Introduction: From Science to Explanatory Authority
Biology achieves mythic status when it is asked to explain everything: traits, behaviour, preferences, norms, and meaning itself. At that point, authority and explanation are conflated, and biology is no longer simply a domain of constraints and enablements.
This post examines how over-extension produces this myth, and how restoring biology to its proper domain both preserves its authority and reopens explanation.
1. The Allure of Total Explanation
When biology is promoted to explain everything, it carries immediate rhetorical advantages:
it appeals to necessity rather than contingency,
it appears objective rather than negotiated,
it draws on timescales beyond individual experience.
These features make biology persuasive — almost irresistible — even when the explanation is ontologically incomplete.
2. Myth in Action
Myth arises when constraint, enablement, and history are collapsed into constitutive narratives:
constraints become explanations of present phenomena,
enablements are treated as causes rather than possibilities,
evolutionary histories masquerade as justification.
In each case, biology stops being descriptive and becomes normative and causal by fiat.
3. The Cost of Over-Promotion
This over-promotion has real consequences:
relational processes are displaced,
meaning and normativity are erased,
inquiry is foreclosed in favour of authoritative narratives.
The explanatory reflex we have traced across psychology and biology repeats: explanation ends where understanding should begin.
4. Restoring Biology to Its Domain
Properly understood, biology does immense explanatory work without overreach:
it defines the space of possibility,
it sets conditions for emergence of traits and behaviours,
it reveals enabling structures without prescribing outcomes.
Restoring these limits turns biology back into a tool rather than a deus ex machina.
5. The Power of Properly Bounded Explanation
When biology is read correctly, it does not compete with relational or semiotic explanation; it complements it. Constraints inform the present without erasing it. Enablements make possibilities visible without predetermining them. Historical narratives become context, not closure.
The myth dissolves, and explanation regains orientation rather than authority.
Conclusion: Biology Freed, Inquiry Restored
Biology becomes myth when it is asked to answer questions it cannot answer. The solution is not to dismiss it, but to respect its domain.
Once its limits are clear, biology ceases to suppress inquiry and instead illuminates it, preparing the ground for relational, present-oriented understanding.
In the next series, we will explore Human Nature After Essence, showing how stability, plasticity, and variation can be appreciated without collapsing them into traits or essences.
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