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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Nature of Irreversibility: A Study of Its Dynamics and Physical Origins

The Nature of Irreversibility: A Study of Its Dynamics and Physical Origins

Hollinger, H. B.
Zenzen, M.

Hardcover

Series: The Western Ontario Philosophy of Science, Book 28

PhilosophyChemistryPhysics

ISBN10: 9027720800
ISBN13: 9789027720801
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: Sep 30 1985
Pages: 340
Weight: 1.52
Height: 0.94 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A dominant feature of our ordinary experience of the world is a sense of irreversible change: things lose form, people grow old, energy dissipates. On the other hand, a major conceptual scheme we use to describe the natural world, molecular dynamics, has reversibility at its core. The need to harmonize conceptual schemes and experience leads to several questions, one of which is the focus of this book. How does irreversibility at the macroscopic level emerge from the reversibility that prevails at the molecular level? Attempts to explain the emergence have emphasized probability, and assigned different probabilities to the forward and reversed directions of processes so that one direction is far more probable than the other. The conclu- sion is promising, but the reasons for it have been obscure. In many cases the aim has been to find an explana- tion in the nature of probability itself. Reactions to that have been divided: some think the aim is justified while others think it is absurd.

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