Two Essays on Entropy

Two Essays on Entropy
Author: Rudolf Carnap
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 138
Release: 2023-11-15
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0520324706

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1977.

Entropy and Art

Entropy and Art
Author: Rudolf Arnheim
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2010-08-02
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520266005

This essay is an attempt to reconcile the disturbing contradiction between the striving for order in nature and in man and the principle of entropy implicit in the second law of thermodynamics - between the tendency toward greater organization and the general trend of the material universe toward death and disorder.

Entropy and the Magic Flute

Entropy and the Magic Flute
Author: Harold J. Morowitz
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 239
Release: 1993
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0195081994

Essays of humorous comments about issues of science, technology, society, philosophy, and the arts.

Entropy Theory and its Application in Environmental and Water Engineering

Entropy Theory and its Application in Environmental and Water Engineering
Author: Vijay P. Singh
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 787
Release: 2013-01-10
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1118428609

Entropy Theory and its Application in Environmental and Water Engineering responds to the need for a book that deals with basic concepts of entropy theory from a hydrologic and water engineering perspective and then for a book that deals with applications of these concepts to a range of water engineering problems. The range of applications of entropy is constantly expanding and new areas finding a use for the theory are continually emerging. The applications of concepts and techniques vary across different subject areas and this book aims to relate them directly to practical problems of environmental and water engineering. The book presents and explains the Principle of Maximum Entropy (POME) and the Principle of Minimum Cross Entropy (POMCE) and their applications to different types of probability distributions. Spatial and inverse spatial entropy are important for urban planning and are presented with clarity. Maximum entropy spectral analysis and minimum cross entropy spectral analysis are powerful techniques for addressing a variety of problems faced by environmental and water scientists and engineers and are described here with illustrative examples. Giving a thorough introduction to the use of entropy to measure the unpredictability in environmental and water systems this book will add an essential statistical method to the toolkit of postgraduates, researchers and academic hydrologists, water resource managers, environmental scientists and engineers. It will also offer a valuable resource for professionals in the same areas, governmental organizations, private companies as well as students in earth sciences, civil and agricultural engineering, and agricultural and rangeland sciences. This book: Provides a thorough introduction to entropy for beginners and more experienced users Uses numerous examples to illustrate the applications of the theoretical principles Allows the reader to apply entropy theory to the solution of practical problems Assumes minimal existing mathematical knowledge Discusses the theory and its various aspects in both univariate and bivariate cases Covers newly expanding areas including neural networks from an entropy perspective and future developments.

Maxwell's Demon 2 Entropy, Classical and Quantum Information, Computing

Maxwell's Demon 2 Entropy, Classical and Quantum Information, Computing
Author: Harvey Leff
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 494
Release: 2002-12-13
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1420033999

Over 130 years ago, James Clerk Maxwell introduced his hypothetical "demon" as a challenge to the scope of the second law of thermodynamics. Fascination with the demon persisted throughout the development of statistical and quantum physics, information theory, and computer science, and links have been established between Maxwell's demon and each of

Time, Chance, and Reduction

Time, Chance, and Reduction
Author: Gerhard Ernst
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2010-01-21
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1139485431

Statistical mechanics attempts to explain the behaviour of macroscopic physical systems in terms of the mechanical properties of their constituents. Although it is one of the fundamental theories of physics, it has received little attention from philosophers of science. Nevertheless, it raises philosophical questions of fundamental importance on the nature of time, chance and reduction. Most philosophical issues in this domain relate to the question of the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics. This book addresses issues inherent in this reduction: the time-asymmetry of thermodynamics and its absence in statistical mechanics; the role and essential nature of chance and probability in this reduction when thermodynamics is non-probabilistic; and how, if at all, the reduction is possible. Compiling contributions on current research by experts in the field, this is an invaluable survey of the philosophy of statistical mechanics for academic researchers and graduate students interested in the foundations of physics.

The Thirst for Annihilation

The Thirst for Annihilation
Author: Nick Land
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2002-11-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 113493565X

An important literary and philosophical figure, Georges Bataille has had a significant influence on other French writers, such as Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard. The Thirst for Annihilation is the first book in English to respond to Bataille's writings. In no way, though, is Nick Land's book an attempt to appropriate Bataille's writings to a secular intelligibility or to compromise with the aridity of academic discourse - rather, it is written as a communion . Theoretical issues in philosophy, sociology, psychodynamics, politics and poetry are discussed, but only as stepping stones into the deep water of textual sacrifice where words pass over into the broken voice of death. Cultural modernity is diagnosed down to its Kantian bedrock with its transcendental philosophy of the object, but Bataille's writings cut violently across this tightly disciplined reading to reveal the strong underlying currents that bear us towards chaos and dissolution - the violent impulse to escape, the thirst for annihilation.

Maxwell's Demon

Maxwell's Demon
Author: Harvey S. Leff
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 2014-07-14
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1400861527

About 120 years ago, James Clerk Maxwell introduced his now legendary hypothetical "demon" as a challenge to the integrity of the second law of thermodynamics. Fascination with the demon persisted throughout the development of statistical and quantum physics, information theory, and computer science--and linkages have been established between Maxwell's demon and each of these disciplines. The demon's seductive quality makes it appealing to physical scientists, engineers, computer scientists, biologists, psychologists, and historians and philosophers of science. Until now its important source material has been scattered throughout diverse journals. This book brings under one cover twenty-five reprints, including seminal works by Maxwell and William Thomson; historical reviews by Martin Klein, Edward Daub, and Peter Heimann; information theoretic contributions by Leo Szilard, Leon Brillouin, Dennis Gabor, and Jerome Rothstein; and innovations by Rolf Landauer and Charles Bennett illustrating linkages with the limits of computation. An introductory chapter summarizes the demon's life, from Maxwell's illustration of the second law's statistical nature to the most recent "exorcism" of the demon based on a need periodically to erase its memory. An annotated chronological bibliography is included. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Bernard Stiegler

Bernard Stiegler
Author: Bart Buseyne
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2024-01-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1350410462

Honouring the memory of the late Bernard Stiegler, this edited collection presents a broad spectrum of contributions that provide a complex and coherently articulated image of Stiegler's thought which reached beyond the boundaries of academic, artistic and experimental techno-scientific enclaves where it had been originally received. Stiegler's philosophical work encompassed theorization, social diagnosis, planning, practical and territorial experimentation, politics, and aesthetics. In its wake, the essays in this volume celebrate and explore the wealth of this multi-dimensional legacy. They examine the conditions of human life in general, its foundational intermittence, and carry forward Stiegler's post-phenomenological unfolding of the distinctive spatio-temporalities that weave together the epoch we call 'present'. Engaging closely with Stiegler's original impetus for the creation of technologies of care, as well as of communities of knowledge and artistic practice,