What if the success of an economy, hospital, school or public institution were judged not primarily by money, output or activity, but by the life-capacity it protects, restores and enlarges?
This Deep Dive explores The Missing Bridge, a public-facing synthesis that connects John McMurtry’s Life-Value Onto-Axiology to a causal science of living coherence. It explains why a life-value compass is necessary but insufficient: to make institutions answerable to life, we must also trace how specific rules and practices alter provisioning, exposure, safety, time and information; how those changes affect load, capacity and protective margin; whether living systems can regulate and repair; and what happens to future life-capacity.
The discussion shows how this method moves beyond substituting price for value, output for wellbeing, or institutional activity for actual improvement. It also examines the safeguards that keep a unifying framework scientifically usable: mechanisms must be specified, biological, psychological, social and ecological domains must not be collapsed into one another, and causal claims must remain open to disconfirmation.
Read the companion article:
The Missing Bridge: From Life-Value Onto-Axiology to a Causal Science of Living Coherence
Scholarly record:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22530235
This AI-generated programme is an interpretive companion to the published work. It is not the canonical scholarship, empirical validation or authorization for intervention. The published paper remains authoritative.