Hans Reichenbach - Order Quotes

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... absolute time would exist in a causal structure for which the concept indeterminate as to time order lends to a unique simultaneity, i. e., for which there is no finite interval of time between the departure and return of a first-signal...

Hans Reichenbach
The statement that although the past can be recorded, the future cannot, is translatable into the statistical statement: Isolated states of order are always postinteraction states, never preinteraction states.

Hans Reichenbach
Occasionally one speaks... of signals or signal chains. It should be noted that the word signal means the transmission of signs and hence concerns the very principle of causal order...

Hans Reichenbach
We define: any two events which are indeterminate as to their time order may be called simultaneous.... Simultaneity means the exclusion of causal connection.... Yet we must not commit the mistake of attempting to derive from it the conclusion that this definition coordinates to any given event at a given different place. This would be the case only for a special form of causal structure, a form that does not conform to physical reality.

Hans Reichenbach
... the order of betweenness does not depend on mutual distances... betweenness is purely a relational order.

Hans Reichenbach
Like pebbles on the beach, biological species are ordered through a selective cause; chance in combination with selection produces order.

Hans Reichenbach