The Direction of Time

"Hans Reichenbach analysed the implications of discoveries about time made by physicists with the clarity that characterises analytical philosophy at its best, and remains a master for most of the philosophy of space and time. But his book is not widely known today, and this is a pity because it contains fundamental ideas, which are correct and are often disregarded. “ the growth of entropy is the only law of physics that distinguishes the past from the future” For instance, he was the first, as far as I know, to fully grasp the implications of the fact that the growth of entropy is the only law of physics that distinguishes the past from the future. This means that the existence of traces, memories and causation are just byproducts of entropy growth. This is a shocking realisation, which I believe has not been fully digested yet. He writes lucidly, and the book remains a model of clarity about the nature of time. Yes! Entropy is a fancy name to indicate the amount of disorder. Things naturally tend to get out of order for the simple reason that there are many ways of being in disorder and only few of being in order. Therefore random motion disorders: if you shake a box full of numbered balls you do not expect then to find them in the right order given by their numbers. The big surprise of the physics of time direction is that this disordering appears to be the single and only source of the difference between past and future."