It strikes me as plausible that one of the disadvantages of the use of natural philosophy is not simply that it tends towards a deterministic explanation of things - which is accurate in many circumstances - but that we in our weakness tend to apply these explanations to ourselves as excuses. As creatures who are in some sense somewhat a beast and somewhat an angel, (as even the mad philosophers attest to) it is clear that whatever we are, we have some manner of choice in how we behave and what we become.

This being the case, the more we discover about our impulses - the animal part of our nature - the more bestial we may become. Conveniently, this trend would reinforce the accuracy of the descriptions which then in turn would increase the authority of them. Evolutionary psychology has this problem, as it describes our actions mostly in terms of our biologically linked tendencies. If we consider these determinisms accurate, we may ourselves yield to them instead of denying ourselves. But since we have a reason, it is always our responsibility to decide if we want to yield to an impulse or not. Self-denial is to some degree simply denying these impulses. Science can and perhaps will become totemic in this way; Man must do x or y because it improves the species. It is natural philosophy's version of the jinx.

In economics, the tendency of an action or observation to reinforce that trend which caused the action or observation is called 'reflexivity'. It is probably more or less a property of systems that involve perceiving, willing actors. A Heisenberg's principle of these situations, perhaps?