Technical note defines causal set theory concepts applied to social time, revealing dynamic interactions and implications.
The programme of diagnostic sociology identifies a structural isomorphism between the emergence of physical time in causal set theory (CST) and the emergence of social time from networks of communicative interaction. The present technical note operationally defines the key combinatorial and dynamic structures of CST within the social architecture: event (subjective collapse), chain (causally connected sequence of collapses), antichain (causally disconnected collapses), and Classical Sequential Growth (SSG). The first operational definition of the social present as the maximal antichain of the social causal set is proposed. A social analogue of Sequential Growth dynamics is developed, incorporating habitus (Bourdieu) as a historically laden Markovian state with a memory decay function, systemic noise (SN_total), and contextual constraints. Durkheim and Zerubavel are formalised through ritual selection of the dominant antichain; Bourdieu through field competition for its legitimation; Gurvitch and Adam through the suppression of alternative temporalities. Five measurable predictions are derived. Robustness considerations address temporal ordering in digital environments, extra-network synchronisation, proxy metric calibration, and non-linearity of the coherence operator near phase transitions.
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Dmitry Timofeev (2026) studied this question.
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