A research field for auditing the conditions under which physical descriptions are applicable.
Prephysics is not an alternative physics, not a new ontology, and not a rival cosmological or quantum theory. It is a diagnostic research field that asks a prior methodological question: under which conditions is a physical description applicable to the regime in which it is being used? The point is not to weaken physics, but to protect its explanatory force by distinguishing formal availability from licensed application.
A central distinction runs through the programme: a model may be mathematically coherent, internally elegant, and empirically successful in one domain, while still lacking a justified interface to another domain. Prephysics therefore examines the bridges between formal structures, physical targets, measurement regimes, background assumptions, and explanatory claims. The question is not simply whether a theory can represent something, but whether the representation is anchored well enough to count as a physical description of that target.
Core distinction: formal admissibility is not the same as physical applicability. A claim can be expressible within a formalism and still remain OPEN with respect to a specific physical regime if target anchoring, comparability, robustness, or connectivity have not been secured.
The diagnostic vocabulary is deliberately conservative. It does not replace empirical testing and it does not decide metaphysical questions by stipulation. Instead, it makes boundary transfers explicit. When a claim moves from a tested regime to an extrapolated one, the diagnostic asks what licenses that move: which ordering structure is preserved, which alternatives are non-arbitrary, which carrier structure supports the claim, and how the claim connects to neighboring descriptions without circularity.
This makes Prephysics particularly useful at the edges of present-day physics: the measurement problem, cosmological initial conditions, AI-based physical discovery claims, and the dark sector. In each case, the issue is not whether mathematics can be written down, but whether the resulting claim has the conditions needed for physical applicability. The outcome is a disciplined verdict language: PASS, OPEN, or a limit of applicability.
What this page does not claim is equally important. It does not suggest that physics should be replaced by philosophy, nor that empirical work can be bypassed. The diagnostic function is more modest: it identifies where a claim needs an additional licensing step before it can be treated as physically explanatory outside its original domain.
The methodological basis of Prephysics is developed in the following papers: