Author: Timothy Speed
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18267243
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Contemporary physics is characterized by high formal correctness, empirical stability, and technical effectiveness. At the same time, situations increasingly arise in which central phenomena—such as the direction of time, cosmological constants, measurement events, or emergence—are no longer ontologically integrated but stabilized through statistical, ensemble-based, or simulation-driven constructions. This practice appears as progress, yet marks a structural shift: explanation is replaced by placeholders.
The present paper diagnoses this pattern as a statistical rescue reflex. This term denotes a recurring mechanism in which formal residues are not recognized as boundary markers but externalized through statistics, simulation, or measure assumptions. The resulting models are correct, consistent, and functional—yet worldless. They stabilize describability without grounding a world.
Building on the distinction between theoretical correctness and world-founding capacity, the paper does not analyze individual theories but a disciplinary mode of operation. It shows how the continued conflation of stabilization and knowledge leads to a self-distortion of research: models densify, simulations accelerate, while ontological orientation erodes. The contribution is not intended as a critique of physical methods, but as a diagnosis of a structural boundary that is currently being systematically bypassed.
Statistical Rescue Reflex; Stabilization Without World; Simulation as Placeholder; Ontological Boundary; World-Founding Capacity; Self-Distortion of Physics; Ontology of Physics; World-Reference; Epistemic Limits; Simulation-Based Modeling; Structural Diagnosis; Worldless Models
Zenodo landing page: https://zenodo.org/records/18267243