Introduction: Biology Arrives Late on Purpose
Biology enters this project deliberately late.
Not because it is unimportant, and not because it is suspect, but because biology so often bears explanatory burdens that do not belong to it. When biology appears too early in an inquiry, it is easily mistaken for a master key — a source of causes rather than a domain of constraints.
This series begins from a position of respect for biology while refusing its misuse.
1. Biology as the Wrong Kind of Answer
Biological explanations are often invoked at moments of uncertainty:
when social explanation feels unstable,
when meaning seems slippery,
when relational accounts feel diffuse.
In these moments, biology promises solidity. Genes, brains, and evolutionary histories appear to offer causes that do not depend on interpretation or coordination.
But this promise is misleading. Biology does not explain why a phenomenon takes the form it does in the present. It explains what is possible, what is constrained, and what is enabled.
2. Constraint Is Not Constitution
The central confusion this series addresses is simple but pervasive:
Biological constraints are treated as if they constituted phenomena.
Constraints delimit ranges. They do not select outcomes.
A biological system makes some forms of coordination possible and others impossible. It does not specify which meanings, norms, practices, or behaviours will actualise within that space.
When constraint is mistaken for constitution, explanation appears deep while becoming shallow.
3. Why Biology Feels Authoritative
Biology carries rhetorical weight:
it appears prior to culture,
it is associated with necessity rather than contingency,
it invokes timescales that dwarf individual experience.
These features make biological explanation feel final. But finality is not understanding.
Biology’s authority derives from its generality, not from its capacity to explain particular phenomena as they are lived and enacted.
4. The Pattern Reappears
Readers familiar with the previous series will recognise the pattern immediately.
Where psychology located explanation inside the individual, biology relocates it behind the individual — into genes, brains, or evolutionary pasts. The explanatory reflex is the same:
relation is bypassed,
meaning is displaced,
inquiry closes early.
Only the location of closure has changed.
5. What This Series Will — and Will Not — Do
This series will:
preserve biology’s legitimacy as a science of constraint and enablement,
separate biological explanation from ontological overreach,
show how biology is turned into myth by explanatory over-promotion.
It will not:
deny biological facts,
reduce culture to biology,
offer an alternative biological theory.
The aim is clarification, not correction.
Conclusion: Keeping Biology in Its Place
Biology matters profoundly. But it matters in the right way.
By restoring biology to its proper explanatory role, we reopen inquiry rather than closing it. Meaning, normativity, and coordination return to view — not in opposition to biology, but alongside it.
In the next post, we will examine constraint, enablement, and constitution in detail, showing why confusing them is the root of biology’s misuse.
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