Discontinuous transitions—such as quantum measurement collapse, evolutionary speciation, and systemic failures—often appear non-derivable from the local dynamics that precede them. In this work, we present the Theory of Non-Derivability and Admissibility (TNA), a unified formal framework for describing these phenomena through structural constraints rather than purely dynamical processes. We propose that every operational system exists within a domain of structural admissibility (S) governed by a minimal coherence constraint (dₛ). We show that when a system trajectory approaches the boundary of its admissible domain, the dynamics become non-extendable, leading to a structural rupture S S'. By introducing the Bresciano Metric to quantify the distance to these boundaries, TNA formalizes collapse, emergence, and regime shifts as necessary consequences of structural topology. This framework provides a non-smooth generalization of system stability across physics, biology, and complex cognitive architectures.
Claudio Bresciano (Tue,) studied this question.