Glossary

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

Biological agency is viability-oriented self-maintaining activity, not intention, consciousness, or intelligence.

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

A biological individual is a viability-oriented system that maintains organised continuity across continual change.

Biological organisation is the dynamically maintained organisation of processes through which living systems sustain viability.

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 is the integrated, temporally extended organisation of semiosis and evaluation relative to viability-oriented persistence.

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

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

A constraint is an organisational relation that stabilises activity without fully determining it.

Constraint closure is the reciprocal regeneration of viability-sustaining constraints through ongoing organised 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.

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

Developmental organisation is the coordinated continuity through which living systems remain developmentally viable across change.

Developmental plasticity is the regulated reorganisation of development that preserves viability across changing conditions.

Developmental regulation is the coordinated maintenance of viable developmental continuity across changing conditions.

Developmental scaffolding is the organised support structure through which developmental continuity becomes possible and stabilised.

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

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.

In APS, ecology concerns the distributed continuity relations through which living systems persist across interacting organisms, environments, perturbations, and scales. Ecology is not external background surrounding organisms, but part of the organised persistence of life itself.

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.

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

Evaluation is the viability-oriented modulation of activity relative to what matters for organised persistence.

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

The orientation of explanation toward parts or toward organisation.

Explanatory grammar is the structure that determines how explanation works.

Fitness is the context-dependent capacity of organised living systems to sustain persistence and continuity across generations.

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

Function is the viability-relative contribution of structures or processes to organised persistence.

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

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 maintenance of a viable trajectory through change.

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.

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

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 the temporally organised trajectory through which living systems sustain continuity across changing forms and conditions.

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.

Morphogenesis is the organised developmental production and maintenance of viable biological form.

Morphology is the organised biological form through which living systems express and sustain viability-oriented continuity.

Multi-scale causation is the scale-coupled operation of causation across interacting processes in biological systems.

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.

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.

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

Organised persistence is the continued viability-oriented continuity of living organisation across ongoing 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.

Persistence is the active maintenance of organisational continuity through ongoing viability-oriented activity.

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 ongoing organisation of activity through which living systems sustain viability-oriented organisational continuity across time and scale.

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.

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

Regeneration is the large-scale organisational reconstitution through which living systems restore continuity after substantial disruption or loss.

Repair is the restoration of viable organisational continuity after damage or disruption.

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.

Scale is the spatiotemporal extent and coordination of viability-oriented biological organisation across interacting processes.

Scale-coupling is the reciprocal integration of organisation across spatial and temporal scales.

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

A social norm is a coordination constraint that stabilises social organisation.

Social organisation is coordinated organised persistence among interacting living systems.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Viability specifies the conditions under which organised persistence can be sustained and regenerated across time.

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