Epistemic Cartography: A Formal Epistemology of Boundary-Aware Physics

An inquiry into the foundational principles of physics necessitates a rigorous examination of the relationship between reality and the scientific models constructed to describe it. This text introduces a formal epistemology designed to clarify this relationship, positing that many of the most persistent paradoxes in modern physics arise from a category error: the conflation of the objective, underlying reality with the finite, human-constructed maps used to navigate it. The proposed framework, termed Epistemic Cartography, is built upon a set of foundational axioms and mathematical constraints that define the boundaries of scientific knowledge. It seeks to provide a coherent structure for understanding the emergence of observable phenomena, resolving foundational paradoxes, and guiding future inquiry by making the limits of knowledge an explicit and quantifiable aspect of scientific practice.