Operational Unboundedness as an Empirical Precondition for Measurement

This work formalizes the minimal, non-negotiable physical preconditions required for any experimental measurement to occur. Rather than proposing new forces, particles, or equations, the theory identifies four operational constraints—operational unboundedness, geometry, time, and resistance to instantaneous change—that must be satisfied by both the measurement apparatus (observer) and the system under investigation. These constraints are derived directly from established physics, including causality, locality, conservation laws, and thermodynamics. The framework reframes measurement as a physical interaction with mandatory energetic and temporal overhead, demonstrating that any system failing to satisfy these conditions is operationally decoupled and therefore lies outside the domain of empirical physics. The contribution of this work is to make explicit the implicit assumptions that underlie all successful experimental practice, providing a metatheoretical filter that distinguishes physically testable models from operationally non-interacting abstractions.