Author: Shannon M. Mussett
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 178661247X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 221
Book Description
Now is a time of tremendous anxiety about the present and future state of the world. As the second law of thermodynamics states, entropy never decreases, time marches relentlessly forward, and closed systems inevitably break down. Entropy serves as a powerful metaphor capturing expressions of growing malaise and decline. Entropic Philosophy: Chaos, Breakdown, and Creation builds on the meaning of entropy from the Greek entropia, signifying “a turning toward” or “transformation.” Developing a philosophy of entropy, this book draws variously from anthropology, psychoanalysis, literature, art, and the history of philosophy. This approach opens pathways for reverence and care that are crucial in preventing fear, existential inertia, and despair.
Entropic Philosophy
Author: Shannon M. Mussett
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 178661247X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 221
Book Description
Now is a time of tremendous anxiety about the present and future state of the world. As the second law of thermodynamics states, entropy never decreases, time marches relentlessly forward, and closed systems inevitably break down. Entropy serves as a powerful metaphor capturing expressions of growing malaise and decline. Entropic Philosophy: Chaos, Breakdown, and Creation builds on the meaning of entropy from the Greek entropia, signifying “a turning toward” or “transformation.” Developing a philosophy of entropy, this book draws variously from anthropology, psychoanalysis, literature, art, and the history of philosophy. This approach opens pathways for reverence and care that are crucial in preventing fear, existential inertia, and despair.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 178661247X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 221
Book Description
Now is a time of tremendous anxiety about the present and future state of the world. As the second law of thermodynamics states, entropy never decreases, time marches relentlessly forward, and closed systems inevitably break down. Entropy serves as a powerful metaphor capturing expressions of growing malaise and decline. Entropic Philosophy: Chaos, Breakdown, and Creation builds on the meaning of entropy from the Greek entropia, signifying “a turning toward” or “transformation.” Developing a philosophy of entropy, this book draws variously from anthropology, psychoanalysis, literature, art, and the history of philosophy. This approach opens pathways for reverence and care that are crucial in preventing fear, existential inertia, and despair.
The Entropic Philosphy
Author: Stevie Kaschke
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781737121107
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The Entropic Philosophy takes a science-based approach to answering our most pressing existential questions. Drawing from fields like astrophysics, evolutionary biology, and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, the thought experiments detailed in this book provide novel explanations for both biological life and human consciousness. The central thought experiment proposes that we live in an evolutionary multiverse and that life on Earth and human consciousness are the predictable outcomes of natural selection at a grand scale. Writing for a diverse audience, Kaschke excels at making these topics accessible to any eager mind. The philosophical implications of Kaschke's thought experiments are profound; offering desperately needed fresh insights into pressing and timely ethical questions. The Entropic Philosophy offers a new worldview with much to say on topics like climate change, space colonization, feminism, commerce, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence. In a single book, The Entropic Philosophy provides a new set of answers to ancient questions but also lays bare just how much we have left to learn.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781737121107
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
The Entropic Philosophy takes a science-based approach to answering our most pressing existential questions. Drawing from fields like astrophysics, evolutionary biology, and non-equilibrium thermodynamics, the thought experiments detailed in this book provide novel explanations for both biological life and human consciousness. The central thought experiment proposes that we live in an evolutionary multiverse and that life on Earth and human consciousness are the predictable outcomes of natural selection at a grand scale. Writing for a diverse audience, Kaschke excels at making these topics accessible to any eager mind. The philosophical implications of Kaschke's thought experiments are profound; offering desperately needed fresh insights into pressing and timely ethical questions. The Entropic Philosophy offers a new worldview with much to say on topics like climate change, space colonization, feminism, commerce, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence. In a single book, The Entropic Philosophy provides a new set of answers to ancient questions but also lays bare just how much we have left to learn.
Entropic Affirmation
Author: Apple Zefelius Igrek
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498568009
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 167
Book Description
How do we conceptualize death when its very nature implies absence and nothingness? It is difficult to put into words precisely because we want our words to help us delineate the world around us, whereas the absence associated with death is the opposite of such delineation. For this reason, death might be said to represent a form of infinite otherness, something radically different from our usual, finite, anthropomorphic way of thinking about the world. With this in mind, Apple Igrek observes an unusual paradox. Some philosophers argue that we should be more open to that which is infinitely other (as with change or death) in the context of ethics, culture, and politics, while others critique this position since we cannot logically say what is more or less open to the immeasurable. It would therefore seem impossible to defend the relevance of what is infinite to ethics while nevertheless acknowledging the validity of the above-stated critique. If we want, in other words, to say that infinite otherness remains relevant to our social and ethical values, we will have a difficult time doing so unless we create a new methodological approach determining how it is possible for pure absence and alterity to play a role in the creation of those values. In this book Apple Igrek takes up the challenge of articulating this new approach explaining how something transcending our finite comprehension (as with death or never-ending change) is nonetheless essential for describing the construction of social values, especially in terms of describing their conflictual and agonistic tendencies.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498568009
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 167
Book Description
How do we conceptualize death when its very nature implies absence and nothingness? It is difficult to put into words precisely because we want our words to help us delineate the world around us, whereas the absence associated with death is the opposite of such delineation. For this reason, death might be said to represent a form of infinite otherness, something radically different from our usual, finite, anthropomorphic way of thinking about the world. With this in mind, Apple Igrek observes an unusual paradox. Some philosophers argue that we should be more open to that which is infinitely other (as with change or death) in the context of ethics, culture, and politics, while others critique this position since we cannot logically say what is more or less open to the immeasurable. It would therefore seem impossible to defend the relevance of what is infinite to ethics while nevertheless acknowledging the validity of the above-stated critique. If we want, in other words, to say that infinite otherness remains relevant to our social and ethical values, we will have a difficult time doing so unless we create a new methodological approach determining how it is possible for pure absence and alterity to play a role in the creation of those values. In this book Apple Igrek takes up the challenge of articulating this new approach explaining how something transcending our finite comprehension (as with death or never-ending change) is nonetheless essential for describing the construction of social values, especially in terms of describing their conflictual and agonistic tendencies.
Anthropic Bias
Author: Nick Bostrom
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113671099X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Anthropic Bias explores how to reason when you suspect that your evidence is biased by "observation selection effects"--that is, evidence that has been filtered by the precondition that there be some suitably positioned observer to "have" the evidence. This conundrum--sometimes alluded to as "the anthropic principle," "self-locating belief," or "indexical information"--turns out to be a surprisingly perplexing and intellectually stimulating challenge, one abounding with important implications for many areas in science and philosophy. There are the philosophical thought experiments and paradoxes: the Doomsday Argument; Sleeping Beauty; the Presumptuous Philosopher; Adam & Eve; the Absent-Minded Driver; the Shooting Room. And there are the applications in contemporary science: cosmology ("How many universes are there?", "Why does the universe appear fine-tuned for life?"); evolutionary theory ("How improbable was the evolution of intelligent life on our planet?"); the problem of time's arrow ("Can it be given a thermodynamic explanation?"); quantum physics ("How can the many-worlds theory be tested?"); game-theory problems with imperfect recall ("How to model them?"); even traffic analysis ("Why is the 'next lane' faster?"). Anthropic Bias argues that the same principles are at work across all these domains. And it offers a synthesis: a mathematically explicit theory of observation selection effects that attempts to meet scientific needs while steering clear of philosophical paradox.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113671099X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
Anthropic Bias explores how to reason when you suspect that your evidence is biased by "observation selection effects"--that is, evidence that has been filtered by the precondition that there be some suitably positioned observer to "have" the evidence. This conundrum--sometimes alluded to as "the anthropic principle," "self-locating belief," or "indexical information"--turns out to be a surprisingly perplexing and intellectually stimulating challenge, one abounding with important implications for many areas in science and philosophy. There are the philosophical thought experiments and paradoxes: the Doomsday Argument; Sleeping Beauty; the Presumptuous Philosopher; Adam & Eve; the Absent-Minded Driver; the Shooting Room. And there are the applications in contemporary science: cosmology ("How many universes are there?", "Why does the universe appear fine-tuned for life?"); evolutionary theory ("How improbable was the evolution of intelligent life on our planet?"); the problem of time's arrow ("Can it be given a thermodynamic explanation?"); quantum physics ("How can the many-worlds theory be tested?"); game-theory problems with imperfect recall ("How to model them?"); even traffic analysis ("Why is the 'next lane' faster?"). Anthropic Bias argues that the same principles are at work across all these domains. And it offers a synthesis: a mathematically explicit theory of observation selection effects that attempts to meet scientific needs while steering clear of philosophical paradox.
Physics and Chance
Author: Lawrence Sklar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521558815
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 458
Book Description
Lawrence Sklar offers a comprehensive, non-technical introduction to statistical mechanics and attempts to understand its foundational elements.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521558815
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 458
Book Description
Lawrence Sklar offers a comprehensive, non-technical introduction to statistical mechanics and attempts to understand its foundational elements.
Entropy and Diversity
Author: Tom Leinster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108832709
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 457
Book Description
Discover the mathematical riches of 'what is diversity?' in a book that adds mathematical rigour to a vital ecological debate.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108832709
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 457
Book Description
Discover the mathematical riches of 'what is diversity?' in a book that adds mathematical rigour to a vital ecological debate.
Entropic Creation
Author: Helge S. Kragh
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317142489
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
Entropic Creation is the first English-language book to consider the cultural and religious responses to the second law of thermodynamics, from around 1860 to 1920. According to the second law of thermodynamics, as formulated by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius, the entropy of any closed system will inevitably increase in time, meaning that the system will decay and eventually end in a dead state of equilibrium. Application of the law to the entire universe, first proposed in the 1850s, led to the prediction of a future 'heat death', where all life has ceased and all organization dissolved. In the late 1860s it was pointed out that, as a consequence of the heat death scenario, the universe can have existed only for a finite period of time. According to the 'entropic creation argument', thermodynamics warrants the conclusion that the world once begun or was created. It is these two scenarios, allegedly consequences of the science of thermodynamics, which form the core of this book. The heat death and the claim of cosmic creation were widely discussed in the period 1870 to 1920, with participants in the debate including European scientists, intellectuals and social critics, among them the physicist William Thomson and the communist thinker Friedrich Engels. One reason for the passion of the debate was that some authors used the law of entropy increase to argue for a divine creation of the world. Consequently, the second law of thermodynamics became highly controversial. In Germany in particular, materialists and positivists engaged in battle with Christian - mostly Catholic - scholars over the cosmological consequences of thermodynamics. This heated debate, which is today largely forgotten, is reconstructed and examined in detail in this book, bringing into focus key themes on the interactions between cosmology, physics, religion and ideology, and the public way in which these topics were discussed in the latter half of the nineteenth and the first years of the twentieth century.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317142489
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
Entropic Creation is the first English-language book to consider the cultural and religious responses to the second law of thermodynamics, from around 1860 to 1920. According to the second law of thermodynamics, as formulated by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius, the entropy of any closed system will inevitably increase in time, meaning that the system will decay and eventually end in a dead state of equilibrium. Application of the law to the entire universe, first proposed in the 1850s, led to the prediction of a future 'heat death', where all life has ceased and all organization dissolved. In the late 1860s it was pointed out that, as a consequence of the heat death scenario, the universe can have existed only for a finite period of time. According to the 'entropic creation argument', thermodynamics warrants the conclusion that the world once begun or was created. It is these two scenarios, allegedly consequences of the science of thermodynamics, which form the core of this book. The heat death and the claim of cosmic creation were widely discussed in the period 1870 to 1920, with participants in the debate including European scientists, intellectuals and social critics, among them the physicist William Thomson and the communist thinker Friedrich Engels. One reason for the passion of the debate was that some authors used the law of entropy increase to argue for a divine creation of the world. Consequently, the second law of thermodynamics became highly controversial. In Germany in particular, materialists and positivists engaged in battle with Christian - mostly Catholic - scholars over the cosmological consequences of thermodynamics. This heated debate, which is today largely forgotten, is reconstructed and examined in detail in this book, bringing into focus key themes on the interactions between cosmology, physics, religion and ideology, and the public way in which these topics were discussed in the latter half of the nineteenth and the first years of the twentieth century.
The Order of Time
Author: Carlo Rovelli
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735216118
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
One of TIME’s Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade "Meet the new Stephen Hawking . . . The Order of Time is a dazzling book." --The Sunday Times From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, and Anaximander comes a concise, elegant exploration of time. Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe. Already a bestseller in Italy, and written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735216118
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Book Description
One of TIME’s Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade "Meet the new Stephen Hawking . . . The Order of Time is a dazzling book." --The Sunday Times From the bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality Is Not What It Seems, Helgoland, and Anaximander comes a concise, elegant exploration of time. Why do we remember the past and not the future? What does it mean for time to "flow"? Do we exist in time or does time exist in us? In lyric, accessible prose, Carlo Rovelli invites us to consider questions about the nature of time that continue to puzzle physicists and philosophers alike. For most readers this is unfamiliar terrain. We all experience time, but the more scientists learn about it, the more mysterious it remains. We think of it as uniform and universal, moving steadily from past to future, measured by clocks. Rovelli tears down these assumptions one by one, revealing a strange universe where at the most fundamental level time disappears. He explains how the theory of quantum gravity attempts to understand and give meaning to the resulting extreme landscape of this timeless world. Weaving together ideas from philosophy, science and literature, he suggests that our perception of the flow of time depends on our perspective, better understood starting from the structure of our brain and emotions than from the physical universe. Already a bestseller in Italy, and written with the poetic vitality that made Seven Brief Lessons on Physics so appealing, The Order of Time offers a profoundly intelligent, culturally rich, novel appreciation of the mysteries of time.
Bernard Stiegler and the Philosophy of Education
Author: Joff P.N. Bradley
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000353311
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
This book is the first of its kind to critically examine the philosophy of Bernard Stiegler from the perspective of the philosophy of education. The editors of this book firmly believe that in the coming years Stiegler’s philosophy will assume increasing importance and influence in both digital studies and the philosophy of education as his thought is a prism through which to understand how we live and work, and a means to anticipate what the future may hold for us all in the time of the Anthropocene. They are of the view that Stiegler’s work will have a permanent impact on the intellectual terrain of the twenty-first century as his majestic conceptual architectonic will shape political, social and pedagogical debates in the coming decades. With this in mind, the contributors of this book take up his gauntlet to understand the risks and opportunities of the digital pharmakon and its impact on the educational milieu. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000353311
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
This book is the first of its kind to critically examine the philosophy of Bernard Stiegler from the perspective of the philosophy of education. The editors of this book firmly believe that in the coming years Stiegler’s philosophy will assume increasing importance and influence in both digital studies and the philosophy of education as his thought is a prism through which to understand how we live and work, and a means to anticipate what the future may hold for us all in the time of the Anthropocene. They are of the view that Stiegler’s work will have a permanent impact on the intellectual terrain of the twenty-first century as his majestic conceptual architectonic will shape political, social and pedagogical debates in the coming decades. With this in mind, the contributors of this book take up his gauntlet to understand the risks and opportunities of the digital pharmakon and its impact on the educational milieu. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory.
Philosophy of Experimental Biology
Author: Marcel Weber
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139453912
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Book Description
Philosophy of Experimental Biology explores some central philosophical issues concerning scientific research in experimental biology, including genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, developmental biology, neurobiology, and microbiology. It seeks to make sense of the explanatory strategies, concepts, ways of reasoning, approaches to discovery and problem solving, tools, models and experimental systems deployed by scientific life science researchers and also integrates developments in historical scholarship, in particular the New Experimentalism. It concludes that historical explanations of scientific change that are based on local laboratory practice need to be supplemented with an account of the epistemic norms and standards that are operative in science. This book should be of interest to philosophers and historians of science as well as to scientists.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139453912
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Book Description
Philosophy of Experimental Biology explores some central philosophical issues concerning scientific research in experimental biology, including genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, developmental biology, neurobiology, and microbiology. It seeks to make sense of the explanatory strategies, concepts, ways of reasoning, approaches to discovery and problem solving, tools, models and experimental systems deployed by scientific life science researchers and also integrates developments in historical scholarship, in particular the New Experimentalism. It concludes that historical explanations of scientific change that are based on local laboratory practice need to be supplemented with an account of the epistemic norms and standards that are operative in science. This book should be of interest to philosophers and historians of science as well as to scientists.