Anthony P. Stone, “A Program Model of Becoming,” Physics Essays 10 (1997), pp. 150-163
gives a detailed discussion, with precedents, of the present as a spacelike hypersurface. It explains why Feynman's time reversal, Malament's theorm about the Lorentz transformation, and tachyons are irrelevant to this, and shows where the present might be in a black hole. The paper also deals with the problem of how the present advances, by introducing something like a computer program running in the before/after order of happening, rather than in the earlier/later order of time coordinates. The program refers to the “highest agent”.
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Part: 1
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
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ISSN: 0836-1398
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“Erratum: A Program Model of Becoming,” Physics Essays, 11 (1998), p. 180
is a very brief further explanation (a) clarifying that RP always means ‘reinterpretation principle’, and (b) mentioning that the idea of the
present as a spacelike hypersurface was used by Fred & Geoffrey Hoyle in their 1963 science fiction novel Fifth Planet (London: Heinemann) - see the Preface, p. vii. It omitted to say that Hoyle & Hoyle suggested only that spacelike hypersufaces could give a subjective (and perhaps merely local) present. In fact, the idea works equally well for an objective, universal present. This Erratum is also in Part 1 of its volume.
The development of these ideas culminates, for the moment, in God & Time II (2008). Intermediate provisional ideas occur in other papers on this site.
Version 1.1 Copyright (C) Anthony P. Stone 2008. This material may be freely used, provided the author is acknowledged.
Last updated: 17 December 2008