Maxwell's Demon and the Golden Apple

Maxwell's Demon and the Golden Apple PDF Author: Randall L. Schweller
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421412780
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Mixing myth, entropy, and Angry Birds, Randall Schweller brings a novel perspective to international studies. Just what exactly will follow the American century? This is the question Randall L. Schweller explores in his provocative assessment of international politics in the twenty-first century. Schweller considers the future of world politics, correlating our reliance on technology and our multitasking, distracted, disorganized lives with a fragmenting world order. He combines the Greek myth of the Golden Apple of Discord, which explains the start of the Trojan War, with a look at the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy. "In the coming age,” Schweller writes, “disorder will reign supreme as the world succumbs to . . . entropy, an irreversible process of disorganization that governs the direction of all physical changes taking place in the universe.” Interweaving his theory of global disorder with issues on the world stage—coupled with a disquisition on board games and the cell phone app "Angry Birds"—Schweller’s thesis yields astonishing insights. Maxwell’s Demon and the Golden Apple will appeal to leaders of multinational corporations and government programs as well as instructors of undergraduate courses in international relations.

Maxwell's Demon and the Golden Apple

Maxwell's Demon and the Golden Apple PDF Author: Randall L. Schweller
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421412780
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mixing myth, entropy, and Angry Birds, Randall Schweller brings a novel perspective to international studies. Just what exactly will follow the American century? This is the question Randall L. Schweller explores in his provocative assessment of international politics in the twenty-first century. Schweller considers the future of world politics, correlating our reliance on technology and our multitasking, distracted, disorganized lives with a fragmenting world order. He combines the Greek myth of the Golden Apple of Discord, which explains the start of the Trojan War, with a look at the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy. "In the coming age,” Schweller writes, “disorder will reign supreme as the world succumbs to . . . entropy, an irreversible process of disorganization that governs the direction of all physical changes taking place in the universe.” Interweaving his theory of global disorder with issues on the world stage—coupled with a disquisition on board games and the cell phone app "Angry Birds"—Schweller’s thesis yields astonishing insights. Maxwell’s Demon and the Golden Apple will appeal to leaders of multinational corporations and government programs as well as instructors of undergraduate courses in international relations.

Maxwell's Demon and the Golden Apple

Maxwell's Demon and the Golden Apple PDF Author: Randall L. Schweller
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421412772
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

Get Book Here

Book Description
Mixing myth, entropy, and Angry Birds, Randall Schweller brings a novel perspective to international studies. Just what exactly will follow the American century? This is the question Randall L. Schweller explores in his provocative assessment of international politics in the twenty-first century. Schweller considers the future of world politics, correlating our reliance on technology and our multitasking, distracted, disorganized lives with a fragmenting world order. He combines the Greek myth of the Golden Apple of Discord, which explains the start of the Trojan War, with a look at the second law of thermodynamics, or entropy. "In the coming age,” Schweller writes, “disorder will reign supreme as the world succumbs to . . . entropy, an irreversible process of disorganization that governs the direction of all physical changes taking place in the universe.” Interweaving his theory of global disorder with issues on the world stage—coupled with a disquisition on board games and the cell phone app "Angry Birds"—Schweller’s thesis yields astonishing insights. Maxwell’s Demon and the Golden Apple will appeal to leaders of multinational corporations and government programs as well as instructors of undergraduate courses in international relations.

Globalizing IR Theory

Globalizing IR Theory PDF Author: Yaqing Qin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000043002
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
Despite attempts to redress the balance, international relations (IR) as a discipline is still dominated by Western theories. The contributors in this book explore the challenges of constructing an alternative, with a dialogue between global and local approaches. Drawing on scholars with backgrounds in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America, this volume attempts to critically engage with and reflect upon existing traditions of IR theory to produce a deeply pluralist approach. Traditions, cultures, histories and practices from around the world influence their respective theoretical understanding and in turn explain why the Western tradition of IR is insufficient. This book provides great insight for scholars of IR from around the world, looking for more diversity in IR theory.

China and Middle East Conflicts

China and Middle East Conflicts PDF Author: Guy Burton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000037991
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
How do aspiring and established rising global powers respond to conflict? Using China, the book studies its response to wars and rivalries in the Middle East from the Cold War to the present. Since the People’s Republic was established in 1949, China has long been involved in the Middle East and its conflicts, from exploiting or avoiding them to their management, containment or resolution. Using a conflict and peace studies angle, Burton adopts a broad perspective on Chinese engagement by looking at its involvement in the region’s conflicts including Israel/Palestine, Iraq before and after 2003, Sudan and the Darfur crisis, the Iranian nuclear deal, the Gulf crisis and the wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen. The book reveals how a rising global and non-Western power handles the challenges associated with both violent and nonviolent conflict and the differences between limiting and reducing violence alongside other ways to eliminate the causes of conflict and grievance. Contributing to the wider discipline of International Relations and peace and conflict studies, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of peace and conflict studies, Chinese foreign policy and the politics and international relations of the Middle East.

Indonesia’s Foreign Policy and Grand Strategy in the 21st Century

Indonesia’s Foreign Policy and Grand Strategy in the 21st Century PDF Author: Vibhanshu Shekhar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317199898
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book examines the changes in Indonesian foreign policy during the 21st century as it seeks to position itself as a great power in the Indo-Pacific region. The rise of 21st-century Indonesia is becoming a permanent fixture in both the domestic and global discourses. Though there has been an increasing level of discussion on Indonesia’s emerging power status, there has been little discussion on how the country is debating and signalling its new-found status. This book combines the insights of both neo-classical realism and social identity theory to discuss a reset in an emerging Indonesia’s foreign policy during the 21st century while emphasizing domestic drivers and constraints of its international behaviour. There are three key organizing components of the book – emerging power, status signalling and the Indo-Pacific region. The Indo-Pacific region constitutes a spatial framing of the book; the emerging power provides an analytical category to explain Indonesia’s changing international status; and status signalling explains multiple facets of international behaviour through which the country is projecting its new status. Though leaders are adding different styles and characteristics to the rising Indonesia narrative, there are a few unmistakable overarching trends that highlight an increasing correlation between the country’s rising power and growing ambition in international behaviour. This book is built around four key signalling strategies of Indonesia as an emerging power – expanded regional canvas, power projection, leadership projection, and quest for great power parity. They represent Indonesia’s growing desire for a status-consistent behaviour, its response to the prevailing strategic uncertainty in the Indo-Pacific region and its attempt to advance its strategic interests. This book will be of much interest to students of South-East Asian politics, strategic studies, international diplomacy, security studies and IR in general.

The Return of Bipolarity in World Politics

The Return of Bipolarity in World Politics PDF Author: Øystein Tunsjø
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231546904
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the international system has been unipolar, centered on the United States. But the rise of China foreshadows a change in the distribution of power. Øystein Tunsjø shows that the international system is moving toward a U.S.-China standoff, bringing us back to bipolarity—a system in which no third power can challenge the top two. The Return of Bipolarity in World Politics surveys the new era of superpowers to argue that the combined effects of the narrowing power gap between China and the United States and the widening power gap between China and any third-ranking power portend a new bipolar system that will differ in crucial ways from that of the last century. Tunsjø expands Kenneth N. Waltz’s structural-realist theory to examine the new bipolarity within the context of geopolitics, which he calls “geostructural realism.” He considers how a new bipolar system will affect balancing and stability in U.S.-China relations, predicting that the new bipolarity will not be as prone to arms races as the previous era’s; that the risk of limited war between the two superpowers is likely to be higher in the coming bipolarity, especially since the two powers are primarily rivals at sea rather than on land; and that the superpowers are likely to be preoccupied with rivalry and conflict in East Asia instead of globally. Tunsjø presents a major challenge to how international relations understands superpowers in the twenty-first century.

Human Development and Interaction in the Age of Ubiquitous Technology

Human Development and Interaction in the Age of Ubiquitous Technology PDF Author: Rahman, Hakikur
Publisher: IGI Global
ISBN: 1522505571
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
The human condition is affected by numerous factors in modern society. In modern times, technology is so integrated into culture that it has become necessary to perform even daily functions. Human Development and Interaction in the Age of Ubiquitous Technology is an authoritative reference source for the latest scholarly research on the widespread integration of technological innovations around the globe and examines how human-computer interaction affects various aspects of people’s lives. Featuring emergent research from theoretical perspectives and case studies, this book is ideally designed for professionals, students, practitioners, and academicians.

Good-Bye Hegemony!

Good-Bye Hegemony! PDF Author: Simon Reich
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691160430
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
Many policymakers, journalists, and scholars insist that U.S. hegemony is essential for warding off global chaos. Good-Bye Hegemony! argues that hegemony is a fiction propagated to support a large defense establishment, justify American claims to world leadership, and buttress the self-esteem of voters. It is also contrary to American interests and the global order. Simon Reich and Richard Ned Lebow argue that hegemony should instead find expression in agenda setting, economic custodianship, and the sponsorship of global initiatives. Today, these functions are diffused through the system, with European countries, China, and lesser powers making important contributions. In contrast, the United States has often been a source of political and economic instability. Rejecting the focus on power common to American realists and liberals, the authors offer a novel analysis of influence. In the process, they differentiate influence from power and power from material resources. Their analysis shows why the United States, the greatest power the world has ever seen, is increasingly incapable of translating its power into influence. Reich and Lebow use their analysis to formulate a more realistic place for America in world affairs.

Frenemies

Frenemies PDF Author: Mark L. Haas
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501761242
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
In Frenemies Mark L. Haas addresses policy-guiding puzzles such as: Why do international ideological enemies sometimes overcome their differences and ally against shared threats? Why, just as often, do such alliances fail? Alliances among ideological enemies confronting a common foe, or "frenemy" alliances, are unlike coalitions among ideologically-similar states facing comparable threats. Members of frenemy alliances are perpetually torn by two powerful opposing forces. Haas shows that shared material threats push these states together while ideological differences pull them apart. Each of these competing forces has dominated the other at critical times. This difference has resulted in stable alliances among ideological enemies in some cases but the delay, dissolution, or failure of these alliances in others. Haas examines how states' susceptibility to major domestic ideological changes and the nature of the ideological differences among countries provide the key to alliance formation or failure. This sophisticated framework is applied to a diverse range of critical historical and contemporary cases, from the failure of British and French leaders to ally with the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany in the 1930s to the likely evolution of the United States' alliance system against a rising China in the early 21st century. In Frenemies, Haas develops a groundbreaking argument that explains the origins and durability of alliances among ideological enemies and offers policy-guiding perspectives on a subject at the core of international relations.

The Demon in the Machine

The Demon in the Machine PDF Author: Paul Davies
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241309603
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
'A gripping new drama in science ... if you want to understand how the concept of life is changing, read this' Professor Andrew Briggs, University of Oxford When Darwin set out to explain the origin of species, he made no attempt to answer the deeper question: what is life? For generations, scientists have struggled to make sense of this fundamental question. Life really does look like magic: even a humble bacterium accomplishes things so dazzling that no human engineer can match it. And yet, huge advances in molecular biology over the past few decades have served only to deepen the mystery. So can life be explained by known physics and chemistry, or do we need something fundamentally new? In this penetrating and wide-ranging new analysis, world-renowned physicist and science communicator Paul Davies searches for answers in a field so new and fast-moving that it lacks a name, a domain where computing, chemistry, quantum physics and nanotechnology intersect. At the heart of these diverse fields, Davies explains, is the concept of information: a quantity with the power to unify biology with physics, transform technology and medicine, and even to illuminate the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe. From life's murky origins to the microscopic engines that run the cells of our bodies, The Demon in the Machine is a breath-taking journey across the landscape of physics, biology, logic and computing. Weaving together cancer and consciousness, two-headed worms and bird navigation, Davies reveals how biological organisms garner and process information to conjure order out of chaos, opening a window on the secret of life itself.