Yi, Yunbeom: Why Observation Cannot See the Whole

We propose an axiomatic framework for variational analysis in which a single scalar functional E is fixed independently of the choice of representation. After an admissible repre- sentation is chosen, the field variables admit a decomposition into a retained component and a complementary component. The basic non-exposure axiom states that the complementary component is not itself a retained variable; it may influence the retained equations only through declared summary maps or induced operator c