Theory Survey

Single-sentence verdicts applying the structural admissibility framework to major theories, both contemporary and historical. Verdicts are at the theory level for compactness. The full evaluation runs at the component level (see framework.md). Where the theory-level verdict obscures important component-level structure, the entry flags it.

The framework: identify the bucket the work claims to occupy, decompose into components-in-regimes, and check that each component's derivation chains close in one of three modes (reaches ground / honest deferral / dissolution) against three legs (primitives anchored / regime covered / boundary continuity). The verdict is the decomposition.

The four buckets

Each public-facing label links to the framework's exact technical definition. The labels are aliases for working physicists; the underlying ontology is the framework's.

Public label	Framework name	Short definition
Mathematical exploration	Mathematical physics exploration	Conditional claim, evaluated as mathematics
Effective model	Effective model	Operational primitives within stated regime, no derivation claim
Theory proposal	Mathematical physics theory-construction	Unconditional claim to describe reality, derivation in progress
Physical theory	Physics proper	Derived from named anchors, recovers established physics at boundaries

A theory may claim one bucket while its structure supports another; that is the most common failure mode the framework catches. The entries below carry the bucket-claimed / bucket-supported pair to make this explicit.

Established frameworks

General Relativity — Vacuum field equations are Physical theory: derived from equivalence principle + self-consistency, completely retrodict Newton in the weak field, predicted Mercury precession, lensing, and gravitational waves before observation. Sourced GR inherits matter-theory status from whatever fills T_μν; cosmological-constant Λ is an effective parameter; cosmological applications (FLRW + ΛCDM) are Effective model with the cosmological principle as auxiliary assumption. GR-near-singularities is honest deferral to QG. → deep dive

Quantum Mechanics — Effective model with embedded Physical-theory components. Born rule, commutators, and measurement postulate are operationally defined. The Dirac equation (in flat space, free fermion), spin-statistics theorem, and identical-particle statistics are Physical-theory components embedded in the framework. QM's empirical reach comes from the combination: derived nuclei doing predictive work, operational scaffolding making the framework usable. The category-collapse view treats QM as monolithic Physical theory; the honest reading is that QM contains Physical-theory components inside an Effective-model frame. → deep dive

Standard Model — Effective model with embedded Physical-theory components. Gauge invariance forcing minimal coupling, anomaly cancellation constraining hypercharges, and spin-statistics are Physical theory. Specific gauge group SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1), three generations, Yukawa structure, and mixing matrices are effective. Higgs mechanism is Physical-theory construction with effective specifics. Quark confinement empirically present, analytical derivation incomplete (Millennium Prize). Predictive reach comes from the combination of derived structural backbone plus fitted content. → deep dive

QFT on Curved Spacetime — Calculational framework, not a theory of gravity. Leg A passes only in the matter sector (the metric is classical input, not derived); B1 operates only on fixed backgrounds, not where geometry must also be quantum; B2 recovers flat-space QFT in the Minkowski limit, with SM as input. Back-reaction unresolved, exactly why QG remains open. This is the framework that exists because QG isn't solved.

Historical unification attempts

Kaluza-Klein theory (Kaluza 1921, Klein 1926) — Original 5D unification of Einstein gravity and Maxwell electromagnetism, sitting structurally as Mathematical exploration with Physical-theory aspirations: the 5D metric decomposes algebraically into a 4D metric plus a vector potential plus a scalar, but the scalar field's mass, the compactification radius, and a matter sector were not derived. Modern higher-dimensional Kaluza-Klein lifts (in string theory and supergravity) sit as Theory proposal at the higher-dimensional layer with the same load-bearing open piece: the SM is not derived from the geometric primitives, only embedded by hand. → deep dive

Einstein's unified field theory program (multiple attempts 1925-1955) — Asymmetric metric, teleparallelism, distant parallelism, non-symmetric connection variants. All Theory proposal claiming Physical theory at the geometric layer. None closed: in every attempt, the matter sector was not derived from the geometric primitives, and the empirical content reduced either to GR plus posited matter or to mathematical structures with no clear empirical regime. Historically the load-bearing demonstration of the scope of the unification problem and the difficulty of deriving matter content from geometric primitives alone.

Eddington's Fundamental Theory (Eddington 1936 Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons; 1946 Fundamental Theory, posthumous) — Theory proposal claiming Physical theory: derived the fine-structure constant, proton-electron mass ratio, and other dimensionless constants from group-theoretic structures (Clifford-algebra E-frames, finite combinations of group elements) combined with epistemological postulates about what observers can observe. The fine-structure-constant derivation moved from ${\alpha }^{-1}=136$ in 1929 to ${\alpha }^{-1}=137$ after measurement updates, explained as a correction added when moving from rigid to Galilean coordinates. The fit-to-measurement adjustment damaged the project's reception. The mathematical exposition was contested by contemporaries and remains so (Gross later described it as "totally incomprehensible"). Cited by later derivation programmes and by their critics as a precedent and warning about derivation-from-first-principles claims where the structure was not insulated from the empirical fit it was meant to predict.

Heisenberg's nonlinear spinor theory (Heisenberg 1957) — Theory proposal: a single nonlinear Dirac equation ${\gamma }^{\mu }{\partial }_{\mu }\psi \pm l^2{\gamma }^{\mu }\psi (\overline{\psi }{\gamma }_{\mu }\psi )=0$ supposed to derive all elementary particles as soliton-like solutions. Did not close at any layer; the SM gauge structure that emerged in the 1960s and 70s was not anticipated. Historical precedent for substrate-spinor approaches.

Weyl's gauge theory (Weyl 1918) — Original local-scale-invariance unification of gravity and EM as Mathematical exploration. Failed as physics on Einstein's pocket-watch objection (a free-falling clock's rate would depend on its path through the gauge field, contradicting observation). The gauge concept survived in modified form (gauge invariance as phase rotation in QM) and became foundational to the Standard Model. A mathematical exploration that succeeded by being reinterpreted rather than by closing as originally posed.

Grand Unified Theories

SU(5) Georgi-Glashow (1974) — Theory proposal claiming Physical theory: minimal embedding of SM gauge group in SU(5), predicting proton decay with lifetime ~10^30 years. Empirically falsified at minimal level by Super-Kamiokande's proton-decay non-observation pushing the lifetime bound past 10^34 years. Structurally still teaches gauge unification and anomaly cancellation; not viable in its minimal form.

SO(10) — Theory proposal: embeds the SM gauge group in SO(10), accommodates a right-handed neutrino in the 16 representation, predicts proton decay at longer lifetimes than minimal SU(5). Still viable in current empirical constraints. Doesn't derive the three-generation count or the Yukawa structure.

Pati-Salam (1974) — Theory proposal: lepton number as the fourth color, gauge group SU(4)_c × SU(2)_L × SU(2)_R. Predicts heavy gauge bosons mediating quark-lepton transitions. Some variants survive current empirical constraints.

Flipped SU(5) — Theory proposal: variant with permuted particle assignments to evade some proton-decay constraints of minimal SU(5). Less institutional traction than SO(10) or Pati-Salam.

Trinification (De Rújula-Georgi-Glashow 1984, with Achiman-Stech 1978 antecedent) — Theory proposal: gauge group SU(3)_C × SU(3)_L × SU(3)_R, the maximal subgroup of E6 under cyclic permutation, with the SM fermions arranged into the $(3,\overline{3},1)\oplus (1,3,\overline{3})\oplus (\overline{3},1,3)$ representation. Appears as the low-energy limit of certain heterotic E8 × E8 string compactifications, providing a string-to-SM bridge in those constructions. Less institutionally developed than SU(5) or SO(10) since the multiplicity of scalars and gauge bosons makes detailed phenomenology calculations cumbersome, but variants remain in active research (asymptotic-freedom-preserving constructions, dark-matter embeddings). Doesn't derive three generations or the Yukawa structure.

Supersymmetry and supergravity

Supersymmetry as concept — Mathematical exploration: a Lie superalgebra extending the Poincaré algebra with anticommuting generators, mathematically well-defined. Whether the symmetry is realized in nature is a separate question that the mathematical structure does not by itself answer.

MSSM (Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model) — Theory proposal: SM with superpartners at the TeV scale, predicting specific signatures and lifetimes. LHC data through Run 2 has pushed many MSSM signal regions to scales well above the "naturalness" expectation; the load-bearing open piece is whether the original naturalness motivation survives the empirical constraints. The program has institutional pressure to shift to "Split SUSY" or similar variants.

Supergravity — Theory proposal: gauged supersymmetry incorporating gravity, derives gravity at low energy as a consistency requirement of the gauging. Building block of string theory's low-energy effective field theory.

Split SUSY — Theory proposal: gauginos at TeV scale, scalars at higher (PeV-EeV) scale. Evades some LHC constraints at the cost of giving up the naturalness motivation. Has lost institutional momentum.

Beyond Standard Model unification (non-GUT, non-SUSY)

Technicolor (Weinberg, Susskind 1979) — Theory proposal: replaces the Higgs scalar with a fermion condensate of new "technifermions" in a confining gauge theory. The basic version is mostly ruled out by the 125 GeV Higgs discovery (technicolor predicted no light fundamental scalar) and by electroweak precision tests. Walking technicolor and extended technicolor variants survive in academic conversation with reduced institutional traction.

Composite Higgs models — Theory proposal: Higgs as a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of a strongly-coupled sector at higher energy. Currently constrained by LHC data on Higgs couplings; still viable in specific corners of parameter space.

Randall-Sundrum (warped extra dimensions) (1999) — Theory proposal: a 5D warped geometry with an exponential hierarchy between the Planck and TeV scales. Predicts Kaluza-Klein excitations at the TeV scale; constrained by LHC.

ADD (large extra dimensions) (Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos, Dvali 1998) — Theory proposal: ~mm-scale extra dimensions in which gravity dilutes. Predicts deviations from Newton's 1/r² at sub-mm scales; constrained by short-distance gravity experiments. The original mm-scale formulation is mostly excluded; sub-mm versions remain.

Little Higgs models — Theory proposal: Higgs as a Goldstone boson of a higher symmetry, suppressing radiative corrections by collective symmetry breaking. Constrained by LHC.

Quantum gravity candidates

String Theory — Theory proposal claiming Physical-theory status. Perturbative amplitudes on flat backgrounds are admissible as Mathematical exploration; promoted to Theory proposal where the work claims to describe reality. The ~10^500 vacuum landscape provides no mechanism to select the SM-yielding compactification; SM recovery is open. As Physical theory in the QG discourse, fails B2 by leaving the SM recovery unconstrained. The cleanest case of institutional bucket-misrepresentation: admissible at Theory proposal, inadmissible at Physical theory. → deep dive

M-theory (Witten 1995+) — Theory proposal: 11-dimensional unification of the five string theory variants under one umbrella. Shares String theory's structural issues with empirical anchoring; admissible at Theory proposal, not at Physical theory in QG discourse.

Loop Quantum Gravity — Theory proposal failing all three legs as Physical-theory QG. Geometry quantized without derivation of why geometry is the quantization target (fails A). Semiclassical limit recovering smooth Lorentzian spacetime with matter QFT unresolved after four decades (fails B1). Matter content not addressed structurally (fails B2). Admissible as Theory proposal with interesting mathematical results. → deep dive

AdS/CFT — Mathematics-passing, physics-failing. As mathematics, a well-posed conjectured duality between two defined structures, admissible as Mathematical exploration. As Physical-theory QG, three-leg fail: substrate (AdS₅ × S⁵, large-N 𝒩=4 SYM) isn't reality (fails A), regime isn't our universe (fails B1), boundary theory isn't the SM (fails B2). What's structurally inadmissible is the deployment that cites AdS results as if they had established facts about QG in our universe.

Causal Dynamical Triangulation — Honest research programme: passes A on its lattice prescription, partially recovers semiclassical geometry in simulations, hasn't yet addressed SM coupling. Sits cleanly in Theory proposal with named open items.

Asymptotic Safety — Conjecturally passes A and B1 within truncation schemes for the gravitational RG fixed point; SM recovery from the fixed point is open and isn't the programme's primary target. Honest deferral on B2. Theory proposal at the claimed and supported bucket.

Causal Sets (Sorkin 1987+) — Theory proposal: spacetime as a discrete partially-ordered set with Lorentz invariance preserved on average. Derives a causal-discrete substrate; matter coupling and SM recovery open. Sits cleanly as Theory proposal with named open items.

Group Field Theory (Boulatov 1992 foundation, with Freidel-Oriti-Ryan 2005 matter coupling) — Theory proposal: a quantum field theory defined on copies of a Lie group (typically SU(2) for 3D) whose Feynman amplitudes reproduce the spin-foam path integrals associated with Loop Quantum Gravity. Provides the second-quantised, sum-over-histories formulation of LQG dynamics, with the n-th Feynman graph corresponding to a triangulation of an n-dimensional spacetime. Matter coupling is a major open programme. The 3D case with scalar matter is partially understood (Freidel-Oriti-Ryan), and 4D extensions and SM coupling remain open. Inherits LQG's structural issues with semiclassical limit and matter sector.

Doubly Special Relativity (Amelino-Camelia 2000, Magueijo-Smolin 2002) — Theory proposal: modify special relativity at the Planck scale so the Planck length is observer-invariant. Predicts Planck-suppressed deviations from Lorentz invariance; constrained by high-energy astrophysical observations (GRBs, neutrino arrival times).

Horava-Lifshitz gravity (Horava 2009) — Theory proposal: modify GR by giving up Lorentz invariance at short distances to gain power-counting renormalizability. Suffers from extra scalar degrees of freedom that may be strongly coupled at low energy; the structural status is contested.

Massive gravity (dRGT) (de Rham, Gabadadze, Tolley 2010+) — Theory proposal: give the graviton a small mass without the Boulware-Deser ghost. Constrained by gravitational-wave observations from LIGO/Virgo (graviton mass < 10^-23 eV); remains a Theory proposal in the constrained corner.

Wave Relativity (Tan 2026) — Claims Physical theory with full decomposition. A closes: derived from three empirical anchors (Aharonov-Bohm, Newton, Davisson-Germer + Stern-Gerlach + Pauli) through self-consistency to one master equation. B1 closes via dissolution: sub-Planck QM-in-curved-spacetime question dissolves because matter wave and metric are derived as aspect-projections of a single field Ψ, with both projections failing together at ℓ_P. B2 closes at tree level: SM gauge group, fermion spectrum, generations, and electroweak masses recovered; precision residue named. Open items named at the layer where they're open. The contrast case for the framework. (Disclosure: the framework's author. WR is evaluated on the same standard as every other entry.) → deep dive

Verlinde's Emergent Gravity (Verlinde 2010+) — Fails A: entropy gradients are posited as gravity's source without derivation of why entropy specifically plays that role. Matter content not addressed. Theory proposal claiming Physical-theory status without the derivation to support it.

Shape Dynamics — Theory proposal: replace ADM relativity's foliation choice with conformal invariance. Mathematically reformulates GR but doesn't address QG closure structurally.

Quantum Graphity (Konopka-Markopoulou-Smolin 2008) — Theory proposal: spacetime as a dynamical graph; geometry is emergent from graph dynamics. Underdeveloped relative to LQG or causal sets.

Modified gravity

MOND (Milgrom 1983) — Honest Effective model. The acceleration scale a_0 is named as empirical input. Passes within the galaxy-scale regime it covers. Hasn't delivered a clean relativistic generalisation or SM coupling; those are named open items, not buried. → deep dive

TeVeS (Tensor-Vector-Scalar) (Bekenstein 2004) — Theory proposal: relativistic generalisation of MOND with tensor, vector, and scalar gravitational fields. Constrained by gravitational-wave observations after the 2017 binary neutron-star event (the speed-of-gravity-vs-light constraint is in tension with TeVeS's structure); the load-bearing question is which TeVeS variants survive this constraint.

f(R) gravity — Theory proposal / Effective model: replace the Einstein-Hilbert R term in the action with a function f(R). Specific f(R) choices fit cosmological data without dark energy; the choice itself is empirically motivated rather than derived. Effective model when f(R) is fitted; Theory proposal when claimed as derived from a deeper principle.

DGP (Dvali, Gabadadze, Porrati 2000) — Theory proposal: 4D gravity from a 5D braneworld with crossover scale. Predicted cosmological acceleration without Λ; the self-accelerating branch is ruled out by precision cosmology data, the normal branch remains as a degree of freedom in modified-gravity searches.

Bimetric gravity — Theory proposal: GR with two interacting metrics, related to massive gravity formulations.

Mimetic gravity (Chamseddine-Mukhanov 2013) — Theory proposal: a constrained scalar-field reformulation of GR that introduces a dust-like dark-matter analog without a new particle.

Cosmological and phenomenological proposals

ΛCDM — Effective model with embedded Physical-theory components. GR backbone inherits GR status. Cold dark matter and cosmological constant are effective parameters. Inflation is effective with multiple model families. BBN and CMB acoustic peaks are Physical theory within regime, depending on parameter inputs. Hubble and σ_8 tensions are current open empirical residues, not yet structural failures. → deep dive

Cosmic inflation (generic) (Guth 1981, Linde 1982, Albrecht-Steinhardt 1982) — Effective model with model-dependent variations: solves horizon, flatness, and monopole problems within ΛCDM. The specific inflaton potential is fitted to CMB observables; multiple models (chaotic, new, hybrid, R²) fit current data. Sits as Effective model with named effective parameters.

Eternal inflation (Linde 1986, Vilenkin 1983) — Theory proposal: inflation continues forever in some regions of spacetime, producing a multiverse. Inherits structural issues from the multiverse claim: no derivation principle picks out our pocket-universe parameters.

Multiverse / String landscape — Theory proposal claiming Physical theory: ~10^500 vacua across which physical parameters take different values; our values are anthropically selected. Structurally fails Leg A at the level required for Physical theory: no derivation principle picks out our vacuum from the landscape, only anthropic post-selection. Supports at best as Theory proposal where the load-bearing question is whether the framework counts as "predicting" the SM via anthropic selection rather than derivation.

Steady State (Bondi-Gold-Hoyle 1948) — Effective model historically: posited continuous matter creation to keep the cosmological-principle universe in steady state. Ruled out empirically by the 1965 CMB discovery, QSO distribution, and primordial helium abundance.

Plasma cosmology (Alfvén, 1960s-90s) — Theory proposal historically: cosmology dominated by electromagnetic effects in plasma, not gravitational expansion. Ruled out empirically by the CMB blackbody spectrum and the failure to reproduce BBN.

Quasi-Steady State (Hoyle-Burbidge-Narlikar 1990s) — Effective model variant of steady state with cyclical creation events. Same empirical issues; ruled out by CMB acoustic-peak structure.

Tired light — Effective model historically: redshift as photon energy loss through space, no cosmological expansion. Ruled out empirically by supernova time-dilation observations, the surface-brightness Tolman test, and CMB spectrum.

Variable speed of light (Moffat 1992-93 phase-transition formulation, with Albrecht-Magueijo 1998 smooth-variation formulation following) — Theory proposal: c varies in the early universe (much higher than today, then dropping at a symmetry-breaking phase transition or continuously) to solve the horizon, flatness, monopole, and cosmological-constant problems without inflation. Current empirical constraints favour constant c at the ${10}^{-3}$ level over cosmological distances (Qi et al. 2014 give $n=-0.0033\pm 0.0045$ on a fitted variation index from quasar angular-size data, and DESI 2024-25 BAO data show no significant deviation). Structurally still has open issues that inflation handles cleanly. The mechanism for producing the nearly-scale-invariant CMB perturbation spectrum is less developed, and the isotropy of the CMB requires additional ingredients. Survives empirical constraint at the ${10}^{-3}$ level but has not reproduced the CMB observables that inflation reproduces. Admissible at Theory proposal with the perturbation-spectrum problem named.

Cyclic / Ekpyrotic (Steinhardt-Turok 2001+) — Theory proposal: cyclical universe with brane collisions replacing the singularity. Provides an alternative to inflation; constrained by CMB tensor-to-scalar ratio bounds.

Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (Penrose 2010+) — Theory proposal / Effective model: future infinity of one aeon identified with the Big Bang of the next via conformal rescaling. Empirical residues (Hawking points in CMB) claimed by Penrose's group but contested by independent analysis.

Paradox Engine Cosmology — Three-leg fail as Physical-theory QG. Primitives (u, χ, ρ_c, C(t), kernel exponent 25/12) operationally defined rather than derived. No quantum machinery or curved-spacetime evolution structure. SM treated as primitive labeled "resolved" without derivation. Bucket claimed is Physical theory (unification of DM/DE/inflation/BH-info); bucket actually occupied is Theory proposal without derivation closure, with effective-phenomenology content sitting honestly at the Effective model bucket.

Modern contested ToEs

Geometric Unity (Weinstein 2013+) — Theory proposal claiming Physical theory: unification via the "observerse," a 14-dimensional manifold with a metric tensor that produces both gauge fields and matter content. The full mathematical exposition is at best partial in public; the SM recovery (gauge group, three generations, Yukawa structure) hasn't been demonstrated. Admissible at Theory proposal where the load-bearing open piece is Leg B2 (recovery of established physics). The crank-discourse around the work is heavy; the framework's verdict cuts independently of that. → deep dive

Wolfram Physics Project (Wolfram 2020+) — Theory proposal: spacetime as a dynamical hypergraph with rewriting rules. Lorentz invariance, time-reversal symmetry, and SM recovery are claimed as emergent but not closed. Admissible at Theory proposal; open at Leg B1 (whether QM+GR machinery is recovered in the regime where the SM operates) and Leg B2 (SM recovery).

Lisi E8 (Lisi 2007) — Theory proposal: SM + gravity as a single Lie group E8. Mathematically clean attempt; broke on the three-generation count (the proposed embedding does not produce three generations without additional structure). Sits as Theory proposal with a specific named technical failure.

Penrose Twistor Theory (Penrose 1967+) — Mathematical exploration with genuine mathematical merit (twistor space, twistor strings, BCFW recursion in amplitude calculations). Used as a computational tool in modern scattering-amplitude work. Has not closed as Physical-theory unification; the connection to matter content was never derived.

Penrose's Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) (Penrose, Hameroff 1989+) — Theory proposal at the intersection of QM, gravity, and neuroscience: wave function collapse occurs via objective gravitational reduction in microtubules. Multiple components fail empirical scrutiny (the microtubule timescales for decoherence are much faster than Orch-OR requires); admissible at Theory proposal with severe Leg B1 issues.

't Hooft Cellular Automaton interpretation (2014+) — Theory proposal: QM emerges from a deterministic cellular automaton at the substrate level. Sits alongside other QM interpretations; open whether the deterministic substrate can reproduce the full QM with measurement, and how Bell's theorem is evaded (requires giving up some standard assumption such as statistical independence).

Smolin Cosmological Natural Selection (Smolin 1992+) — Theory proposal: each black hole spawns a new universe with slightly perturbed parameters, selecting for universes that produce many black holes. Falsifiable on the neutron-star mass cap. Parameters tuned to maximise black-hole production force a soft hadronic equation of state, capping the maximum non-rotating neutron-star mass at ~1.6 $M_{\odot }$ in the original argument, raised to ~2 $M_{\odot }$ in revised versions. Successively exceeded by three pulsars: PSR J1614-2230 at 1.97 ± 0.04 $M_{\odot }$ (Demorest et al. 2010), PSR J0740+6620 at 2.08 ± 0.07 $M_{\odot }$ (Fonseca et al. 2021), and PSR J0952-0607 at 2.35 ± 0.17 $M_{\odot }$ (Romani et al. 2022). Most analyses treat this as either a serious challenge to CNS or as outright falsification, while defenders note that rotation effects and equation-of-state uncertainties leave room for revised cap arguments. Admissible at Theory proposal with a falsifiable prediction in observational tension.

Tegmark Mathematical Universe Hypothesis (Tegmark 2008+) — Framework does not apply: MUH abandons the physics-proper derivation question by claiming all mathematical structures exist as physical realities. The structure that derives the SM is just one structure in the Level IV multiverse, with no derivation principle picking which structure corresponds to our universe.

Constructor Theory (Deutsch, Marletto 2013+) — Theory proposal / Mathematical exploration: rephrase physics in terms of possible vs impossible tasks under counterfactual reasoning. Mathematically interesting; whether it produces novel predictions that aren't already in QM/GR is currently contested.

Adinkras (Faux-Gates 2004-2005, with the DFGHILM collaboration extending the programme) — Mathematical exploration: graph-theoretic representation of off-shell N-extended supersymmetric algebras in one dimension (supersymmetric quantum mechanics), with vertices labelling component fields and coloured edges labelling supersymmetry generators. Connects to Clifford algebras, doubly-even error-correcting codes, dessins d'enfants, and Riemann surfaces, providing mathematical machinery for organising 1D SUSY representations. Gates and collaborators have speculatively linked the appearance of error-correcting code structure inside adinkras to a "code in the matter equations" substrate-physics interpretation. This speculative extension is separable from the underlying representation theory and is admissible at Mathematical exploration only with the substrate claim flagged as conjectural.

Quantum mechanics interpretations

Copenhagen Interpretation — Engineering framework, not a fundamental theory: the projection postulate is operational rule. The framework doesn't apply in the standard sense since no derivational status is claimed. Operational adequacy is the relevant criterion.

Many-Worlds Interpretation — Passes A on minimal primitives (state vector + unitary evolution), operates at the level B1 lives at, but derivation of Born-rule weights from branch measure remains contested. Theory proposal at the claimed and supported bucket with the Born-rule open item named.

Bohmian Mechanics — Passes within non-relativistic QM via configurations plus guiding equation; relativistic generalisation (Bohmian QFT) remains incomplete. Honest deferral on the relativistic side. Theory proposal at the claimed and supported bucket.

QBism — Different category: explicitly abandons derivational claims by treating quantum states as epistemic. The framework doesn't apply in the standard form. QBism succeeds at what it claims, but what it claims is different from what the framework evaluates.

Consistent Histories (Griffiths 1984, Omnes 1988, Gell-Mann-Hartle 1990s) — Theory proposal / engineering framework: QM as a calculus of consistent decoherent histories. Sometimes positioned as a fundamental interpretation, sometimes as a tool for QM-on-closed-systems. Sits at Theory proposal when the fundamental claim is made.

Relational QM (Rovelli 1996+) — Theory proposal: quantum states are relations between systems, not properties of one system. The interpretation is self-consistent; whether it adds substantive content to operational QM or just relabels it is currently contested.

Transactional Interpretation (Cramer 1986+) — Theory proposal: quantum events as completed transactions between offer waves and confirmation waves, with relativistic-friendly time-symmetric structure. Less institutional uptake than MWI or Bohmian.

GRW Spontaneous Collapse (Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber 1986) — Theory proposal with falsifiable predictions: wave functions undergo random localisation events at a rate proportional to mass. The rate and localisation length are empirical inputs; the model is constrained by matter-wave interferometry experiments. Admissible at Theory proposal with named empirical parameters.

Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) — Theory proposal: continuous-in-time version of GRW. Same empirical-input situation; constrained by ongoing experiments at increasing mass scales.

Diosi-Penrose gravitational collapse — Theory proposal: gravity induces wave function collapse at a rate set by the gravitational self-energy of mass distributions. Predicts specific decoherence timescales; tested at the boundary of current experimental sensitivity.

Stochastic Mechanics (Nelson 1966+) — Theory proposal: derive non-relativistic QM from classical stochastic processes via the Madelung decomposition. Mathematically reproduces the Schrödinger equation but runs into issues with relativistic generalisation and with multi-particle entanglement.

Modal interpretations — Theory proposal: quantum systems have definite properties at all times, but which properties are definite depends on the quantum state. Multiple variants (Kochen-Dieks, Bub-Clifton, perspectival) with no single dominant version.

Many-Minds Interpretation — Theory proposal: variant of MWI where the branching is in the observer's mental states rather than in the world. Less institutional uptake than MWI proper.

Notes on reading the survey

The framework's value is in seeing which component fails which leg, not in averaging across them. Theory-level verdicts compress this; component-level decomposition (in framework.md, and in the per-theory pages once drafted) preserves the structure.

"Passes" doesn't mean "is right." Passing means the work is in the candidate-solution category for the bucket it claims to occupy, and gets evaluated on the next filters (empirical adequacy, predictive power, parsimony, explanatory reach).

"Fails" doesn't mean "is wrong." Failing means the work isn't yet a candidate at the bucket it claims. The bucket-misrepresentation case is the most common failure mode the framework catches: work that occupies one bucket honestly while claiming another for institutional reasons.

"Ruled out" means empirically ruled out at the regime the model claims. A ruled-out model can still teach structural lessons even though its empirical content fails. A model that has not been ruled out is not thereby right; the next filters apply.

Theories with a mix of Physical-theory components and effective scaffolding (QM, SM, GR-with-Λ) are the most common case. The strict reading places them as Effective model overall while honoring their derived nuclei. Calling them "established physics" without decomposition obscures both the achievement (effective models that work this well are extraordinary) and the project specification (the open work is identifying the Physical-theory layer that produces the effective nuclei as derived consequences).