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.