When Process Is Not Enough: Failure and Necessity in Event Attribution

This article examines a systematic failure mode in contemporary scientific interpretation: cases in which formally complete, empirically rich process descriptions are treated as if they license discrete event attribution, despite the absence of physical realization. Using physiological regulatory systems as canonical examples, the work shows that many commonly reported “events” are in fact process-level correlations without commitment, persistence, or irreversible inscription. Such outcomes function as interpretive conveniences rather than physically realized events. The analysis deconstructs these false event attributions without challenging underlying mechanisms or dynamics, and argues that event attribution requires explicit physical realization constraints beyond process description alone.