Proteronomy: The Science of the Laws of Before-and-After

Time travel and temporal intervention have historically been treated almost exclusively as problems in theoretical physics, tied to the geometry of closed timelike curves and the energy conditions of curved spacetime. This paper proposes proteronomy (from Greek próteron, “before,” and nomos, “law”) as an independent scientific discipline devoted to the general laws that govern the relation of before-and-after, irrespective of any particular physical, biological, computational, or narrative substrate. We provide a formal working definition, five foundational research questions, and an axiomatic classification of four temporal consistency regimes: strict linear order, branching time with non-interference, closed loops under global self-consistency, and multi-timeline isolation. We state seven core postulates, introduce transition operators and a notion of structural cost between regimes, outline candidate formal frameworks, present six canonical thought experiments, define six initial subfields, and propose a research program aimed at the conditions under which temporal order might become an object of deliberate intervention. By relocating the problem of temporal manipulation from the question of physical permission to the question of structural law, proteronomy opens a multi-domain inquiry capable of generating both formal results and empirically contactable hypotheses.