Theory of Social Environments: Structural Properties, Boundaries of Applicability, and Incompatibility of Social Forms

This preprint presents a Theory of Social Environments, a structural, pre-empirical framework that shifts social analysis from institutions and behavior to social environments understood as systems of constraints. The theory distinguishes two incompatible aggregated states—hierarchical social organization and decentralized social self-organization—and establishes their structural incompatibility. It defines boundaries of applicability, explains the structural impossibility of reform, and introduces social entropy as a measure of coordination overhead. The framework is descriptive and non-normative, intended as a foundational analytical reference for the study of social forms.