Conventional framing
In many scientific contexts, explanatory assumptions are implicit rather than explicit. Biology, in particular, often operates with mixed explanatory grammars, drawing on concepts such as genes, mechanisms, selection, or systems without clearly specifying how these relate within a unified framework. As a result, different explanations may rely on different underlying assumptions about what entities are fundamental, what counts as a cause, and what constitutes an adequate explanation.
APS reframing
APS makes explanatory grammar explicit and treats it as foundational to biological theory. This distinguishes explanatory grammar as a general feature of scientific explanation from the specific explanatory grammar adopted by APS.
In biology, explanatory grammar shapes what counts as an entity (e.g., gene, cell, organism, process) and what counts as a cause (e.g., mechanism, selection, constraint). Different biological traditions have therefore adopted different grammars, variously privileging genes, cells, organisms, or networks as primary explanatory units.
In APS, explanatory grammar is grounded in viability-oriented, constraint-closed organisation rather than in static structure, informational code, or normatively neutral dynamics. Biological explanation is therefore framed in terms of agency, process, and scale: living systems are understood as actively sustaining and modulating the conditions of their own persistence through constraint-closed organisation enacted across continuous processes and interacting scales.
This explanatory grammar integrates the domains of life, evolution, and cognition. It aligns the explanatory triad—agency, process, and scale—with the evolutionary triad—persistence, inheritance, and transformation—providing a unified account of biological organisation and change.
Explanatory grammar therefore determines not only what biology studies, but how biological causation becomes intelligible.
Key Point
Explanatory grammar defines the structure of biological explanation—what counts as real, what counts as a cause, and how persistence is explained.