The multicomputational paradigm is a generalization of the computational paradigm to many computational threads of time. In the ordinary computational
paradigm, time effectively progresses in a linear way corresponding to the successive
computation of the next state of the system from the previous one. In contrast, in
the multicomputational paradigm every possible path through a computation proceeds
through a different interwoven thread of time.
In other words, the mathematical paradigm treats treats time as a mathematical variable whose value can be arbitrarily chosen,
the computational paradigm treats time
as a reflection of the progress of a computation, and the multicomputational paradigm
treats time as multithreaded, thus reflecting an interwoven progression of multiple
threads of computation. As shown schematically above, the multicomputational paradigm
can be viewed as a new fourth paradigm for doing theoretical science, supplanting
the structural, mathematical, and computational paradigms (Wolfram 2021a).
Multicomputation and the multicomputational
paradigm are one of the core ideas of the Wolfram Physics Project (Wolfram 2021a).
