Time and Chance / David Z Albert.
2003
QC173.59.T53 ǂb A43 2000eb
Linked e-resources
Linked Resource
Online Access
Details
Title
Time and Chance / David Z Albert.
Author
Albert, David Z, author.
ISBN
9780674020139
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2003]
Copyright
©2000
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (192 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers
10.4159/9780674020139 doi
Call Number
QC173.59.T53 ǂb A43 2000eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
530.1
Summary
This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures--and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense--that whatever can happen can just as naturally happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. Table of Contents: Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index Reviews of this book: The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation.--Jean Bricmont, ScienceAlbert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own.It has a surgical precision.and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn.--Simon W. Saunders, Oxford UniversityAs usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear.The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to.--Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jan 2023)
In
HUP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013 (Canada)
Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
Linked Resources
Online Access
Record Appears in
Online Resources > Ebooks
All Resources
All Resources
Table of Contents
Frontmatter
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE TIME-REVERSAL INVARIANCE
CHAPTER TWO THERMODYNAMICS
CHAPTER THREE STATISTICAL MECHANICS
CHAPTER FOUR THE REVERSIBILITY OBJECTIONS AND THE PAST-HYPOTHESIS
CHAPTER FIVE THE SCOPE OF THERMODYNAMICS
CHAPTER SIX THE ASYMMETRIES OF KNOWLEDGE AND INTERVENTION
CHAPTER SEVEN QUANTUM MECHANICS
APPENDIX GEDANKENEXPERIMENTS WITH HEAT ENGINES
INDEX
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER ONE TIME-REVERSAL INVARIANCE
CHAPTER TWO THERMODYNAMICS
CHAPTER THREE STATISTICAL MECHANICS
CHAPTER FOUR THE REVERSIBILITY OBJECTIONS AND THE PAST-HYPOTHESIS
CHAPTER FIVE THE SCOPE OF THERMODYNAMICS
CHAPTER SIX THE ASYMMETRIES OF KNOWLEDGE AND INTERVENTION
CHAPTER SEVEN QUANTUM MECHANICS
APPENDIX GEDANKENEXPERIMENTS WITH HEAT ENGINES
INDEX