The series of conversations that have unfolded here — first with the architects of quantum theory, then with its interpretations, and more recently with evolutionary biology — may appear to range widely across domains. Physics, biology, history, probability, fitness: the surface diversity is obvious.
What is less obvious, but more important, is that the same structural problem has been appearing again and again.
This work has not been about particles, or genes, or organisms. It has been about explanation under constraint — about what happens when a field of possibility must be cut in order to become intelligible.
The Necessity of the Cut
Every scientific explanation begins by stabilising something:
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a unit,
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a variable,
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a law,
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a level,
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a mechanism.
Without such stabilisation, there is no explanation — only an undifferentiated field.
The cut is not an error. It is a necessity. It allows prediction, calculation, coordination, and communication. Quantum theory and evolutionary biology are not exceptional in this regard; they are exemplary.
But the cut is never neutral.
Quantum Theory: The Cut at the Limits of Description
In quantum theory, the cut appears at the point where description itself falters:
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the wavefunction stabilises possibility,
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measurement actualises an outcome,
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probability mediates between theory and event.
The interpretive struggles that follow — over collapse, realism, locality, determinism, or multiplicity — do not arise because the theory fails. They arise because the theory succeeds while suppressing relations it cannot accommodate.
What cannot be said is mistaken for what cannot be real. The limits of description are reified as properties of nature.
The resulting discomfort is structural.
Evolutionary Biology: The Cut at the Limits of History
In evolutionary biology, the cut appears elsewhere:
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the gene,
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the organism,
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fitness,
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selection,
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lineage.
These stabilisations make evolution describable. They allow patterns to be tracked and mechanisms to be inferred.
But again, the success of explanation generates resistance. Variation, contingency, multi-level causation, and historical singularity press against unitary cuts. What is foregrounded clarifies; what is suppressed returns as critique.
Determinism is resisted. Reduction is resisted. Closure is resisted.
Not because the science is wrong — but because the field is richer than the cut.
One Structure, Not Two Analogies
It would be a mistake to treat these cases as merely analogous.
The disputes in quantum foundations and evolutionary theory share the same underlying structure:
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A continuous field of constrained possibility.
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A necessary explanatory cut.
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Formal success.
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Relational suppression.
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Interpretive resistance.
Particles and organisms are not the point of unity. The structure of explanation is.
Intolerance as Diagnostic
The intensity of scientific disagreement in these domains is often read as personal, political, or ideological. From a relational perspective, it is better understood as diagnostic.
Intolerance appears precisely where:
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an explanatory cut is pushed too far,
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a unit is treated as ontologically final,
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a perspective is mistaken for a view from nowhere.
Resistance marks the return of suppressed relations.
Einstein’s refusal of dice, Gould’s defence of contingency, Lewontin’s insistence on context, and Bohr’s careful restriction to phenomena all name the same pressure from different directions.
The Field of Constrained Possibility
What these debates have been circling is not a missing mechanism or a better model. It is the field within which models become possible at all.
This field is:
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structured, but not fully formalisable;
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constrained, but not deterministic;
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intelligible only through cuts that never exhaust it.
Explanation does not reveal this field directly. It presses against it.
Beyond Physics and Biology
If this structure appears in quantum theory and evolutionary biology, it is not because these sciences are uniquely troubled. It is because they operate at points where relational excess cannot be easily hidden.
There is no reason to expect the pattern to stop here.
Wherever explanation requires stabilisation — in neuroscience, economics, climate science, artificial intelligence, or elsewhere — the same cut will be made, and the same resistance will appear.
The task ahead is not to resolve these tensions, but to trace them: to follow the cut as it is repeated across domains, and to read intolerance not as failure, but as signal.
That is the work that now opens.
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