Gene-centric biology and APS do not simply disagree about which biological component matters most. They represent different explanatory grammars—different ways of organising what counts as a cause, a unit, and an explanation in biology.
The contrast is not between “genes” and “organisms,” but between component-centred explanation and organisation-centred explanation.
Gene-centric grammar
- Evolution = change in gene frequency
- Genes are units of selection
- Organisms are vehicles for replicators
- Information flows from genes outward
- Causation is located at a privileged component
- Genes explain biological order
APS grammar
- Evolution = transformation of viability-oriented organisation
- Viability-oriented organisation is what selection operates on
- Organisms enact constraint-closed agency
- Organisation constrains and integrates genetic processes
- Agency, process, and scale are co-constitutive
- Organisation makes genetic processes biologically meaningful
Gene-centric models successfully describe patterns of inheritance and evolutionary change. APS does not reject these models. It clarifies their domain of validity.
Gene-centric explanations operate within systems that already:
- maintain themselves
- regulate their own conditions of existence
- sustain viability across time
APS begins at this prior condition.
Within viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation:
- genes stabilise and transmit structure
- genetic variation contributes to transformation
- selection reflects differential persistence of viable organisation
Key Point. Gene-centric biology explains how inheritance operates, but APS explains the organisational condition that makes inheritance, variation, and selection biologically meaningful.