Formalising the Formalism: 1 When the Tool Becomes the Load: How Explanatory Power Generates Obligation

Every formalism begins as relief.

It clarifies, distinguishes, reduces confusion, and makes certain kinds of error harder to commit. For a time, it lightens cognitive and semiotic load.

Then, if it works, something changes.

The tool itself begins to bind.

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When Explanation Succeeds Too Well

A successful formalism does not merely describe a domain.

It reshapes expectations about what ought to be explainable.

Once a calculus proves capable of:

• diagnosing breakdown,

• tracing obligation without subjects,

• explaining persistence without closure,

it becomes tempting to treat it as generally applicable.

This is the first point of danger.

Explanatory success creates normative pressure:

If the theory can explain this, why not that?

The question is not innocent.

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From Instrument to Commitment

At this point, the formalism ceases to be merely a tool.

It becomes a commitment:

• a standard of adequacy,

• a benchmark for intelligibility,

• a measure of theoretical seriousness.

Work that does not pass through it begins to feel under-specified, naïve, or incomplete.

Nothing coercive has occurred.

And yet obligation has emerged.

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The Structural Source of the Pressure

This pressure does not arise from arrogance or imperial ambition.

It arises from the same machinery the calculus itself describes.

The formalism:

• actualises distinctions,

• generates readiness in its users,

• binds expectations about explanation,

• modulates what counts as insight.

In other words, the calculus is now operating as a semiotic system within a field.

It has become subject to its own conditions.

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Minimal Does Not Mean Lightweight

Minimal formalisms are especially prone to overextension.

Because they rely on few distinctions, they appear:

• portable,

• abstract,

• widely reusable.

This makes them attractive for application beyond the contexts that generated them.

But minimality increases load concentration:

each distinction is asked to do more work,

carry more explanatory weight,

bridge more domains.

Saturation begins quietly.

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When Clarity Becomes Demand

At the point of saturation, clarity turns into obligation.

The formalism is no longer something one uses.

It becomes something one must answer to.

Questions shift from:

• Does this illuminate?
  to:

• Why hasn’t this been analysed in these terms?

The tool has become the load.

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Not a Critique — a Diagnosis

This is not an argument against formalisation.

Nor is it a rejection of the calculus developed so far.

It is a structural observation:

no formalism escapes the dynamics it describes.

Explanatory systems generate expectations.

Expectations generate obligation.

Obligation generates saturation.

The danger is not totalisation.

The danger is overuse without reflection.

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Why This Series Exists

This series does not aim to refine the calculus further.

It asks a different question:

What happens when a theory that refuses closure becomes binding anyway?

That question cannot be answered from outside the formalism.

It must be answered from within it, without privilege.

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Next

The next post will examine the most common failure mode at this stage:

Overextension Without Totalisation

How minimal distinctions are asked to explain too much — and why this feels responsible rather than excessive.

That is where saturation first becomes visible.