Lineage
Scientific discoveries do not appear in isolation.
They emerge through a lineage of thinkers—often separated by centuries—who confront the same unresolved problem from different angles, refining language, correcting errors, and advancing understanding.
Free World Theory belongs to such a lineage.
It did not begin with a single author, nor does it end with one. It is the result of a long effort to understand freedom, property, coercion, and civilization with increasing precision.
Early Foundations of Liberty
Thomas Paine
Paine articulated the radical idea that political authority derives from individuals, not divine right or inherited power. His insistence on natural liberty helped shift the cultural imagination away from monarchy and toward individual sovereignty.
Thomas Jefferson and the American Founders
The American Founders attempted—imperfectly—to encode liberty into institutional form. While their solutions relied on political structures that would later prove unstable, they advanced the idea that property, consent, and individual rights matter.
These early efforts moved civilization closer to freedom—but without a scientific definition, progress remained fragile.
Civilization Explored Through Story
Isaac Asimov
Asimov treated civilization as a system—subject to laws, feedback loops, and long-range dynamics. His work demonstrated that large-scale social behavior could be studied analytically rather than mythically.
Robert A. Heinlein
Heinlein explored individual sovereignty, responsibility, and the consequences of coercion through speculative worlds. His fiction examined freedom not as an abstraction, but as something that must function under real constraints.
These writers did not define freedom scientifically—but they helped prepare the cultural ground for doing so.
The Turn Toward Science
Robert LeFevre
LeFevre rejected political solutions entirely, arguing that freedom cannot be granted, voted on, or imposed. His work challenged the assumption that power structures can produce liberty.
Andrew J. Galambos
Galambos made a decisive breakthrough by applying the Scientific Method to social systems. He introduced Volitional Science, reframing freedom as a subject that could be studied, defined, and built—rather than debated.
This marked the transition from philosophy to science.
Refinement and Development
Jay Stuart Snelson
Snelson expanded and refined Galambos’ work, developing what became known as V-50—a more precise articulation of property, coercion, and freedom as measurable phenomena.
His work emphasized semantic precision and operational definitions, laying essential groundwork for further advancement.
Free World Theory
Charles R. Holloway
Holloway unified and advanced this body of work, formally naming Free World Theory and introducing a mathematical definition of freedom, identifying coercion as the independent variable and freedom as the dependent one.
This completed the transition from scattered insight to a coherent scientific framework.
Free World Theory, as formulated here, is not political, philosophical, or ideological. It is a scientific discovery about how societies function—and how they fail.
Readers interested in the formal development of Free World Theory can explore the original works by Charles R. Holloway, HERE.
Transmission and Application
The work of teaching freedom has always faced a paradox:
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When taught too quickly, it fails to stick.
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When taught too directly, it overwhelms.
For this reason, earlier pioneers often concealed their conclusions until students had invested significant time.
Today, new approaches are emerging—using visualization, systems thinking, and narrative—to help people grasp these ideas intuitively before confronting their full implications.
This site represents one such approach.
It does not alter Free World Theory.
It organizes, maps, and applies it.
An Ongoing Line
Free World Theory is not finished.
Like all sciences, it will continue to evolve as:
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definitions sharpen
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tools improve
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non-coercive technologies emerge
No single person owns this work.
No authority grants its validity.
Its only test is whether it describes reality accurately—
and whether it can be used to build freedom in practice.
Civilization advances when knowledge replaces force.