The Double-Slit Experiment as Evidence for Structure-First Physics

The double-slit experiment is commonly interpreted as evidence that particles propagate through space and interfere with themselves along multiple paths. This interpretation relies on an implicit classical assumption: that trajectories are primitive physical objects. In this paper, we show that the experiment provides no empirical evidence for trajectory-based motion. Instead, it constrains only the statistical structure of detector registrations under different boundary and distinguishability conditions. By treating the slits and measurement apparatus as imposed structural constraints, interference is reinterpreted as the overlap of admissible registrations in an under-constrained geometry, while which-way detection corresponds to constraint-locking that suppresses cross-terms. Localization occurs only at registration, not during propagation. Wave–particle duality is thereby dissolved as a projection-dependent artifact rather than a fundamental ontological tension. The double-slit experiment is best understood as direct empirical support for a structure-first ordering, in which geometry and admissibility precede motion, force, and trajectory.