Dynamic Present Theory I: Foundations of Continuous Present Actualization

Update (July 2026): A pre-registered prediction stated in this version has since been tested and confirmed. The constraint geometry fitted to salol mechanical viscosity, with a lock-in temperature of T_lock = 177.31 K, was frozen and transferred without refitting to independent dielectric α-relaxation data for the same system. The transferred geometry improved on the pre-registered null by ΔAIC = 15.5, and a nonparametric bootstrap placed the dielectric lock-in temperature within [165.2, 197.5] K, an interval containing the mechanical value. The result indicates a shared divergence geometry with observable-specific coupling across two independent probes of the same relaxation. This dielectric transfer test will be incorporated in the next revision (v7).


In physics, all measurements occur in the present: detectors click, clocks are read, and records inspected in the immediate now. The past is inferred from present evidence, and the future is projected using established mathematical laws. While relativity formalizes the relationships among clocks, light, motion, and gravitational fields with extraordinary precision, its spacetime metric functions as a coordinate map of physical events. The dominant block-universe interpretation elevates this map into a completed four-dimensional reality where all times coexist. Dynamic Present Theory (DPΦ) retains the tested metric relations of relativity but rejects this ontological expansion: spacetime is the map; the changing present is the territory.

 

If only the present is objectively real, reality is not motion through a completed timeline, it is the active, ongoing process of Continuous Present Actualization (CPA). In structured systems, CPA proceeds at a measurable local rate modulated along two distinct pathways: a gravitational path governed by mass-energy distribution, recovering the validated weak-field metric of general relativity, and a constraint path governed by Constraint Load (C), yielding the CPA + C Rate Law.

 

This rate law is empirically tested in glass-forming liquids, modeling vitrification as constraint-modulated slowing rather than a phenomenological divergence. Across five canonical glass data sets, CPA + C is statistically favored over the VFT, MYEGA, and Avramov–Milchev models in four cases. In the single exception, an insufficient dynamic range leaves the constraint transition underdetermined, precisely as the model’s identifiability domain predicts. In the largest data set, salol (n = 95), CPA+C shows decisive margins over the strongest comparators, with ΔAIC = 140.9 over MYEGA and 124.4 over Avramov–Milchev.

 

Glass serves as the primary physical validation; Large Language Models provide an informational analog in which constraint narrowing can be inspected directly, exposing the same Lock-In structure in a measurable probability space.

 

This present-only ontology reframes quantum foundations and thermodynamics. The wavefunction is interpreted as physically constrained potential prior to actualization, rather than a distributed object waiting to collapse; measurement is the actualization of a definite instance that constrains subsequent actualizations. Entanglement reflects holistic resolution within a single relational system, preserving no-signaling structures. The Second Law of Thermodynamics naturally follows from the fundamental irreversibility of CPA: each actualization transforms potential into actual, inscribing the structural constraint for the subsequent state.

 

The framework is falsifiable. It must consistently recover weak-field metrics under a single CPA rate calibration and fit constraint-modulated slowing without ad hoc refitting. Future quantitative tests will target open quantum systems, biological timing, and strong-field astrophysics, where deriving a quantitative rate-suppression threshold will allow DPΦ to differentiate itself from general relativity precisely where the classical description becomes singular.