Ludwig Boltzmann His Later Life and Philosophy, 1900–1906
Ludwig Boltzmann His Later Life and Philosophy, 1900–1906

Author: J.T. Blackmore

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-09

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9401704899

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

2 But already he had done important work on thermal equilibrium which helped generalize Maxwell's distribution law. Indeed, there is part of a letter by James Clerk Maxwell to Loschmidt from this period which runs: "I am very pleased over the outstanding work of your student; in England experi mental physics is much neglected. Sir William Thomson has done the most in this connection, but you [in Austria] are ahead of us with your good example. "2 But while praise was fine, Boltzmann lusted after further travel. He wanted to know what other physicists were doing first hand. In 1870 he attended lectures by Bunsen and Konigsberger in Heid elberg, and in the same year went to Berlin only to scurry back to Vienna with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, but Boltzmann was back in Berlin the next year attending lectures, visiting laboratories, and working on dielectricity more or less under the direction of Kirchhhoff and Helmholtz.

Fasol-Boltzmann Ludwig Boltzmann Principien der Naturfilosof
Fasol-Boltzmann Ludwig Boltzmann Principien der Naturfilosof

Author: Ludwig Boltzmann

Publisher: Springer

Published: 1990-08-24

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Ludwig Boltzmanns bekannte Vorlesung ueber Naturfilosofi von 1903-1906 wird hier zum ersten Mal der A-ffentlichkeit vorgestellt. Der Autor behandelt grundlegende Konzepte der Mathematik (Zahlenlehre und Geometrie), er diskutiert physikalische Begriffe wie Materie, Raum-Zeit, KrA1/4mmung des Universums, sowie den Farbenraum. Daneben findet man philosophische Betrachtungen, vor allem eine ausfA1/4hrliche Auseinandersetzung mit Schopenhauer, und Bemerkungen zu den schAnen KA1/4nsten. Der Vorlesung vorangestellt ist eine kurze, reich bebilderte Biographie, ein Essay von S.G. Brush A1/4ber Boltzmann und eine EinfA1/4hrung in die Vorlesung von G. Fasol.

Kinetic Theory Of Gases, The: An Anthology Of Classic Papers With Historical Commentary
Kinetic Theory Of Gases, The: An Anthology Of Classic Papers With Historical Commentary

Author: Stephen G Brush

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2003-07-28

Total Pages: 664

ISBN-13: 1783261056

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book introduces physics students and teachers to the historical development of the kinetic theory of gases, by providing a collection of the most important contributions by Clausius, Maxwell and Boltzmann, with introductory surveys explaining their significance. In addition, extracts from the works of Boyle, Newton, Mayer, Joule, Helmholtz, Kelvin and others show the historical context of ideas about gases, energy and irreversibility. In addition to five thematic essays connecting the classical kinetic theory with 20th century topics such as indeterminism and interatomic forces, there is an extensive international bibliography of historical commentaries on kinetic theory, thermodynamics, etc. published in the past four decades.The book will be useful to historians of science who need primary and secondary sources to be conveniently available for their own research and interpretation, along with the bibliography which makes it easier to learn what other historians have already done on this subject.

Information Theory And Evolution (Third Edition)
Information Theory And Evolution (Third Edition)

Author: John Scales Avery

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2021-11-24

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 9811250383

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This highly interdisciplinary book discusses the phenomenon of life, including its origin and evolution, against the background of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and information theory. Among the central themes is the seeming contradiction between the second law of thermodynamics and the high degree of order and complexity produced by living systems. As the author shows, this paradox has its resolution in the information content of the Gibbs free energy that enters the biosphere from outside sources. Another focus of the book is the role of information in human cultural evolution, which is also discussed with the origin of human linguistic abilities. One of the final chapters addresses the merging of information technology and biotechnology into a new discipline — bioinformation technology.This third edition has been updated to reflect the latest scientific and technological advances. Professor Avery makes use of the perspectives of famous scholars such as Professor Noam Chomsky and Nobel Laureates John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edward Moser to cast light on the evolution of human languages. The mechanism of cell differentiation, and the rapid acceleration of information technology in the 21st century are also discussed.With various research disciplines becoming increasingly interrelated today, Information Theory and Evolution provides nuance to the conversation between bioinformatics, information technology, and pertinent social-political issues. This book is a welcome voice in working on the future challenges that humanity will face as a result of scientific and technological progress.

A History of the Ideas of Theoretical Physics
A History of the Ideas of Theoretical Physics

Author: S. D'Agostino

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9401090343

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book presents a perspective on the history of theoretical physics over the past two hundreds years. It comprises essays on the history of pre-Maxwellian electrodynamics, of Maxwell's and Hertz's field theories, and of the present century's relativity and quantum physics. A common thread across the essays is the search for and the exploration of themes that influenced significant con ceptual changes in the great movement of ideas and experiments which heralded the emergence of theoretical physics (hereafter: TP). The fun. damental change involved the recognition of the scien tific validity of theoretical physics. In the second half of the nine teenth century, it was not easy for many physicists to understand the nature and scope of theoretical physics and of its adept, the theoreti cal physicist. A physicist like Ludwig Boltzmann, one of the eminent contributors to the new discipline, confessed in 1895 that, "even the formulation of this concept [of a theoretical physicist] is not entirely without difficulty". 1 Although science had always been divided into theory and experiment, it was only in physics that theoretical work developed into a major research and teaching specialty in its own right. 2 It is true that theoretical physics was mainly a creation of tum of-the century German physics, where it received full institutional recognition, but it is also undeniable that outstanding physicists in other European countries, namely, Ampere, Fourier, and Maxwell, also had an important part in its creation.

Exact Thinking in Demented Times
Exact Thinking in Demented Times

Author: Karl Sigmund

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2017-12-05

Total Pages: 491

ISBN-13: 0465096964

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A dazzling group biography of the early twentieth-century thinkers who transformed the way the world thought about math and science Inspired by Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Bertrand Russell and David Hilbert's pursuit of the fundamental rules of mathematics, some of the most brilliant minds of the generation came together in post-World War I Vienna to present the latest theories in mathematics, science, and philosophy and to build a strong foundation for scientific investigation. Composed of such luminaries as Kurt Gö and Rudolf Carnap, and stimulated by the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, the Vienna Circle left an indelible mark on science. Exact Thinking in Demented Times tells the often outrageous, sometimes tragic, and never boring stories of the men who transformed scientific thought. A revealing work of history, this landmark book pays tribute to those who dared to reinvent knowledge from the ground up.

Before Tomorrow
Before Tomorrow

Author: Catherine Malabou

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-09-13

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0745691528

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Is contemporary continental philosophy making a break with Kant? The structures of knowledge, taken for granted since Kants Critique of Pure Reason, are now being called into question: the finitude of the subject, the phenomenal given, a priori synthesis. Relinquish the transcendental: such is the imperative of postcritical thinking in the 21st century. Questions that we no longer thought it possible to ask now reemerge with renewed vigor: can Kant really maintain the difference between a priori and innate? Can he deduce, rather than impose, the categories, or justify the necessity of nature? Recent research into brain development aggravates these suspicions, which measure transcendental idealism against the thesis of a biological origin for cognitive processes. In her important new book Catherine Malabou lays out Kants response to his posterity. True to its subject, the book evolves as an epigenesis the differentiated growth of the embryo for, as those who know how to read critical philosophy affirm, this is the very life of the transcendental and contains the promise of its transformation.

Approaches to Wittgenstein
Approaches to Wittgenstein

Author: Brian McGuinness

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-11

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1134968078

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Bringing together for the first time many of the finest published and unpublished papers by Ludwig Wittgenstein, this text illuminates his philosophy by placing it in its biographical, cultural and historical context.

John von Neumann and the Foundations of Quantum Physics
John von Neumann and the Foundations of Quantum Physics

Author: Miklós Rédei

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-09

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9401720126

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

John von Neumann (1903-1957) was undoubtedly one of the scientific geniuses of the 20th century. The main fields to which he contributed include various disciplines of pure and applied mathematics, mathematical and theoretical physics, logic, theoretical computer science, and computer architecture. Von Neumann was also actively involved in politics and science management and he had a major impact on US government decisions during, and especially after, the Second World War. There exist several popular books on his personality and various collections focusing on his achievements in mathematics, computer science, and economy. Strangely enough, to date no detailed appraisal of his seminal contributions to the mathematical foundations of quantum physics has appeared. Von Neumann's theory of measurement and his critique of hidden variables became the touchstone of most debates in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Today, his name also figures most prominently in the mathematically rigorous branches of contemporary quantum mechanics of large systems and quantum field theory. And finally - as one of his last lectures, published in this volume for the first time, shows - he considered the relation of quantum logic and quantum mechanical probability as his most important problem for the second half of the twentieth century. The present volume embraces both historical and systematic analyses of his methodology of mathematical physics, and of the various aspects of his work in the foundations of quantum physics, such as theory of measurement, quantum logic, and quantum mechanical entropy. The volume is rounded off by previously unpublished letters and lectures documenting von Neumann's thinking about quantum theory after his 1932 Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. The general part of the Yearbook contains papers emerging from the Institute's annual lecture series and reviews of important publications of philosophy of science and its history.

Atoms, Mechanics, and Probability
Atoms, Mechanics, and Probability

Author: Olivier Darrigol

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 639

ISBN-13: 0198816170

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One of the pillars of modern science, statistical mechanics, owes much to one man, the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-1906). As a result of his unusual working and writing styles, his enormous contribution remains little read and poorly understood. The purpose of this book is to make the Boltzmann corpus more accessible to physicists, philosophers, and historians, and so give it new life. The means are introductory biographical and historical materials, detailed and lucid summaries of every relevant publication, and a final chapter of critical synthesis. Special attention is given to Boltzmann's theoretical tool-box and to his patient construction of lofty formal systems even before their full conceptual import could be known. This constructive tendency largely accounts for his lengthy style, for the abundance of new constructions, for the relative vagueness of their object--and for the puzzlement of commentators. This book will help the reader cross the stylistic barrier and see how ingeniously Boltzmann combined atoms, mechanics, and probability to invent new bridges between the micro- and macro-worlds.