Conventional physical theories proceed from measurement outcomes toward inferred laws. This work demonstrates that such an outcome-first approach is structurally incapable of recovering universal instability principles. Instability operates upstream of observability, determining which configurations persist long enough to be measured. Using the Mott problem as a minimal prototype, the paper generalizes this failure mode across biology, geology, and cosmology. Within the ψ₀-OCM (Osborne Cosmological Model), persistence is not assumed as a primitive but emerges as the residual set of trajectories that survive instability-driven elimination and PDS-1 locking. Measurement is shown to operate exclusively within already-stabilized regimes, functioning as a reporting layer rather than a selection mechanism. Physical constants, biological instincts, geological channels, and cosmological structures are interpreted as fossilized residues of instability selection rather than optimized or tuned outcomes. The work introduces an instability-governing action defined prior to observables and Hamiltonian structure, resolving foundational circularities associated with persistence, measurement, and initial conditions without modifying successful existing theories. Instead, those theories are situated within their proper domain of validity.
John Francis Osborne (Sun,) studied this question.