The Legitimate and Illegitimate in Physics

Physics is supposed to represent and reflect the reality of the physical world. However, modern physics is full of elements that do not represent or reflect any aspect of the reality of the physical world (or at least this is what they look like). Moreover, it contains theories and models whose representation of the physical reality is questionable. Despite the fact that physics in its theoretical side inevitably contains elements and theories that do not reflect directly the physical reality, there must be some criteria that determine what is allowed (or legitimate from this perspective) and what is not allowed (or illegitimate) of these elements and theories; otherwise physics can lose its status as a subject that acquires its legitimacy as a scientific discipline from representing and reflecting the physical world. In more simple words, we need some criteria that determine what is physical (and hence legitimate) of these elements and theories and what is non-physical (and hence illegitimate, i.e. delusional or metaphysical). The purpose of the present paper is to identify these criteria, but we should admit that identifying these criteria is not an easy or straightforward task. Moreover, the application of these criteria is another difficult task even if we supposedly succeed in identifying these criteria conceptually and theoretically. Therefore, we consider the present paper as a first attempt in identifying these criteria hoping that other researchers in this field contribute to this investigation to improve our suggestions. To be more complete and specific, the present paper will also suggest an initial sample of illegitimate elements and theories as an application of the suggested criteria (considering our previous admission about the additional difficulty of this task).