Glossary

Accountability makes responsibility answerable.

Adaptation is the ongoing reorganisation of living organisation that sustains viability through change.

Living systems maintain themselves not by preserving fixed patterns of organisation but by continually reorganising their functional activity as circumstances change.

An affordance is a viability-relevant possibility for action.

Ageing is the progressive transformation of biological organisation across time that alters the capacities supporting viability and persistence.

Architectural Dependency makes the dependency commitments represented by APS pathway architecture explicit.

Autonomy is the capacity of a system to participate in maintaining the organisational conditions required for its own continued persistence. It does not imply independence from the environment, but active self-maintenance through viability-oriented organisation.

Autopoiesis explains living systems as self-producing organisations that maintain themselves through their own activity.

Awareness is sensitivity to significant conditions.

Behaviour is how biological agency is expressed in action. It consists of the context-sensitive responses and activities through which living systems interact with conditions that matter for organised persistence.

Biological agency is the viability-oriented organisational activity through which living organisation is enacted and sustained.

Biological design is the organised structure of living systems shaped by viability.

Biological evaluation is the process through which living systems distinguish what matters for continued functioning and adaptive persistence.

Biological explanation makes biological phenomena intelligible through explanatory approaches appropriate to the question; APS gives particular attention to viability-oriented organisation and organised persistence.

The biological imperative is the fundamental tendency of living systems to maintain themselves and persist through changing conditions.

A biological individual is a viability-oriented and organisationally integrated system that maintains coherent continuity through change.

Biological meaning is the significance that something has for a living system. It arises when conditions matter differently for viability, functioning, and adaptive persistence, allowing organisms to distinguish among opportunities, resources, threats, and constraints.

Biological organisation is the ongoing organisation through which living systems maintain the conditions of continued viable functioning.

Within APS, biological systems are understood primarily through their organisation rather than their material composition. Their defining characteristic is the coordinated activity through which viability is maintained over time.

Biological values are patterns of importance that emerge when living systems repeatedly evaluate conditions according to their significance for viability, functioning, and adaptive persistence. They help explain why some conditions matter more than others and guide behaviour and regulation throughout the living world.

Causation is how processes contribute to maintaining or changing biological organisation.

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

Closure is the reciprocal organisation of mutually sustaining relations within a system.

Cognition organises what matters biologically across time so that significance can contribute to activity beyond immediate or fixed regulation.

Communication is a mechanism of coordination through which living systems organise activity and sustain continuity.

Conceptual Governance manages conceptual development while preserving explanatory coherence.

Conceptual Stability is the condition that enables concepts to function reliably within scientific explanation.

Consciousness is a specialised and highly integrated mode of cognition emerging within some viability-oriented living systems.

Constitutive dependency exists when a later form of organisation is inseparable from organisational structures already present in an earlier form.

A constraint selectively alters the possibilities available to activity without fully determining outcomes.

Constraint closure is the reciprocal organisation of mutually sustaining constraints within living organisation.

Constraint Modulation explains the dynamic activity of living organisation. Whereas Constraint Closure describes the mutually sustaining organisation of constraints within a living system, Constraint Modulation describes how that organisation is continually maintained, repaired, adjusted, and re-established through the system's own activity.

In APS, continuity refers to the preservation of viability-oriented organisation across time through ongoing transformation, adaptive reorganisation, and persistence-maintaining activity rather than through static sameness or unchanging identity.

Coordination is the organised alignment of activity that contributes to organised persistence.

Counterfactual depth is the extent to which present regulation is shaped by non-present but viability-relevant conditions.

Coupling is the reciprocal dynamic relation through which systems or processes become mutually influential.

Cultural inheritance is the process through which cultural continuity is reproduced across generations.

Culture is socially distributed organised persistence maintained across generations through shared practices, meanings, and symbolic systems.

A dependency specifies how one explanatorily relevant feature depends upon another; the type of dependence must be stated rather than assumed.

Dependency hypotheses make proposed relations explicit so that their type, material basis, evidence, scope, alternatives, and failure conditions can be assessed.

Development is the temporally extended differentiation and reorganisation of biological organisation through a living system's developmental history.

Developmental organisation is the coordinated organisation of developmental processes through which living systems are generated or transformed over time.

Developmental plasticity is regulated variation in developmental trajectories or outcomes in response to changing conditions.

Developmental regulation is the coordinated modulation of developmental processes across changing conditions.

Developmental scaffolding is systematic support for developmental processes or trajectories in a particular biological context.

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

Distributed Functional Organisation explains how biological functions extend across organised organism–environment relationships while biological agency remains centred in the living organism.

Domination occurs when social power becomes organised in ways that systematically undermine legitimate participation, accountability, standing, or treatment.

Ecological organisation concerns the organised relations between organisms and their environments that sustain biological persistence.

In APS, ecological resilience concerns the continuity-preserving reorganisation of ecosystems and ecological relations under perturbation. Ecological resilience is not merely resistance to disturbance, but the capacity of distributed ecological systems to reorganise persistence across interacting environmental and multiscale continuity structures.

Ecology concerns the continuity relations through which living systems sustain viable persistence.

In APS, ecosystems are not merely collections of organisms within an environment, but distributed ecological continuity structures through which persistence, adaptation, perturbation, resilience, and environmental coupling become organised across interacting scales.

Emergence describes higher-order organisation, but in APS it is explained through viability-oriented organisation, not treated as a primitive.

Enabling dependency makes a later form of organisation possible while preserving its organisational distinctiveness.

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

Environmental responsibility emerges where agents possess the power to shape conditions that matter to present and future forms of life.

Environmental value explains why environmental entities and conditions can become objects of concern beyond their immediate contribution to organismic viability.

Ethics investigates morality.

Evaluation is the process of distinguishing what matters relative to a particular criterion, norm, goal, or standard.

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

The integrated historical architecture through which life maintains continuity across generations while remaining capable of transformation.

The explanandum is what is to be explained.

Explanation goes beyond description by clarifying why or how a phenomenon is as it is through relations or processes relevant to the explanatory question.

An explanatory architecture is the organised structure through which a research programme organises biological explanation.

The orientation of explanation toward parts or toward organisation.

Explanatory gain is a warranted comparator-relative improvement for a specified explanatory target, not merely a difference between explanations.

APS's Explanatory Grammar organises the concepts and relations through which it explains living organisation and organised persistence. It has potential foundational generality because living organisation itself is its principal explanatory target, but it is not an obligatory grammar for every biological explanation.

Explanatory organisation describes how an explanatory architecture functions as a coherent explanatory system.

Explanatory priorities identify the questions that a research programme treats as central to biological explanation.

Explanatory realism is the view that successful biological explanations work because they identify real organisational relations involved in maintaining viability-oriented organised persistence rather than merely providing useful descriptions or predictive tools.

An explanatory target identifies the principal biological phenomenon toward which a research programme directs its explanatory effort.

Fitness is the context-dependent capacity of organised living systems to sustain continuity across generations. In APS, fitness concerns the differential continuity of organised persistence under changing conditions.

Fragility is the vulnerability of organised persistence to disruption or failed reorganisation.

Function is viability-relative organisational contribution within living organisation.

Functional Equivalence explains how different mechanisms can realise the same organisational role, allowing living systems to maintain viability despite changes in their material organisation.

Functional Integration explains how diverse biological functions are coordinated into a coherent organisational whole that maintains the viability and organised persistence of the living system.

Functional lineage refers to the continuity of biological roles or capacities despite differences in their structural realisation.

Functional Organisation explains how biological functions are coordinated into a coherent viability-oriented whole through which living systems continually maintain organised persistence.

A gene is a functional component of developmental and regulatory organisation.

A biological goal is a state or trajectory privileged within viability-oriented organisation.

Holism is the view that biological systems must be understood as organised wholes rather than as mere collections of isolated parts. APS shares the anti-reductionist insight motivating holism but rejects vague appeals to irreducible whole-properties. Biological organisation is explained through viability-oriented, constraint-closed processes distributed across scale and time.

Homeorhesis is the regulation of an unfolding viable biological trajectory through change.

Human values identify what matters within human forms of life.

Information becomes biologically significant only within systems already organised around viability-oriented persistence. Information is therefore derivative of evaluation and semiosis rather than foundational to life itself.

Inheritance is the reliable reconstitution of viability-oriented organisation through which organised persistence is reproduced across generations.

Institutions are distributed constraint systems that stabilise social continuity.

Integration organises what matters into coherent functional relations.

In APS, intelligence is a specialised organisational development within life, not the defining basis of life itself.

Learning is experience-dependent modification of future activity.

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

Life is viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation.

A life-cycle is a temporally organised trajectory of characteristic biological transformations during a living system's existence.

Lineages are the historical continuities through which living organisation persists and evolves.

In APS, malfunction refers to continuity impairment within organised persistence. Malfunction is not merely the failure of an isolated component, but the disruption of organisational relations required for sustaining viable continuity across interacting biological processes and scales.

Mattering is the viability-relative significance of differences within organised living activity.

Meaning is the viability-relative significance that differences acquire within organised biological activity.

Mechanisms explain how biological processes operate, but their biological significance depends upon viability-oriented organisation rather than isolated causal activity alone.

Memory is the persistence of past influence within present organisation.

Mind is the integrated organization of evaluative cognition through which an agent maintains a coherent relationship with itself and its world.

The process through which norms become subject to moral assessment and justification.

Moral Legitimacy concerns whether organised conduct can be justified rather than merely explained, accepted, effective, lawful, or persistent.

Moral standing concerns who or what counts within moral evaluation and why.

Morality organises collective life around obligations, responsibilities, legitimacy, and moral concern.

Morphogenesis is the developmental generation and reorganisation of biological form.

Morphology is the form and structural configuration of a biological system or structure.

Multi-scale causation concerns materially implemented causal relations across spatial or temporal scales without assigning intrinsic causal priority to any scale.

Natural selection is the differential stabilisation of viable organisation across generations.

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

Niche construction is the active reorganisation of environmental conditions through which living systems help sustain their own continuity and that of other systems.

Norm Formation explains how recurring patterns of Shared Evaluation acquire social continuity and become stable normative organisation.

Normativity is the viability-relative distinction between what supports or undermines organised persistence.

Ontogeny is the organised developmental continuity through which biological individuals persist across time.

Operational Persistence is the continuing organisational accomplishment through which coordinated biological functions actively maintain the viability of a living system.

Organicism is a tradition in biology and philosophy that treats living systems as integrated wholes rather than mere collections of parts. APS shares organicism’s rejection of reductionism and its emphasis on organised biological unity, but differs by grounding organisation in viability-oriented, constraint-closed processes rather than in organismic essences or holistic vital principles.

Organisational continuity is the maintained coherence of viability-oriented biological organisation across continual transformation through time.

Organisational coupling is the reciprocal integration through which organised systems become mutually dependent.

Organisational dependency identifies cases in which biological explanation depends upon how relevant elements are organised.

Organisational realism holds that biological organisation is a genuine explanatory feature of living systems without implying holistic or metaphysical entities.

Organised persistence is the continuity of living organisation despite ongoing material, functional, and environmental change.

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

Organisms and environments reciprocally organise one another through ongoing relations of activity, constraint, and viability.

Organismality is the degree to which a living system exhibits the integrated, coordinated, and self-maintaining characteristics associated with organisms.

Persistence is continuity through 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.

Plasticity is the capacity of living systems to reorganise themselves while remaining viable.

Process concerns how continuity is maintained despite change.

A processual individual is an individual maintained through organised continuity across ongoing transformation.

Purpose is the viability-oriented organisation of activity that sustains organised persistence.

Reason supports reflective evaluation and judgement.

Reductionism explains systems through their parts; APS retains material grounding but locates biological explanation in organised, viability-oriented systems.

Reflective agency is the capacity to reflect upon and modify one's own goals, beliefs, evaluations, and actions.

Reflective evaluation is the deliberate assessment of what matters and why.

Regeneration is the renewed production or re-establishment of biological structure or organisation following loss, damage, or disruption.

Regulation is the maintenance of viability through adaptive adjustment.

Repair is a biological response to damage or disruption that restores, replaces, compensates for, or reorganises affected structures, processes, or functions.

Representation is a derived form of cognition in which evaluative semiosis becomes stabilised across non-immediate conditions.

In APS, resilience refers to the continuity-preserving capacity of living systems under perturbation. Resilience is expressed through regulation, compensation, recovery, adaptive flexibility, and organisational reorganisation that sustain viable persistence across changing conditions.

Resolution is the granularity of explanatory or observational description.

Responsibility identifies who is answerable for what.

Scale concerns where persistence is organised across spatial and temporal extents.

Selfhood is the organized continuity through which a living system persists as a distinct centre of significance.

Semiosis is the viability-relative structuring of meaningful difference within organised activity through which biological meaning emerges.

The process through which individual evaluations become socially organised.

Significance is what matters to an agent.

Collectively sustained expectations that organise behaviour within a community.

Social organisation is coordinated organised persistence among interacting living systems.

Social Power is an organisational feature of social systems through which participation, opportunity, authority, and constraint are structured.

Spatiotemporal organisation is the structured distribution and coordination of activity across space and time in maintaining viability.

Species identify biologically significant entities or patterns within evolutionary history; APS does not define them as identical with lineages or taxonomic classifications.

Survival names the continued existence achieved through living organisation; APS explains that outcome through viability, biological agency, and organised persistence.

Symbolic coordination uses shared symbolic systems to stabilise and extend coordinated organised persistence.

A taxon is a classificatory designation applied to organised persistence.

Technology externalises and extends organisational capacities through continuity-preserving structures embedded in the environment.

Teleology, in APS, is the organisation of activity in relation to viability, not externally imposed purpose or mere appearance.

Teleonomy describes apparently goal-directed biological organisation without invoking conscious intention or external design. APS incorporates this insight while grounding purposive organisation more directly in viability-oriented persistence.

The temporal field is the continuity context within which organised systems persist, transform, and remain viable over time.

Temporal organisation refers to the coordinated regulation of biological processes across time through which living systems maintain viability, persistence, and organised continuity.

In APS, temporality refers to the organised persistence and transformation of living systems across interacting timescales through which continuity, adaptation, development, and viable organisation are sustained across time.

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.

Values stabilise what matters for an agent or community and organise the evaluative patterns through which decisions, judgments, and forms of social coordination become possible.

Variation is the structured generation of organisational differences within viability-oriented systems.

Viability specifies the conditions compatible with the continued functioning and organised persistence of living organisation.

Viability-orientation is activity organised relative to the conditions of viable persistence.

A virus is a biologically active replicator that depends upon host organisation for persistence.

Vulnerability identifies conditions under which harms, burdens, exclusions, or losses become morally relevant and therefore contributes to Moral Evaluation.