A set of practices and techniques intended to limit variability and individuality; a prioritization of rules, limits, and conventions (rather than exceptions) in the service of reason. Surpassing mere METHOD, formal regulation seeks to produce highly intentional objects of knowledge. The modern sense of regulation is derived from the guiding principles that structured religious life, and yet the term has acquired scientific connotations pertaining to measured order as imposed by the French mètre (and its règle) and by empirical assumptions about natural occurrences (like the so-called “regular” heartbeat). In scholarly environments, the conscious and unconscious governance of disciplines by rules and restrictions—understood as efforts at maintenance—inevitably leads to various strategies of conservativism that subsequently require intellectual “deregulation.”