How Oriented Causation Is Rooted into Thermodynamics

Abstract

The notions of cause and effect are widely employed in science and commonly understood as temporally ordered: causes precede effects. I discuss why and how these notions are rooted into thermodynamics. The entropy gradient (i) explains in which sense interventions affect the future rather than the past, and (ii) underpins the time orientation of the subject of knowledge as a physical system. Via these two distinct paths, it is the entropy gradient, and only the entropy gradient, the source of the time orientation of causation, namely the fact the cause comes before its effects.

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