Constitutional Reduction: A Scientific Discipline for Identifying Minimal Constitutional Content Through Systematic Elimination

Abstract Scientific inquiry ordinarily begins with observation, explanation, modeling, mechanism, or prediction. Each of these operations presupposes that a target has already been fixed as a lawfully possible object of inquiry. This paper defines Constitutional Reduction as a scientific discipline concerned with the logically prior problem of identifying the minimal constitutional content required for that possibility. Its governing operation is systematic elimination: every commitment is treated as removable unless the failure of its removal demonstrates necessity relative to a fixed target and evaluation frame. The Runtime terminates only when further lawful elimination is unavailable, or returns an explicit non-terminal classification when possibility is indeterminate, the search space is unbounded, or minimality cannot be established. The paper introduces a formal vocabulary, an operational Runtime, invariants, admission rules, failure classifications, and falsifiability conditions. It distinguishes deletion-minimality from global minimum, target identity from verbal continuity, constitutional necessity from mechanism, and convergence from identity. No claim is made that every target possesses a unique minimal result or that every Runtime must terminate. The discipline commits only to a controlled elimination procedure and to the exact scope of the necessity it earns. The resulting research program asks whether independent domains converge upon reduction-equivalent minimal constitutional content without presupposing the form of that content.