The possible source of the causal time arrow in geo-historical explanations

• Main Author: Gadi Kravitz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2017-05-01
• Series: Geoscience Frontiers
• Subjects: Evolutionary epistemology; Philosophy of geo-historical thinking; Causality; Time arrow
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1674987116300494

My argument in this article, will be that nature, in general, and human nature in particular, suggests that, in principle, it is possible to derive the causal time arrow from several physical time arrows existing in nature and appearing to be unidirectional and irreversible phenomena. A more concrete argument will be that the assumption of a causal time arrow to which geologists resort in all geo-historical explanations, apparently originates in geo-historical time arrows concealed in unidirectional and irreversible physical-geological processes. I will illustrate this claim with a few examples of geo-historical explanations in the theory of plate tectonics, most of which are based on irreversible geo-physical processes. My final argument is a broader, of an epistemological nature, according to which the causal time arrow assumption used in logical-causative explanations in everyday life and in science, apparently “derives” in a way from the geo-historical time arrow. I will base this argument on the causal relationship and mutual influence that occurs in nature between geo-historical and evolutionary processes in animals, including developmental processes of the human brain and mind. From this reductionist argument, nicely integrated in the framework of evolutionary epistemology (EEM), it is possible to derive a wider naturalistic argument according to which, on principle, the laws of geo-historical physics can be reduced to the laws of logic and causality.