Time as generative process: SMM/DTT and McTaggart’s A-series and B-series

01The question behind the comparison

To describe time as generative is to treat the arrival of a determinate event as part of what the theory explains. An ordinary dynamical equation begins with a state space, variables and a law. A stronger SMM/DTT construction would explain why certain variables form spatial objects and why their changes share a measurable temporal order. Its appeal lies in reducing the independence of geometry, matter and clock readings. The single-source claim becomes physically significant when the same mechanism constrains all three rather than merely running three separately chosen rules.

A generative process is not necessarily an event before the universe in an earlier external time. If space and outer time are outputs, their source cannot be located at a pre-existing spatial address or timed by an unexplained outside stopwatch. Mathematical descriptions can still use an index to express dependency. The index is then part of the representation until an operational meaning is provided. This is familiar in constructive mathematics: the order in which a proof or object is built need not be a physical sequence measured in seconds. DTT must explain when its generative order becomes more than this.

Six nested inner levels offer a proposed organization of dependencies. Their scientific role would be clearest if dropping one level destroys a necessary capability, while adding a level contributes no independent capability. Such minimality is stronger than naming six stages after a familiar result. A successful construction would also prevent arbitrary reassignment of stage labels from changing its physical conclusions. The point is not the number alone but the restrictions imposed by the nested organization on possible records and their lawful transformations.

02The single-source and nested-time proposal

SMM begins with one nonspatial generative source. DTT distinguishes its inner production from the outer order in which completed results become accessible. The six inner levels are nested functional dependencies within that production; the seventh denotes outer completion. They are not six independent clocks, six spatial directions, or six simultaneously occupied temporal axes. This distinction makes the framework more specific than a general claim that everything changes: it asks how a world of persistent relations can be generated before its spatial representation is taken for granted. ^[2]

03The comparator’s explanatory structure

McTaggart distinguished tensed positions—past, present and future—from the relations earlier than and later than. His argument challenges the coherence of taking passage as a changing possession of incompatible temporal properties. For the comparison here, the distinction is a tool for asking what DTT’s completion adds to an ordered history. A sequence can be fully ordered without specifying which member is now present.

Consider a list of event labels A, B and C. The facts A precedes B and B precedes C do not change when a reader moves down the list. What changes is the reader’s relation to a particular entry. If a completion theory adds an objective change in actuality, it needs to say whether that change is another event, an irreducible feature of events, or a change in a meta-time. These alternatives expose the regress question without assuming that McTaggart’s conclusion is correct. His analysis is philosophical; it supplies no Hamiltonian, physical clock or information-processing mechanism. ^[1]

04The precise agreement and difference

McTaggart challenges whether change can be fundamental without a coherent account of tense. DTT responds most interestingly by making time the constitution of records rather than an independently moving container. A generative order can explain why one result depends on another, yet McTaggart’s question remains whether that order includes objective becoming or only tenseless relations among stages. Renaming an index inner time does not decide it.

The constructive difference appears when production is constrained: certain partial states cannot yield an accessible event until their dependencies close. This gives completion a functional role that a bare list of events lacks. It still permits a B-description of the whole process. If DTT also claims that actualization is irreducible, that is an ontological commitment to be defended separately. The comparison therefore encourages a two-part account: a mathematically explicit generative relation and a philosophical interpretation of its actuality. The first can be developed and tested for consistency even while the second remains disputed. ^[1]

05Worked example: what follows and what does not

Consider a rewrite system starting from one mark. A rule replaces each mark with two related marks and preserves their ancestry. After n steps there are 2ⁿ leaves and a rooted tree of relations. The construction has genuinely produced multiplicity and a distance based on shared ancestry. It has not produced ordinary three-dimensional Euclidean space: a tree has a different neighborhood structure. Giving the leaves three coordinates afterwards changes their representation, not the original relation. The example identifies a positive milestone for SMM/DTT: derive relational structure first, then prove which metric and dimension its observations support. Unity can generate many objects without uniquely selecting their geometry.

06What this comparison contributes

The comparison therefore concerns explanatory priority. Does a theory start from events and organize them, or provide a process that constitutes events? Both can describe change, but they answer different questions. The most useful bridge is an explicit map from generative states to the observables of a familiar theory, together with an explanation of why the map respects that theory’s symmetries. A completed reconstruction could then illuminate the origin of an established law even before it supplies a new empirical prediction.

THE SAME QUESTION, DIFFERENT STARTING POINTS

The comparison at a glance

Continue on SMONAD

• The Single Monad Model of the Cosmos →

  Connects this comparison with the author’s discussion of generative.

• The bare-source obstruction →

  Connects this comparison with the author’s discussion of generative.

• spatial readout →

  Connects this comparison with the author’s discussion of generative.

• Publication record: The Dynamic Formation of Spatial Dimensions in the Inner Levels of Time →

  Connects this comparison with the author’s discussion of generative.

• Emergent geometry →

  Connects this comparison with the author’s discussion of generative.