Tao does not work backward

CAUSALITY DOES NOT WORK BACKWARD

Logic can often be reversed, but the effect does not precede the cause. This generalization has been a stumbling block for the psychological and biological sciences since the times of Plato and Aristotle. The Greeks were inclined to believe in what were later called final causes. They believed that the pattern generated at the end of a sequence of events could be regarded as in some way causal of the pathway followed by that sequence. This led to the whole of teleology, as it was called (telos meaning the end or purpose of a sequence).
The problem with confronted biological thinkers was the problem of adaptation. It appeared that a crab had claws in order to hold things. The difficulty was always in arguing backward from the purpose of claws to the causation of the development of claws. For a long time, it was considered heretical in biology to believe that claws were there because they were useful. This belief contained the teleological fallacy, an inversion of causality in time.
Lineal thinking will always generate either the teleological fallacy (that end determines process) or the myth of some supernatural controlling agency.
What is the case is that when causal systems become circular, a change in any part of the circle can be regarded as cause for change at a later time in any variable anywhere in the circle. It thus appears that a rise in the temperature of the room can be regarded as the cause of the change in the switch of the thermostat and, alternatively, that the action of the thermostat can be regarded as controlling the temperature of the room.