Principia Strategica

The abstract, author’s note, introduction and complete contents of Principia Strategica, setting out the treatise’s central question, intellectual architecture, evidential discipline and route through its six Parts.

Reconstructs the foundations of strategy from first principles, distinguishing strategy from mere change, adaptation and regulation, and developing the concepts of constructed futures, knowledge technology, value, finite means and recursive information–action.

States and develops the eighteen candidate laws of strategy, ranging from retrospective information and fallible knowledge technology to strategic intent, timing, coherence and the integrative logic of strategy.

Develops SO(X), the strategic organism: the functional architecture required for a system to construct futures, evaluate them, act under constraint, sustain its resources, learn, repair and remain coherent through time.

Extends the theory from the solitary strategic organism into multi-actor fields, examining competition, cooperation, exchange, signalling, coercion, bargaining, coalition and the conditions under which relations become strategically advantageous or destructive.

Asks when relations among strategic organisms become a strategic organism at a higher level, distinguishing formation from genuine higher-order closure and examining nesting, collective agency, capture, institutions, evolutionary transitions and intergenerational strategy.

Places game theory within the wider theory of strategy, asking what game representations preserve, omit or distort, and developing a task-relative account of players, horizons, game construction, strategic authorship, intervention, capture and repair.

The formal machinery of the treatise: notation, typed definitions, the eighteen-law register, strategy and SO(X) calculi, relational and higher-order models, constructed games, operationalisation, falsification, consolidated definitions and provenance.

The complete scholarly reference list underpinning Principia Strategica, spanning thermodynamics, information theory, cybernetics, evolutionary biology, decision theory, organisational science, institutional theory, complexity science and game theory.