In natural science system models, longer time intervals define structural effects that represent long term casual effects. Two examples are biology ranging from behavior to evolution and meteorology ranging from forecasting weather to forecasting climate. These causal effects from history also appear in social science system models. In addition social science system models also include future time expressed as expectations. In the case of choice behavior short term expectations can be described as expected value of a particular alternative whereas long term expectations can be described in moral or religious terms, perhaps millenial.
Cultural processes link the past to future expectations.
The need to combine past time and future time in social science system models is one way to reconstruct the debate in nineteenth century German thought that opposed Naturwissenschaft to Geisteswissenschaft. Both are needed. For choice behavior Weber's modes of orientation describe structural effects from the past that constrain future expectations. Two charts can be described side by side. Both have an origin at the upper left, with time interval defining the horizontal axis and population defining the vertical axis.