Abstract

Physical theories are empirically meaningful only insofar as they support records: stable, repeatable, and finitely ely describable describable facts facts that that can be compared and conditioned upon. We show that records are not merely correlations but equivalence classes induced by admissible coarse-graining, restriction, or quotient operations on on physical descriptions. Such operations are irreducibly many-to-one and therefore induce a directed admissibility structure a preorder or filtration on the space of of admissible admissible des descriptions. This directedness is a structural necessity for record formation and is distinct from coordinate time, thermodynamic irreversibility, or interpretational asymmetries. We prove that any empirically adequate physical theory must therefore entail a directed admissibility scaffold, logically prior to spacetime geometry. Geometric and causal structures, when present, function as constrained representations compatible with this scaffold rather than as its foundation. The result applies equally to time-symmetric formalisms, where operational access to records reinstates directedness through restriction or postselection. We further argue that absolute infinity, understood as an unstructured totality, is inad- missible as a physical temporal domain, since it cannot support record-based constraints. Combined with the empirical fact that the universe admits an initial temporal boundary, this yields a cosmological corollary: absent an independent principle licensing one-sided temporal asymmetry, physical time must admit a terminal boundary or a cyclic completion. While the specific nature of such completion remains an open empirical question, its necessity follows from structural consistency.