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).
