Abstract
Present physics is a mix of theories of time, logic, and matter. These may have a common origin in a unitary quantum cosmology founded on process alone. A quantum theory of sets, or something like it, is helpful for such a cosmology, and one is constructed by adding superposition to a slightly reformulated classical set theory. There is an elementary or atomic process in such theories. The size of its characteristic time is estimated from the mass spectrum, although this gives a much larger time than is usually accepted. In a discussion of the foundations of quantum theory, the problem of “the collapsing state-vector” is attributed to “statism”, the ideology, alien to quantum theory, that the system under study has a state. The origin of metrical and gauge structure is considered. Using von Neumann's work on the lattices of algebras, we may represent almost any gauge structure by enlarging the ring of c-numbers of quantum theory beyond the complex (or quaternion) field. Ultimately the gauge structure and c-numbers may express a transport relation defined by the discrete network of the world.
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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. PHY-8007921.
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Finkelstein, D. Cosmological choices. Synthese 50, 399–420 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413890
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00413890