Finite Cognition and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge: Stabilization, Negentropy, and Structural Constraints

This paper develops a structural account of scientific knowledge grounded in the constraints of finite cognition. It argues that what is commonly taken as “knowledge of reality” is better understood as the stabilization of representations under resource limitations. Stabilization is interpreted as a form of operational negentropy: a constrained reduction of uncertainty relative to a cognitive system. The framework challenges naive realism without collapsing into relativism, and proposes that scientific models are selected and maintained based on their stability under perturbation rather than their access to an unconstrained underlying reality.