Conciliating Mulla Sadra’s Essential Movement and Existential Gradation with Presentist-Fragmentalism Causal Sets

Abstract

This article explores a novel conciliation between Mulla Sadra’s philosophy of Essential Movement ( al- haraka al- jawhariyya ) and Existential Gradation ( tashkik al- wujud ) and the Presentist-Fragmentalist (PF) understanding of time within Causal Set Theory (CST). We argue that the apparent tension between Sadra’s view of time as a qualitative aspect of existential intensity and CST’s discrete accumulation of events can be resolved. We propose that the “accumulation of events” in a growing causal set is the very mechanism by which qualitative changes in existential intensity are instantiated. A simple mathematical mapping, based on the causal fecundity of the “now”, is introduced as an interpretive tool to illustrate how the discrete growth of reality in CST can reflect the hierarchical actualization of existence in Sadra’s metaphysics. This interdisciplinary approach offers new perspectives on the nature of time, being, and cosmic evolution.