Contemporary physics achieves extraordinary empirical success across many regimes, yet often relies on effective structures whose physical status remains ambiguous. These include nonlocal gravitational energy accounting, decoherence-induced classicality, horizon thermodynamics, and cosmological propagation through causal horizons. This paper argues that these features are not contradictions or failures of prediction, but persistent structural tensions between formal ontology and operational practice. Across these examples, successful theories repeatedly invoke response-like behaviour: finite propagation, relaxation, dissipation, boundary dynamics, and global conservation without local carriers. The work formulates a minimal set of operational requirements that any deeper framework must satisfy if it is to resolve these tensions while preserving the tested limits of general relativity, quantum theory, and cosmology. The paper is intended as a conceptual foundation and diagnostic framework rather than a claim of empirical replacement.
Adam Sheldrick (2026) studied this question.