Substrate Blindness_ A Deterministic Law of Human Cognition, Scientific Error, and Civilization Drift

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the meta-law of substrate blindness: the principle that any biological or cognitive system lacking access to its generative invariants will construct compensatory representations to stabilize behavior. These representations appear as identity, theory, or cultural belief but systematically misidentify the underlying substrate. We formalize substrate blindness, derive its mechanism, and demonstrate its expression across biology, psychology, civilization, and the history of science. Major scientific revolutions are shown to be invariant-revelation events that collapse representational complexity. The framework unifies identity formation, scientific paradigm shifts, and civilizational drift under a single deterministic structure, and outlines implications for epistemology, neuroscience, and the emergence of invariant-visible artificial intelligence.