The asymmetry of retrodictability and predictability, the compossibility of explanation of the past and prediction of the future, and mechanism vs. teleology

pp. 281-313

in: Adolf Grünbaum, Philosophical problems of space and time, Berlin, Springer, 1973

Abstract

The temporally asymmetric character of the entropy statistics of branch systems has a number of important consequences which were not dealt with in Chapter Eight and to which we must now turn our attention. In particular, our conclusions regarding the entropy statistics of branch systems can now be used to elucidate (1) the conditions under which retrodiction of the past is feasible while prediction of the future is not,¹ (2) the relation of psychological time to physical time, (3) the consequence which the feasibility of retrodictability without corresponding predictability has for the compossibility of explainability of the past and the corresponding predictability of the future, and (4) the merits of the controversy between philosophical mechanism and teleology.