Local Expansion, Hidden Overlap, and Global Balance: Toward an Observer-Limited Cosmology

Observer‑Limited Cosmology develops a foundations‑oriented framework for interpreting cosmological structure under horizon‑bounded observational access. It argues that identifying the observable universe with the total cosmological system is not an observational result but an interpretive extension. The paper distinguishes local cosmological reconstruction from broader claims about total reality while treating redshift and horizon structure as informational filters on what can be recovered. It further shows why local asymptotic behavior—including heat‑death‑like dilution—does not by itself justify global terminality claims without an added representativeness assumption. The framework preserves standard FLRW dynamics, introduces no new physical entities or dynamical laws, and is offered as a disciplined clarification of the inferential limits governing cosmological totality claims.