Glossary

Adaptation is the ongoing reorganisation of living organisation that sustains viability under changing conditions.

An affordance is a viability-relevant possibility for action.

Biological agency is the activity through which living systems sustain their own viability.

A biological individual is a constraint-closed system that sustains its own viability.

Biological organisation is the constraint-closed organisation of processes through which living systems sustain their own viability.

Classification is the practice of organising and describing patterns of biological organisation.

Cognition is viability-oriented regulation with counterfactual depth.

A constraint is an active boundary condition that organises flow without predetermining it.

Constraint closure is the self-sustaining organisation of mutually dependent constraints.

Coupling is the dynamic, processual relation through which organism and environment are co-constituted.

Development is the ongoing reorganisation of constraint-closed processes that sustain and transform viability through time.

Diagnosis is the evaluation of a system’s viability-oriented organisation through its response to perturbation.

The environment is the active field of viability-relevant conditions constituted through coupling.

Evolution is the historical transformation of viability-oriented organisation across generations.

Explanatory grammar is the organising logic that determines how explanation works.

Function is the contribution a structure or process makes to sustaining viability.

Homeorhesis is the maintenance of a viable trajectory through change.

Inheritance is the reliable reconstitution of constraint-closed, viability-oriented organisation across generations.

Levels of organisation are epistemic partitions of continuous biological organisation, not real hierarchical layers of being.

Life is viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation.

Mattering is viability-relative significance.

Multi-scale causation is the reciprocal, scale-coupled interaction of processes through which biological organisation sustains itself.

Natural selection is the differential filtering of viable organisation.

A niche is the dynamic organism–environment configuration through which viability is sustained.

Normativity is the viability-relative asymmetry through which processes sustain or undermine persistence.

An organism is a viability-oriented, constraint-closed biological individual that sustains its own persistence.

Persistence is the ongoing continuity of viability-oriented organisation across time.

Perturbation is the probing of a system’s viability-oriented organisation through targeted disturbance.

Physiology is the coordinated, present-tense activity of processes that sustain viability.

Process is the dynamic organisation through which living systems sustain viability across time and scale.

A processual individual is an individual defined by ongoing organisational continuity rather than static structure.

Purpose is the organisation of activity that sustains viability.

Scale is the spatiotemporal organisation through which living processes are coordinated.

Semiosis in APS is the enactment of differences that matter to a system’s continued viability.

A species is a lineage of persistent, viability-oriented organisation.

A taxon is a classification of a persistent pattern of viable organisation.

Time in APS is organised duration—the medium through which living systems sustain and transform their viability.

Transformation is the change of viability-oriented organisation over time.

Umwelt is the organism-specific domain in which environmental conditions acquire viability-relevant significance.

Variation is the structured generation of differences in viability-oriented organisation.

Viability is the ongoing maintenance of the conditions required for continued biological organisation.