When Chemistry Works but Explanations Fail: Biochemistry as a Witness of the Process–Event Constraint

Modern chemistry and biochemistry achieve extraordinary predictive success, yet frequently rely on elastic explanatory notions—such as “gating,” “dynamics,” “context dependence,” or “non-genomic effects”—when timing, selectivity, or efficiency resist straightforward interpretation. This work argues that many such tensions do not indicate missing mechanisms, but a category error: the attribution of physical meaning at the level of processes that have not yet been physically realized. Building on a process–event framework developed across a companion series, the paper examines enzymatic catalysis, photosynthetic energy transfer, and hormonal signaling as empirical witnesses to a universal constraint: physical meaning arises only at the level of realized events. The analysis shows that key biochemical observables—rates, efficiencies, and selectivities—track the density of realized events rather than the richness of underlying dynamics. Quantum coherence, conformational motion, binding, and signaling processes remain fully valid descriptions, but do not themselves constitute information, function, or irreversibility. Without modifying quantum mechanics, chemical kinetics, or biochemical pathways, the work delineates the domain of validity of explanatory attribution. Chemistry and biochemistry are not treated as applications of the framework, but as empirical arbiters that expose where interpretation outruns realization.