Is the Past Determined by the Future? Retrocausal Becoming and the Fine-Tuning of the Universe: From Chronological to Compositional Causality

We are accustomed to reading causality from the past toward the future: first causes, then effects. But what if causality can also be read otherwise — from a future whole toward its own prehistory? Retrocausality is reverse causation in time, in which the past is determined by the future. It presupposes a symmetry of the world in which causal chains are formed not only forward, but also backward in time. Thus, the future composition of a work may determine which causal connections of the past were, from the very beginning, its actual genealogy. In this essay, the hypothesis is considered through the examples of a vase, a living organism, a work of art, and the fine-tuning of the Universe.