The Direction Problem: On the Causal Origin of Oriented Motion in Complex Systems

While constructing a predictive model for phase transitions in complex systems, we encountered a dilemma: the empirically measured acceleration constant **g_j** required a source that no known mechanism could supply. Starting from a simple observation — that every functional system exhibits a vector oriented toward the future — the paper follows a chain of logical elimination through the available candidate explanations.

The result is formalized as the **Principle of Causal Inversion**: every determined result occupies a coordinate in a space where time is treated as a navigable dimension, and emits a signal that orients the decoherent system toward it. The principle is applied to five open problems: the origin of genuine novelty, the arrow of time, the source of spontaneous impulses in neuroscience, and the acceleration observed before phase transitions.

**Terminological note.** *Coherent* and *decoherent* are used structurally, not in the quantum-mechanical sense: *coherent* denotes the domain of determined results, *decoherent* the domain in which a system moves toward them.