Harald Zierhut

This deposit contains the pre-registered methodology, a pre-B3 reliability amendment, and the complete uncoded extraction register for I5, an empirical investigation of asymmetric normalisation of unresolved liabilities in cosmology literature. I5 forms one component (the Epistemic Incumbency axis) of the planned paper P12 on Frame-Boundary, Structural Solvency, and Epistemic Incumbency in the dark sector. The methodology was frozen on 26 May 2026, prior to data extraction. Phase B2 full-text extraction is complete (20 sources, 100 selected passages); Phase B3 coding has not begun. The purpose of Version 1.0 is to time-stamp the complete uncoded extraction register and the reliability amendment before any code, valence, or Burden-Asymmetry Score is assigned, so that the coding cannot later be suspected of having been reverse-engineered from a desired result. The package includes: (A) the I5 Coding Protocol v3; (B) Source-Lock Final v1.3; (C) Phase B1 v1.2 Candidate Register; (D) Phase B2 Access Check; (E) the complete uncoded B2 extraction register for all 20 sources; and (F) the B3/BAS Amendment v1.1 specifying blind double-coding, status-effect valence rules, pre-coding calibration, and adjudication-before-BAS sequencing. No findings, no Burden-Asymmetry Score, and no Gate verdict are reported. This is Version 1.0 of a planned iterative deposition; Version 2.0 will add the B3 coding, the BAS calculation, and the Gate verdict after coding is complete.

Two Symptoms, One Failure examines whether dark matter and dark energy should be understood as two independent discoveries or as coupled symptoms of a single modelling overextension. The book applies an applicability-diagnostic framework to the standard cosmological use of the FLRW background and argues that dark-sector inferences depend on regime-specific assumptions whose licensing status remains open. It reconstructs the dark sector as a possible artefact of applying a homogeneous cosmological framework beyond its warranted range, with particular attention to backreaction, inhomogeneity, and the methodological status of cosmological inference.

Prephysics develops a diagnostic framework for the conditions under which physical descriptions are applicable. It argues that before a physical theory or model can license claims about the world, the regime-specific conditions of its applicability must be made explicit and assessed. The book introduces a structured protocol for identifying applicability failures, distinguishing formal coherence from physical applicability, and clarifying the methodological status of physical explanation at its boundaries.

This paper identifies a cross-domain recurrence of the same structural failure patterns in cosmological origin proposals, quantum-mechanical interpretations, and foundational finality claims. The pathology is the same in each case: physical claims presuppose framework-constitutive conditions — licensing conditions — that they neither declare nor classify, and the resulting problems are not resolvable by the tools the claims themselves provide. Two structural limits explain why these patterns persist. First, a Structural Boundary Result establishes that no physical theory can fully derive its own licensing conditions: every self-licensing attempt terminates in postulate, circle, or frame-exit. Second, the major assessment frameworks in philosophy of science (Kuhn, Lakatos, Laudan, Dawid) operate at theory-level and do not provide claim-level diagnostics with regime-binding, auditable verdicts, or reformulation directives. From these two limits, a necessity argument follows: a methodological layer that makes licensing conditions explicit, classifiable, and auditable is structurally required. The paper specifies this layer — applicability diagnostics — as methodological infrastructure analogous to metrology. A six-step diagnostic procedure is defined and demonstrated on a worked example (Hartle–Hawking no-boundary proposal), producing a determinate verdict, a trigger report, and a reformulation directive. A fourteen-case Master Table applies seven diagnostic signatures (S1–S7) across cosmology, quantum mechanics, and foundational physics. The constraints identified are necessary, not sufficient: they define a diagnostic threshold, not a success criterion.

Ten papers spanning cosmology, quantum foundations, and the philosophy of foundational physics have produced a programme-internal convergence claim: persistent boundary problems in these domains arise not from empirical gaps but from undisclosed licensing conditions that cannot be resolved within the physical theories that presuppose them. We treat this as a working conclusion, made auditable by explicit cross-paper mapping (Table 1) and the published audit trails in Papers 1–10. We show that this finding, combined with two independently established results—that no physical theory can derive its own licensing conditions (the Structural Boundary Result) and that existing philosophical methodologies do not provide claim-level diagnostics with regime-binding and auditable verdicts (the Framework Gap)—yields a disjunctive conclusion: the systematic investigation of licensing conditions constitutes a distinct research mode. We call this mode prephysics. Prephysics is not metaphysics, not philosophy of science in the classical sense, and not anti-physical: it is the operationalised, regime-bound, reflexively consistent investigation of the conditions under which physical claims are licensed. We distinguish prephysics from five neighbouring disciplines, specify four quality criteria, identify three classes of structurally forced research questions, and argue that the recognition of this research mode transforms persistent foundational disputes into diagnosable licensing questions. Prephysics does not replace physics; it clarifies the conditions under which physical description is licensed. Keywords: prephysics, applicability conditions, licensing conditions, diagnostic protocol, philosophy of physics, structural boundary, foundational methodology, levels of description.

The standard cosmological model (GR+ΛCDM) enjoys remarkable empirical success. Yet a systematic question has received little attention in the philosophical and foundational literature: are the applicability conditions for deploying general relativity at cosmological scales actually satisfied? This paper develops and applies an operationalised validation-licensing protocol to answer that question. The protocol evaluates six applicability conditions (A1–A6), identifies diagnostic signatures, and produces a reproducible verdict—PASS, OPEN, or Limit of Applicability—together with an explicit audit trail. Three principal results emerge. First, a regime-dependent applicability profile shows that GR transitions from PASS in the solar-system regime (R1) to OPEN in the cosmological regime (R3), with the transition correlating with the onset of gravitational anomalies near the MOND acceleration scale a₀. Second, a constraint-disclosure inventory identifies twelve typically undeclared modelling choices that constitutively carry the empirical fit of ΛCDM, demonstrating that this success is a configuration achievement rather than a model-independent result. Third, a diagnostic inheritance structure shows that standard necessity claims for dark matter and dark energy inherit the OPEN status of the GR-applicability presupposition on which they depend. The paper concludes with reformulation directives specifying what observational evidence would convert the diagnostic status from OPEN to PASS, and demonstrates that the protocol is diagnostic and model-neutral: it does not advocate modified gravity, does not propose an alternative cosmology, and does not predict observational outcomes. Additional Description: Preprint. Submitted to Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Virtual Special Issue ‘Modeling the Cosmos: Frontiers in Philosophy of Astrophysics and Cosmology’ (Guest Editors: Silvia De Bianchi, Marco Forgione, Federico Viglione). Part of the research programme ‘Applicability Diagnostics in Fundamental Physics’ (Zierhut & Schwarz).

Physics presupposes time, law, and order without reflecting on the conditions that make such description possible. This paper reconstructs the structural emergence path: a sequence of seven logically ordered levels—existence, difference, relation, reproducibility, invariance, lawfulness, and time-like ordering—without which systematic description of change would be impossible. The analysis operates pre-empirically, identifying necessary (not sufficient) conditions through radical minimalism and validating them via negative analysis, convergence testing, and a worked example from quantum foundations. The emergence path proves robust against variation in starting points. We show that the seven levels generate six operational applicability conditions (A1–A6) and that these conditions occupy a distinct level that cannot be derived from within the physical theories that presuppose them. A brief diagnostic demonstration illustrates how the conditions apply to a concrete foundational problem. The analysis makes no ontological claims and does not propose new physical theory. v2 changes (April 2026): Added A1–A6 applicability-condition terminology (§3.7) with diagnostic demonstration, L1/L2/L3 level distinction (§5.2), and positioning against applicability literature (§2.4). Added worked example from quantum foundations (§4.3) and new objection (§6.4). Expanded references (25 → 48). The emergence path and core argument are unchanged.

Probabilistic objects that are formally admissible—coherent within standard measure-theoretic or Bayesian frameworks—are routinely treated as physically applicable by default. This paper introduces a claim-level diagnostic protocol that distinguishes formal well-definedness from physical applicability. The protocol evaluates individual probabilistic claims against six explicit applicability conditions (addressability, interface control, stability under admissible variations, traceability, carrier adequacy, and constraint disclosure) and produces three structured outputs: a verdict (PASS / OPEN / Loss of Applicability), a trigger report identifying which conditions are responsible, and an action-guiding reformulation directive. A central contribution is the articulation of OPEN as a positive epistemic status: it marks claim-level non-closure with explicit specification of what is missing, blocking interpretive drift while preserving a controlled path toward closure. Two worked examples—a multiverse typicality claim (verdict: LoA) and a Born-rule claim under decoherence (verdict: OPEN)—demonstrate the protocol’s discriminating behaviour. A micro-case library spanning cosmology, statistical mechanics, quantum foundations, and climate/simulation science confirms domain-generality. The protocol is offered as a lightweight methodological tool that increases the epistemic quality of probabilistic claims by making their applicability conditions explicit, auditable, and comparable across domains.