Prolegomena to an Epistemology of Mediation: Introductory Definitions for Physics, Philosophy, Mathematics, and Engineering (媒介性の認識論)

This record bundles the English-only, Japanese-only, and bilingual (EN/JA parallel-column) editions of the same paper, with the LaTeX sources. Attempts an introductory redefinition of the four domains of knowledge — physics, philosophy, mathematics, engineering — from a single epistemological premise: that our contact with phenomena is always borne by mediation, an in-principle impossibility of unmediated access. Taking as point of departure the distinction between mono (objects measurable as states) and koto (objects appearing as relations, processes, and meaning), the four domains are positioned as derivations from this distinction. Derrida's différance is located as the philosophical description of this epistemological condition, and the sufficiency of formalising différance as a discrete-difference operator is argued on four grounds (scale-freeness of difference on a domain, selection-dependence of summation intervals, discreteness of observation, and end-of-pipeline Validation); its necessity — that for koto the operator level is the only level at which objectivity is available — is developed in the companion paper An Epistemological Foundation for Governance Design. This paper supplies the philosophical and methodological foundation of the programme: companion preprints are Mediation, Différance, and the V&V Asymmetry (doi:10.5281/zenodo.20096463), An Epistemological Foundation for Governance Design, and Applications of the Governance Foundations Framework.