Communication
Communication refers to the production, transmission, interpretation, and use of signals through which organisms influence one another’s behaviour.
In conventional accounts, communication is often understood primarily as the transfer of information between a sender and a receiver. APS accepts that communication frequently involves informational processes but argues that information transfer alone does not explain the biological and social significance of communication.
APS instead interprets communication as a mechanism of coordination.
Communication matters because it allows organisms to organise activity in relation to one another. Signals become significant insofar as they contribute to coordinated interactions that support organised persistence.
Communication therefore contributes to continuity.
Through communication, organisms can reduce uncertainty, regulate interactions, coordinate behaviour, and respond more effectively to changing circumstances.
Communication occurs throughout the living world.
Examples include:
- cellular signalling,
- chemical communication,
- behavioural displays,
- vocalisations,
- gestures,
- social signalling,
- symbolic systems,
- language.
Although these forms differ greatly in complexity, they perform a similar organisational role.
They contribute to coordination.
APS emphasises that communication is closely related to evaluation and semiosis.
Communicative signals function as signs that organisms interpret in relation to their ongoing activities and conditions of viability. Communication therefore depends upon processes of evaluation, meaning-making, and sign interpretation rather than simple physical transmission alone.
What is communicated matters only insofar as it influences the organisation of activity. Communication is therefore grounded in the capacity of organisms to evaluate signals in relation to their own persistence and ongoing interactions.
Communication is also closely related to social organisation.
Sustained forms of coordination depend upon communicative processes through which expectations can be stabilised and behaviour can become organised across multiple organisms.
More complex forms of communication support the emergence of:
- social norms,
- symbolic coordination,
- cultural organisation,
- institutions,
- technology.
Communication therefore serves as a bridge between individual and collective forms of organised persistence.
Through communicative processes, coordination can become increasingly stable, distributed, and historically extended across groups, communities, and generations.
APS rejects the view that communication is fundamentally the transfer of information between otherwise separate entities.
Communication is significant because it contributes to coordinated organised persistence.
Information may be transmitted through communication, but communication itself is best understood through the role it plays in maintaining continuity across interacting living systems.
Communication therefore illustrates a central APS principle:
Communication is a mechanism of coordination, and coordination is a mechanism of organised persistence.
Through communication, continuity extends beyond isolated organisms into systems of coordinated interaction that support developmental, social, ecological, and cultural organisation across time and scale.