There is a prevalent notion to the effect that if we admit the possibility of prevision we are bound to become involved in the slough of Fatalism.
"If we can foresee what is going to happen," it is urged, "then the future must be already settled, and we have no power of altering it."
This view appears to me to be fallacious.
Consider again for a moment the filamentary world.
Our forecast of events therein is based on the assumption that the filamentary structures remain unaltered, that the cross-sections which will be traversed by the film will not be changed before it gets there.
This is pure assumption and quite unwarranted.
In the first place the two space beings themselves might be able to alter the arrangement of the threads during their passage across the film, implying of course the exercise of three space forces, and the possession of a certain degree of three-dimensionality, on their part. In the second place all sorts of extraneous three space forces might be applied.
The argument does not perhaps apply especially felicitously to this particular analogy, but translated into more general terms it means that three space change, although expressible in terms of four space, and perhaps for the very reason that it is thus expressible, is susceptible to modification under the influence of factors which have no three-dimensionality.
As stated at the outset, absolute prevision necessitates every factor being accounted for, and these factors may appear, not merely in three space or four space, but in N-space too.
In fact, the more accurate prevision is to be, the wider survey must the percipient take.