The first measurements of the differential cross section for the d͑g, p͒n reaction up to 4.0 GeV were performed at the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at Thomas Jefferson Laboratory. We report the cross sections at the proton center-of-mass angles of 36 ± , 52 ± , 69 ± , and 89 ± . These results are in reasonable agreement with previous measurements at lower energy. The 89 ± and 69 ± data show constituent-counting-rule behavior up to 4.0 GeV photon energy. The 52 ± and 36 ± data disagree with the counting-rule behavior. The quantum chromodynamics (QCD) model of nuclear reactions involving reduced amplitudes disagrees with the present data. To reconcile low energy and high energy descriptions of hadronic matter, nuclear physics must determine when it is justified to make a transition from meson-nucleon degrees of freedom to quark-gluon degrees of freedom in the description of a nuclear reaction. The QCD content of nuclei was studied first by Brodsky and Chertok [1]. A possible signature for this transition is that the reaction cross section begins to scale at some incident energy. If scaling were indeed observed, characterization of the approach to scaling would be essential to understand how the dynamics are simplified. High energy twobody photodisintegration of the deuteron ͑gd ! pn͒ is 4576 0031-9007͞98͞81(21)͞4576(4)$15.00