Book | Chapter
(1978) Selected writings 1909–1953, Dordrecht, Springer.
The causal structure of the world and the difference between past and future
pp. 81-119
It has become the custom to regard the hypothesis of causality in physics as so self-evident a necessity that no one even thinks of subjecting it to critical scrutiny. The extent to which this hypothesis represents extrapolation beyond the factual situation known by experience is seldom noticed; the usual defense of this standpoint is exhausted by the assumption that no exact natural sciences would be possible without it. We propose to demonstrate in the following essay that a quantitative description of natural phenomena is possible without the hypothesis of strict causality: a description that accomplishes everything that is achievable by physics and that furthermore possesses the capacity to solve the problem of the difference between past and future, a problem to which the strict causal hypothesis has no solution.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-9855-1_4
Full citation:
(1978)., The causal structure of the world and the difference between past and future, in H. Reichenbach, Selected writings 1909–1953, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 81-119.
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