When Meaning Becomes Accountable: Why Institutions Resist Thermodynamic Constraints on Semantic Systems

This preprint analyzes the structural resistance encountered by research that applies thermodynamic constraints to meaning, reasoning, and evaluation systems. It advances the central claim that while meaning is experienced subjectively, it behaves as a governed system subject to stability limits, entropy accumulation, and predictable collapse under recursive processing. This position challenges long-standing academic assumptions that interpretive domains are exempt from formal diagnostic accountability. The paper identifies five sources of institutional discomfort that emerge when meaning is treated as thermodynamically constrained: the loss of subjectivity as a protective shield against evaluation; the reframing of peer review and benchmarking as entropy-injecting processes rather than neutral arbiters; the destabilization of disciplinary boundary protections; the refusal of both relativism and totalization in favor of anchored truth with constrained human access; and the exposure of incentive structures within academic publishing that actively generate semantic instability. Rather than attributing resistance to methodological weakness, the analysis demonstrates that opposition arises from the disruptive implications of making meaning systems accountable to formal constraints. The work situates institutional evaluation mechanisms themselves as objects of thermodynamic analysis, revealing how contemporary knowledge infrastructures may inadvertently accelerate semantic degradation while claiming to ensure quality. This preprint contributes to ongoing debates in hermeneutics, philosophy of science, science policy, and AI-mediated knowledge governance by reframing meaning as an ethical and epistemic system subject to failure, stabilization, and collapse. Keywords thermodynamics of meaning; semantic entropy; institutional resistance; evaluation systems; epistemic accountability; hermeneutics; semantic integrity; academic publishing License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Citation Katz, E. T. (2026). When meaning becomes accountable: Why institutions resist thermodynamic constraints on semantic systems (Preprint v1.0). Zenodo. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.18131162