REVIEW 3 major objections 3 minor
A Theory of the Big Bang in McTaggart's Time
T0 review · 3 major / 3 minor · reviewed 2026-08-05 · deepseek-v4-flash
Pith's one-line read The paper claims that longstanding Big Bang questions—what happened before, whether the universe was always here—mix up two different kinds of time, McTaggart's A-series and B-series, and that separating them within a presentist, fragmental
desk verdict A genuinely fresh way to split two Big Bang questions using McTaggart's A/B distinction, but the abstract's promissory note about reconciling presentism with special relativity is the whole ballgame. read the letter →
The pith
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
The reading
What carries the argument
The machine carrying the argument is McTaggart's distinction between the A-series (positions as past, present, or future, which change) and the B-series (positions as earlier or later, which are fixed), placed within a Presentist and Fragmentalist quantum mechanics. Presentism says only the present exists; fragmentalism says reality is a manifold of 'fragments,' each with its own present and its own A-series, so no single global present is needed. That combination is what the paper says allows the A-series past and the B-series earlier-than ordering to come apart, especially at the Big Bang.
What would settle it
Find a single physical situation in which the relativity of simultaneity forces two fragments to disagree about which events are present in a way that cannot be attributed to a fragment-relative A-series; or show, from the model's own axioms, that the A-series past exactly coincides with the B-series earlier-than set near the Big Bang, which would collapse the two questions.
Extended reading notes
Core claim
The paper's central claim is that the Big Bang's conceptual puzzles dissolve when we distinguish, in a Presentist and Fragmentalist setting, two questions usually run together: 'What happens as we go to earlier times toward the Big Bang?' and 'What happens as we go further into the past toward the Big Bang?' The first is a B-series question, about positions on the ordering from later to earlier; the second is an A-series question, about the tensed property of being past. The model claims both series apply, and that a fragmentalist present—where reality is a collection of overlapping presents, one per fragment—reconciles presentism with the relativity of simultaneity. The expected result is t
Load-bearing premise
The whole argument depends on the claim, promised in section 6, that a presentist and fragmentalist account of quantum mechanics can be made consistent with special relativity's relativity of simultaneity; if that consistency proof fails, the distinction between earlier times and past at the Big Bang loses its physical grounding.
Editorial extensions
If this is right
- If the model is right, 'what happened before the Big Bang?' is not a well-formed single question; it splits into a B-series query about earlier times and an A-series query about the past, which can have different answers.
- The Big Bang's properties, such as its being a beginning of time, become properties of the B-series ordering rather than of the A-series past, so 'nothing before' may mean something different from 'no earlier times.'
- The reconciliation with special relativity implies that the present is fragment-relative; observers in different frames see different presents, and each fragment's A-series is internally consistent.
- The model provides a way to talk about the universe being 'always here' if the A-series has no past boundary even when the B-series has an earliest time.
Reading between the lines
- The paper leaves open, but suggests, that quantum cosmology's usual 'beginning' (e.g., a B-series earliest time) is compatible with a nontrivially filled A-series past; one could test this by constructing a minisuperspace model that assigns a present to each fragment and checking whether the A-series past is empty.
- The fragmentalist present bears a structural resemblance to 'blockworld' readings; if the consistency proof in section 6 succeeds, it would undercut a long-standing argument that presentism cannot coexist with relativity of simultaneity.
- If the distinction is physically meaningful, it predicts that future quantum-gravity experiments probing time near the Planck scale will need to specify which sense of 'time' they measure—B-series clock time or A-series becoming.
Signed reviews
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. This abstract-only manuscript proposes that McTaggart's distinction between the A-series (future/present/past) and the B-series (earlier/later) yields two distinct questions about the Big Bang: what happens as we go to earlier times toward the Big Bang, and what happens as we go further into the past. The model is situated in a presentist and fragmentalist account of quantum mechanics; the abstract states that consistency with special relativity, in particular the relativity of simultaneity, will be made explicit in §6. The abstract contains no equations, derivations, or data.
Significance. If the promised reconciliation in §6 is successful, the A/B distinction could provide a new conceptual framework for long-standing questions about the Big Bang. The paper's contribution is conceptual rather than empirical; it does not present fitted parameters or testable predictions in the abstract. Its strongest point is a clear separation of two temporal questions that are often conflated. However, because the central distinction is tied to a presentist/fragmentalist ontology whose compatibility with relativity of simultaneity is the main open point, the significance cannot be assessed from the abstract alone. The paper deserves full review, but the verdict is uncertain without §6.
major comments (3)
- [Abstract / §6] The load-bearing premise is that a presentist and fragmentalist account of quantum mechanics is consistent with the relativity of simultaneity. The abstract defers the demonstration to §6. Presentism is commonly thought to conflict with SR because there is no absolute present. If §6 only asserts compatibility or introduces a preferred foliation without an invariant characterization, the distinction between 'earlier times toward the Big Bang' and 'further into the past' may be frame-dependent and lack invariant physical meaning. This is not an internal inconsistency demonstrated from the abstract, but it is a verification gap in the paper's most central assumption. The full text must be checked to see whether the A-series/B-series distinction is Lorentz-invariant or is defined relative to a foliation.
- [Abstract] The central contrast between 'earlier times toward the Big Bang' and 'further into the past' is not operationalized in the abstract. It is not clear what observable or invariant statement corresponds to each question. Unless the full text supplies a precise definition—e.g., in terms of proper time, cosmic time, or a preferred foliation—the distinction risks being purely verbal. This is a concern about the main claim, not about the presentation style.
- [General (abstract-only assessment)] Because the review is based only on the abstract, I cannot verify whether any equations, derivations, or references support the claims. The abstract's promise that consistency with SR 'will be made explicit section 6' is a self-declared dependency. No derivation or data appear in the abstract, so the soundness score is low but not zero; there is no visible numerical circularity or fitted-parameter problem.
minor comments (3)
- [Abstract] The abstract contains typographical issues: 'McTaggarts' should be 'McTaggart's'; 'section 6' should be 'Section 6'; there are missing periods and spaces, giving the abstract a run-on feel.
- [Abstract] The phrase 'will be made explicit section 6' is awkward; suggest 'will be made explicit in Section 6.'
- [Abstract] The abstract would benefit from a brief definition of 'fragmentalist' for readers outside the philosophy of time.
Circularity Check
Central distinction between 'earlier times' and 'further into the past' is a direct restatement of the McTaggart A/B-series input; SR consistency is deferred, not shown.
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self definitional
[Abstract, sentences 3 and 6]
"This paper gives a novel model based on McTaggarts temporal distinction between the A-series future-present-past and B-series earlier-times to later times. ... This allows us to make a fruitful distinction between two pertinent questions what happens as we go to earlier times toward the Big Bang? And: what happens as we go further into the past toward the Big Bang?"
The advertised result—the distinction between 'earlier times toward the Big Bang' and 'further into the past toward the Big Bang'—is literally the input definition of McTaggart's B-series versus A-series. 'Earlier times' corresponds to the B-series; 'further into the past' corresponds to the A-series past. The paper does not derive this distinction from any additional physical or mathematical mechanism; it simply restates the definitional dichotomy in Big Bang vocabulary. Thus the central claim reduces by construction to the paper's starting definition.
full rationale
The abstract is too short to contain a full derivation, and the only concrete result stated is the two-question distinction. That distinction is entailed by the McTaggart definitions the paper begins with, so to the extent the abstract presents it as the payoff, the result is definitional rather than derived. The consistency of presentism/fragmentalism with special relativity is deferred to Section 6 ('will be made explicit section 6') and is not exhibited; this is missing support rather than circularity, but it is load-bearing. There are no fitted parameters, no self-citations, and no imported uniqueness theorems. Because the central advertised distinction reduces to its own definitional input, the circularity score is 6.
Assumptions & free parameters
assumptions (3)
- domain assumption McTaggart's A-series and B-series distinction is a meaningful and applicable framework for analyzing time at the Big Bang.
- domain assumption A presentist and fragmentalist account of quantum mechanics is a viable foundation.
- ad hoc to paper Presentism/fragmentalism can be made consistent with the relativity of simultaneity.
Cite this review
Pith. "Pith review of A Theory of the Big Bang in McTaggart's Time." pith.science (2026). https://pith.science/paper/2NUMMVQG
@misc{pith2026250815863,
author = {Pith},
title = {Pith review of: A Theory of the Big Bang in McTaggart's Time},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://pith.science/paper/2NUMMVQG}},
note = {Machine review of arXiv:2508.15863}
}
read the original abstract
There are long standing questions about the Big Bang What were its properties? Was there nothing before it? Was the universe always here? Many conceptual issues revolve around time. This paper gives a novel model based on McTaggarts temporal distinction between the A-series future-present-past and B-series earlier-times to later times. These series are useful while situated in a Presentist and Fragmentalist account of quantum mechanics, one in which the consistency with the Special Relativity in particular the relativity of simultaneity will be made explicit section 6. This allows us to make a fruitful distinction between two pertinent questions what happens as we go to earlier times toward the Big Bang? And: what happens as we go further into the past toward the Big Bang?
Reviewed August 5, 2026 · model on record in the stance chip above.
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