Hossein Jorjani
First publication: 2026 – 09 – 12
“One Ring to rule them all.” The danger described by this familiar image is not confined to political power. Something similar can happen in the organization of knowledge. An explanatory concept, method, or framework may gradually acquire such broad ambitions that it seeks to become the One Ring of epistemology: the framework under which all other explanations are ultimately to be understood.
There is nothing objectionable about the expansion of an explanatory framework as such. A concept developed in one domain may prove useful in another. A method devised for one class of problems may illuminate quite different phenomena. Some of the most productive developments in knowledge have occurred precisely because concepts and methods crossed their original boundaries.
The question is what justifies the crossing.
An explanatory framework has what may be called an epistemic jurisdiction: a domain within which its explanatory usefulness has been established. Success within that domain does not automatically establish its authority elsewhere. Every extension into a new domain requires justification appropriate to that extension. A framework may eventually acquire very broad jurisdiction, but that jurisdiction must be earned rather than presumed.
The opposite tendency may be called conceptual expansionism. A successful concept or framework is progressively extended beyond the phenomena for which its explanatory value has been demonstrated. Because each individual extension may appear plausible, the expansion can occur almost unnoticed. Eventually, the framework may be applied to phenomena that differ greatly in their mechanisms, organisation, history, and conditions of existence.
Here an important distinction is easily overlooked. The ability to describe a phenomenon in the vocabulary of a framework does not establish that the framework explains the phenomenon. Social relations can be described in terms of systems, conflicts, networks, adaptation, information, evolution, dialectic, or many other vocabularies. The possibility of such a description demonstrates conceptual applicability. Explanatory jurisdiction requires something more: the framework must help identify or account for the processes by which the phenomenon occurs.
Conceptual expansionism reaches its strongest form when a framework no longer merely seeks application in additional domains but claims authority over the explanations operating within them. Other explanatory approaches then become subordinate cases, partial expressions, or local manifestations of the master framework. What began as an explanatory instrument approaches an explanatory monopoly.
The alternative is epistemological pluralism, but this should not itself become a dogma. There is no reason to declare in advance that reality must require many independent explanatory frameworks. Perhaps some frameworks can legitimately acquire extraordinarily broad scope. The point is only that no framework should be granted universal epistemic jurisdiction in advance. Unification, where achieved, is an accomplishment to be demonstrated, not a privilege to be assumed.
The same caution therefore applies both to fragmentation and to unification. We should not imprison an explanatory concept within the domain in which it originated, but neither should success in one domain give it sovereignty over others. Epistemic boundaries may move as knowledge develops, but they should move with explanatory achievement.
No explanatory framework should be presumed to possess the One Ring. And we should beware whenever one begins to claim it.
Hossein Jorjani 