In the context of quantum theory, recently we distinguished mathematics for expressing evidence from mathematics for explaining evidence. Here this distinction is made in spacetime physics. We offer a system of mathematical thought-or as termed in geodesy a reference system-for evidence, separated out from additional assumptions of a geometry in terms of which to explain that evidence. The offered reference system for evidence, free of any assumption of a particular explanatory geometry, whether Euclidean or general relativistic, amounts to a (theoretical) "assemblage of histories accumulated in the memories of parties to a synchronous communications network." The assemblage of histories gives voice to the known experimental finding, sometimes forgotten by theorists, that any memory device for recording logical symbols must be insensitive to variations in signals in which those symbols are carried. Out of acknowledging this insensitivity comes an appreciation of rhythms essential to the communication of digital symbols and of the need for analog measurements to maintain these rhythms. The separate reference system for evidence reconciles what otherwise is a conflict between the demand in quantum mechanics for repeatable experiments and the lack in spacetime metrics appropriate to the Global Positioning System of any exact symmetry, a lack that rules out an isometry between two spacetime regions for two occurrences of an experiment.
In the context of quantum theory, recently we distinguished mathematics for expressing evidence from mathematics for explaining evidence. Here this distinction is made in spacetime physics. We offer a system of mathematical thought-or as termed in geodesy a reference system-for evidence, separated out from additional assumptions of a geometry in terms of which to explain that evidence. The offered reference system for evidence, free of any assumption of a particular explanatory geometry, whether Euclidean or general relativistic, amounts to a (theoretical) "assemblage of histories accumulated in the memories of parties to a synchronous communications network." The assemblage of histories gives voice to the known experimental finding, sometimes forgotten by theorists, that any memory device for recording logical symbols must be insensitive to variations in signals in which those symbols are carried. Out of acknowledging this insensitivity comes an appreciation of rhythms essential to the communication of digital symbols and of the need for analog measurements to maintain these rhythms. The separate reference system for evidence reconciles what otherwise is a conflict between the demand in quantum mechanics for repeatable experiments and the lack in spacetime metrics appropriate to the Global Positioning System of any exact symmetry, a lack that rules out an isometry between two spacetime regions for two occurrences of an experiment.
Curiously overlooked in physics is its dependence on the transmission of numbers. For example the transmission of numerical clock readings is implicit in the concept of a coordinate system. The transmission of numbers and other logical distinctions is often achieved over a computer-mediated communications network in the face of an unpredictable environment. By unpredictable we mean something stronger than the spread of probabilities over given possible outcomes, namely an opening to unforeseeable possibilities. Unpredictability, until now overlooked in theoretical physics, makes the transmission of numbers interesting. Based on recent proofs within quantum theory that provide a theoretical foundation to unpredictability, here we show how regularities in physics rest on a background of channels over which numbers are transmitted. As is known to engineers of digital communications, numerical transmissions depend on coordination reminiscent of the cycle of throwing and catching by players tossing a ball back and forth. In digital communications, the players are computers, and the required coordination involves unpredictably adjusting "live clocks" that step these computers through phases of a cycle. We show how this phasing, which we call `logical synchronization,' constrains number-carrying networks, and, if a spacetime manifold in invoked, put "stripes" on spacetime. Via its logically synchronized channels, a network of live clocks serves as a reference against which to locate events. Such a network in any case underpins a coordinate frame, and in some cases the direct use of a network can be tailored to investigate an unpredictable environment. Examples include explorations of gravitational variations near Earth.
This essay extends the argument begun in "Why Quantum Mechanics Makes Sense," exploring the conditions under which a physical world can define and communicate information. I argue that like the structure of quantum physics, the principles of Special and General Relativity can be understood as reflecting the requirements of a universe in which things are observable and measurable. I interpret the peculiar hyperbolic structure of spacetime not as the static, four-dimensional geometry of an unobservable "block universe", but as the background metric of an evolving web of communicated information that we, along with all our measuring instruments and recording devices, actually experience in our local "here and now." Our relativistic universe is conceived as a parallel distributed processing system, in which a common objective reality is constantly being woven out of many kinds of facts determined separately in countless local measurement-contexts.
Atomic clocks exchanging signals serve as a background against which to measure the motion of objects on or near the Earth. The background of clocks and signals requires feedback involving computation, both internal to each clock and for regulating relations between clocks. Feedback within a clock responds to a flow of measured outcomes which, by quantum theory, are unpredictable. The steering of atomic clocks in response to unpredictable occurrences of outcomes depends on a wave function, and the choice of this wave function requires an assumption underivable in any logic consistent with quantum theory—another form of unpredictability. Currently backgrounds for motion, for example used in the Global Positioning System, consist of one or another (physical) reference frame as a realization of a (mathematical) reference system that consists of a spacetime coordinate chart with a specified metric tensor field—a structure that expresses neither the unpredictability inherent in atomic clocks nor the feedback by which one deals with this unpredictability. Without requiring the assumption of a metric tensor or even a spacetime, here we introduce a novel type of reference system consisting of the records and criteria resident in real-time computers that mediate feedback, a reference system that, by expressing feedback, structures the unpredictables in a background of motion. The criteria for clock adjustment are discussed. Trade-offs involved in these criteria call for adjusting a background in response to the motion of the objects tracked.
In earlier papers we showed unpredictability beyond quantum uncertainty in atomic clocks, ensuing from a proven gap between given evidence and explanations of that evidence. Here we reconceive a clock, not as an isolated entity, but as enmeshed in a self-adjusting communications network adapted to one or another particular investigation, in contact with an unpredictable environment. From the practical uses of clocks, we abstract a clock enlivened with the computational capacity of a Turing machine, modified to transmit and to receive numerical communications. Such “live clocks” phase the steps of their computations to mesh with the arrival of transmitted numbers. We lift this phasing, known in digital communications, to a principle of logical synchronization, distinct from the synchronization defined by Einstein in special relativity. Logical synchronization elevates digital communication to a topic in physics, including applications to biology. One explores how feedback loops in clocking affect numerical signaling among entities functioning in the face of unpredictable influences, making the influences themselves into subjects of investigation. The formulation of communications networks in terms of live clocks extends information theory by expressing the need to actively maintain communications channels, and potentially, to create or drop them. We show how networks of live clocks are presupposed by the concept of coordinates in a spacetime. A network serves as an organizing principle, even when the concept of the rigid body that anchors a special-relativistic coordinate system is inapplicable, as is the case, for example, in a generic curved spacetime.
An enquiry into the physical nature of time and space and into the ontology of quantum mechanics from a metageometric perspective, resulting from the belief that geometric thought and language are powerless to farther understanding of these issues, restricting instead physical progress. The nature and assumptions of quantum gravity are analysed critically, including misgivings about the relevance of the Planck scale to it and its lack of observational referent in the natural world. The anthropic foundations of geometry are investigated. The exclusive use of geometric thought from antiquity to present-day physics is found to permeate all new attempts towards better theories, including quantum gravity and, within it, even pregeometry. The problem of the ether is found to have perpetuated itself up to the present by transmuting its form from mechanical, through metric, to geometric. A clarification is made of the physical, mathematical, and psychological foundations of relativity and quantum theories. The former is founded geometrically on measurement-based clock-reading separations ds. The latter is founded metageometrically on the experiment-based concepts of premeasurement and transition things, inspired in the physically unexplored aspect of time as a consciousness-related product. A concept of metageometric time is developed and coordinate time t is recovered from it. Discovery of the connection between quantum-mechanical metageometric time elements and general-relativistic clock time elements ds is deemed necessary for a combined understanding of time. Time is conjectured to be the missing link between general relativity and quantum mechanics.
Beyond Causality: Temporal Geometry, Informational Consistency, and the Foundations of Physical Time What if the deepest mystery of time is not whether the past can be reached, but whether causality itself is more fundamental than the physical laws through which we describe it? For more than a century, modern physics has transformed our understanding of space, time, matter, and information. General relativity revealed that temporal order is inseparable from spacetime geometry. Quantum theory challenged classical intuitions about measurement, correlations, and physical reality. Information theory provided a mathematical language for describing what can be known, transmitted, and recovered. Yet a profound question remains: must every physically consistent universe possess a globally ordered sequence of causes and effects? Beyond Causality investigates this question through an extended mathematical and conceptual study of temporal geometry, informational dependence, retrocausal feedback, and global consistency. Organized into six interconnected parts, this 430-page research monograph develops a framework for examining causal structures beyond conventional temporal ordering. It brings together established results from general relativity, quantum information, causal modeling, and fixed-point theory, while exploring additional mathematical constructions designed to clarify the conditions under which temporally nonstandard information networks can remain internally consistent. Particular attention is devoted to distinguishing mathematical self-consistency from physical realizability, statistical correlation from controllable communication, and unconventional temporal descriptions from genuine violations of operational causality. Among its principal investigations are the geometric and energetic constraints associated with localized chronology-violating spacetime models, the existence and stability of globally consistent informational feedback networks, the behavior of finite stochastic systems under intervention, and the relationship between quantum causal structures and hypothetical retrocausal channels. The work also extends the theoretical research program introduced in Eon Reverser: Toward Temporal Bubble Radio Communication, examining what additional mathematical, physical, and experimental conditions would be required before communication with an earlier receiver record could be considered a meaningful scientific possibility. Analytical derivations, formal propositions, computational examples, and reproducibility materials accompany the discussion. The proposed constructions are explicitly distinguished from established physical results, and no experimental evidence for backward-in-time communication is claimed. The central ambition of this monograph is neither to declare that causality can be violated nor to assume that temporal paradoxes admit a universal resolution. It is to ask a more precise question: what mathematical structures, consistency principles, and observable constraints would a physical theory have to satisfy if causal order were not universally fixed? The possibility that time, information, and causality may possess a deeper relationship than our present formulations reveal remains an open intellectual frontier. Exploring that frontier requires imagination disciplined by mathematics, speculation constrained by physical principles, and theoretical proposals that remain accountable to observation. Beyond Causality is offered as a contribution to that exploration: an attempt to extend the questions we can rigorously formulate, identify the limits of existing models, and provide a foundation for further investigation into the nature of physical time. Keywords: Causality; Temporal Geometry; General Relativity; Retrocausality; Closed Timelike Curves; Quantum Causal Structures; Information Theory; Global Consistency; Fixed-Point Theory; Chronology Protection; Advanced Electromagnetic Response; Eon Reverser.