflects differences that matter for viability through evaluation and semiosis
- Cognition arises when evaluative activity becomes sufficiently integrated and temporally extended
- Design is the structured organisation of activity through which systems sustain their own persistence
These are not separate explanatory domains, but different expressions of the same underlying organisation. APS replaces placeholder concepts with an explicit account of how biological systems are organised, maintained, and transformed.
Key Point
APS does not eliminate concepts such as emergence, information, design, and cognition, but re-specifies them within a unified framework of viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation.