Time has a direction.
Events happen before or after one another. Causes precede their effects. What has happened cannot simply be unhappened.
But does that mean time has a destination?
We often slide from one idea to the other.
A process has a direction, so we imagine that it is going somewhere. Evolution has a history, so we speak of progress. A civilisation changes, so we ask what it is becoming. A universe develops, so we look for its ultimate fate.
The sequence is understandable.
It is also misleading.
Temporal direction tells us that events are ordered. It does not tell us that the order has a destination.
A river flows downhill, but the water does not need to know the sea in order to flow. An organism develops through time without its earlier states having to contain its mature form as a purpose. A history can have irreversible consequences without being directed towards an endpoint.
The distinction is between direction and destination.
Direction belongs to the structure of temporal succession.
Destination belongs to a possibility we have placed ahead of that succession.
Once we separate them, history can look rather different.
There is no need for every development to be a step towards something. There can be transformation without progress, succession without trajectory, and increasing complexity without a final form waiting at the end.
This does not make history directionless.
It makes direction less ambitious.
The past constrains what can happen next. The present opens some possibilities and closes others. The future remains a field of possibilities until events make some of them actual.
History therefore has direction because what happens changes what can happen.
It does not need a destination in order to have consequences.
Time can have a direction without having an end in sight.
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