Steps Towards an Evolutionary Physics

About this book

If thermodynamics is to physics as logic is to philosophy, recent theoretical advancements lend new coherence to the marvel and dynamism of life on Earth. Enzo Tiezzi's Steps Towards an Evolutionary Physics is a primer and guide, to those who would to stand on the shoulders of giants to attain this view: Heisenberg, Planck, Bateson, Varela, and Prigogine as well as notable contemporary scientists. The adventure of such a free and enquiring spirit thrives not so much on answers as on new questions.

Steps Towards an Evolutionary Physics offers a new gestalt on the uncertainty principle and concept of probability. A wide range of examples, enigmas, and paradoxes lead one's imagination on an exquisite dance. Among the applications are: songs and shapes of nature, oscillatory reactions, orientors, goal functions and configurations of processes, and "dissipative structures and the city".

Ecodynamics is a new science, which proposes a cross-fertilization between Charles Darwin and Ilya Prigogine. As an enigma in thermodynamics, Entropy forms the basis for this linkage, because it has the intrinsic properties of time irreversibility, quality and information that other thermodynamic functions lack. With fantastic illustration of cycles, the arrow of time, and events, Tiezzi presents a new lexicon for an evolutionary approach to chemistry and physics. Steps Towards an Evolutionary Physics provides a foothold, a step itself, in the climb toward understanding complexity in an evolving biosphere.

Contents

Chapter 1 - First Step: On Giant's Shoulders: A New Epistemological Insight
Chapter 2 - Second Step: The Pure Duration of Time
Chapter 3 - Third Step: Thermodynamic Uncertainty
Chapter 4 - Fourth Step: The Death of the Deer
Chapter 5 - Fifth Step: Order Out of Chaos
Chapter 6 - Sixth Step: Songs and Shapes of Nature
Chapter 7 - Seventh Step: Urban Dynamics: Suggestions from Evolutionary Physics
Chapter 8 - Eighth Step: Orientors, Goal Functions and Configuration Processes
Chapter 9 - Ninth Step: Semantic Biophysical Chemistry
Chapter 10 - Tenth Step: The Probability Paradox
Chapter 11 - Eleventh Step: Alea Iacta Est

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