Since the nineteenth century, the problem of the arrow of time has been traditionally analyzed in terms of entropy by relating the direction past-to-future to the gradient of the entropy function of the universe. In this paper, we reject this traditional perspective and argue for a global and non-entropic approach to the problem, according to which the arrow of time can be defined in terms of the geometrical properties of spacetime. In particular, we show how the global (...) non-entropic arrow can be transferred to the local level, where it takes the form of a non-spacelike local energy flow that provides the criterion for breaking the symmetry resulting from time-reversal invariant local laws. (shrink)

It is argued that some elusive “entropic” characteristics of chemical bonds, e.g., bond multiplicities (orders), which connect the bonded atoms in molecules, can be probed using quantities and techniques of Information Theory (IT). This complementary perspective increases our insight and understanding of the molecular electronic structure. The specific IT tools for detecting effects of chemical bonds and predicting their entropic multiplicities in molecules are summarized. Alternative information densities, including measures of the local entropy deficiency or its displacement relative (...) to the system atomic promolecule, and the nonadditive Fisher information in the atomic orbital resolution(called contragradience) are used to diagnose the bonding patterns in illustrative diatomic and polyatomic molecules. The elements of the orbital communication theory of the chemical bond are briefly summarized and illustrated for the simplest case of the two-orbital model. The information-cascade perspective also suggests a novel, indirect mechanism of the orbital interactions in molecular systems, through “bridges” (orbital intermediates), in addition to the familiar direct chemical bonds realized through “space”, as a result of the orbital constructive interference in the subspace of the occupied molecular orbitals. Some implications of these two sources of chemical bonds in propellanes, π-electron systems and polymers are examined. The current–density concept associated with the wave-function phase is introduced and the relevant phase-continuity equation is discussed. For the first time, the quantum generalizations of the classical measures of the information content, functionals of the probability distribution alone, are introduced to distinguish systems with the same electron density, but differing in their current(phase) composition. The corresponding information/entropy sources are identified in the associated continuity equations. (shrink)

We consider a stochastic process which is described by a continuous-time Markov chain on only short time-scales and constrained to conserve a number of hidden quantities on long time-scales. We assume that the transition matrix of the Markov chain is given and the conserved quantities are known to exist, but not explicitly given. To study the stochastic dynamics we propose to use the principle of stationary entropy production. Then the problem can be transformed into a variational problem (...) for a suitably defined “action” and with time-dependent Lagrange multipliers. We show that the stochastic dynamics can be described by a Schrödinger equation, with Lagrange multipliers playing the role of phases, whenever the transition matrix is symmetric or the detailed balance condition is satisfied, the system is not too far from the equilibrium and the number of the conserved quantities is large. (shrink)

The second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy became one of the most important scientific ideas to influence Western culture in the 19th century. Pessimistic conclusions, such as the concept of the heat death of the universe and the specter of the inevitable decay of everything, inspired philosophical reflection at the fin de siècle. The philosophy of Henri Bergson played a key role in overcoming this pessimistic attitude. In his famous work L’évolution créatrice (1907), he proposed a bold (...) metaphysical vision for the completion of science through a vision of creative evolution driven by the metaphysical factor of élan vital in opposition to destructive (entropic) factors. Bergson’s philosophy appealed specifically to negentropic ideas, so it made an important contribution to the worldview debate of the time. The influence of Bergson’s thought on Polish philosophy has been studied many times, including from a worldview perspective, but no one has yet analyzed the impact of his entropic and negentropic ideas. With research into the cultural significance of these ideas developing today, such research would be particularly relevant. This paper therefore aims to fill this significant research gap and present an initial analysis of the influence of Bergson’s specific entropic and negentropic ideas on Polish thinkers prior to the outbreak of World War II. This paper begins with presenting the historical background for the influence of entropic ideas on Western thought at the turn of the 20th century. Bergson’s philosophical entropic and negentropic ideas are then analyzed. By outlining the background to their reception like this, it becomes possible to illustrate the reception process in Polish philosophy in the next two parts. First, we focus on a group of philosophers who challenged the pessimistic consequences of the established scientific view of the world, while the following part shows the reactions to Bergson’s ideas by philosophers associated with science. Finally, some general conclusions are drawn about Bergson’s influence and the reasons for his failure. Some little-known connections between neo-romanticism and the reflection on entropic ideas are also highlighted. (shrink)

Aristotle denied that time was an entity or thing that could exist independently of objects or things--in this respect, his theory is quite modern. He recognized the relationship of time and motion and consequently defines time as the measure or number of a continuous motion taken without qualification. In this paper I reconstruct Aristotle's theory of time using entropy as the 'continuous motion taken without qualification' and note that this helps to explain several passages in the (...) Physics that seem quite obscure otherwise, but in the final analysis an entropic interpretation cannot rescue his theory from certain shortcomings. (shrink)

Traditional discussions about the arrow of time in general involve the concept of entropy. In the cosmological context, the direction past-to-future is usually related to the direction of the gradient of the entropy function of the universe. But the definition of the entropy of the universe is a very controversial matter. Moreover, thermodynamics is a phenomenological theory. Geometrical properties of space-time provide a more fundamental and less controversial way of defining an arrow of time for the universe (...) as a whole. We will call the arrow defined only on the basis of the geometrical properties of space-time, independently of any entropic considerations, “the global arrow of time.” In this paper we will argue that: (i) if certain conditions are satisfied, it is possible to define a global arrow of time for the universe as a whole, and (ii) the standard models of contemporary cosmology satisfy these conditions. (shrink)

Girls Laughters Solar Eclipse Output Solar Eclipse The programmatic ontology of our contemporary technical-information age is marked by a complicity with algorithmic architectures : new models of information processing evolving with the entropically-hiden complexities and open-ended contingencies of material evolution. Algorithms are abstractly-coordinated entities of “soft thought” sui generis. In fusing generative concreteness with abstract modelling – i. e. matter with information – - Galerie sonore – Nouvel article.

The paper discusses recent proposals by Carroll and Chen, as well as Barbour, Koslowski, and Mercati to explain the arrow of time without a Past Hypothesis, i.e. the assumption of a special initial state of the universe. After discussing the role of the Past Hypothesis and the controversy about its status, we explain why Carroll's model - which establishes an arrow of time as typical - can ground sensible predictions and retrodictions without assuming something akin to a Past (...) Hypothesis. We then propose a definition of a Boltzmann entropy for a classical N-particle system with gravity, suggesting that a Newtonian gravitating universe might provide a relevant example of Carroll's entropy model. This invites comparison with the work of Barbour, Koslowski, and Mercati that identifies typical arrows of time in a relational formulation of classical gravity on shape space. We clarify the difference between this gravitational arrow in terms of shape complexity and the entropic arrow in absolute spacetime, and work out the key advantages of the relationalist theory. We end by pointing out why the entropy concept relies on absolute scales and is thus not relational. (shrink)

There is a persisting tension that exists between the block universe conception of time in modern physics and philosophy and the conception of time that stems naturally from experience, and entropic asymmetries have been proposed to explain this tension. This article argues that as biochemical processes in the brain depend upon spontaneous entropy increases in the forward-time direction, this should provide an entropic basis for the unidirectionality of psychological processes. As this view does not depend (...) on considerations of abstract information processing or a past hypothesis, it provides advantages over previous entropy-based proposals attempting to explain asymmetries in temporal experience. (shrink)

The essay revisits the puzzle of the ‘passage’ of time in relation to EPR-type measurements and asks what philosophical consequences can be drawn from them. Some argue that the lack of invariance of temporal order in the measurement of a space-like related EPR pair, under relativistic motion, casts serious doubts on the ‘reality’ of the lapse of time. Others argue thatcertain features of quantum mechanics establisha tensed theory of time – understood here as Possibilism or the growing (...) block universe. The paper analyzes the employment of frame-invariant entropic clocks in a relativistic setting and argues that tenselessness does not imply timelessness. But this conclusion does not support a tensed theory of time, which requires a preferred foliation. It is argued that the only reliable inference from the EPR example and the use of entropic clocks is an inference not just to a Leibnizian order of the succession of events but a frame-invariant order according to some selected clocks. (shrink)

The debate about the passage of time is usually confined to Minkowski‟s geometric interpretation of space-time. It infers the block universe from the notion of relative simultaneity. But there are alternative interpretations of space-time – so-called axiomatic approaches –, based on the existence of „optical facts‟, which have thermodynamic properties. It may therefore be interesting to approach the afore-mentioned debate from the point of view of relativistic thermodynamics, in which invariant parameters exist, which may serve to indicate (...) the passage of time. Of particular interest is the use of entropic clocks, gas clocks and statistical thermometers, which suggest that two observers in Minkowski space-time could agree on an objective passing of time. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: a) to explore the compatibility of Minkowski’s space-time representation of the Special theory of relativity with a dynamic conception of space-time; b) to locate its roots in invariant features - like entropic relations - of the propagation of signals in space-time. From its very beginning Minkowski’s four-dimensional space-time was associated with a static view of reality, e.g. a block universe. Einstein added his influential voice to this conception when (...) he wrote: ‘From a “happening” in three-dimensional space, physics becomes (…) an “existence” in the four-dimensional “world”.’ (Einstein, Relativity 1920, 122) Yet it is by no means clear that Minkowski himself was a believer in the block universe. In his 1908 Cologne lecture on ‘Space and Time’ he speaks of a four-dimensional physics but concedes that a ‘necessary’ time order can be established at every world point. Although the conception of the block universe has gained much currency, an alternative view has been in circulation since the 1910s according to which the trajectories of particles constitute histories in space-time. (Robb 1914, Cunningham 1915, Carathéodorys 1924, Schlick 1917, Reichenbach 1924). (shrink)

Scientific cosmology is an empirical discipline whose objects of study are the large-scale properties of the universe. In this context, it is usual to call the direction of the expansion of the universe the "cosmological arrow of time". However, there is no reason for privileging the ‘radius’ of the universe for defining the arrow of time over other geometrical properties of the space-time. Traditional discussions about the arrow of time in general involve the concept of entropy. (...) In the cosmological context, the direction past-to-future is usually related to the direction of the gradient of the entropy function of the universe. But entropy is a thermodynamic magnitude that is typically associated with subsystems of the universe: the entropy of the universe as a whole is a very controversial matter. Moreover, thermodynamics is a phenomenological theory. Geometrical properties of space-time provide a more fundamental and less controversial way of defining an arrow of time for the universe as a whole. We will call the arrow defined only on the basis of the geometrical properties of space-time, independently of any entropic considerations, the "cosmological arrow of time". In this paper we will argue that: (i) it is possible to define a cosmological arrow of time for the universe as a whole, if certain conditions are satisfied, and (ii) the standard models of contemporary cosmology satisfy these conditions. (shrink)

한스 라이헨바흐(Hans Reichenbach, 1891-1953)는 20세기의 물리학적 성과를 상세하게 분석하며 시간에 대한 심도 있는 철학적 논의를 전개한 대표적인 20세기 과학철학자이다. 시간에 대한 그의 철학적 분석은 1920년 저작 『상대성 이론과 선험적 지식』에서 시작하여 그의 사후인 1956년에 출판된 미완성 유고작 『시간의 방향』에 이르기까지 30년이 넘는 기간 동안 진행되었다. 특히 그가 남긴 『시간의 방향』은 그 출판 이래로 오늘날까지 시간의 철학적 본성에 관한 논의에서 중요한 영향력을 행사하고 있다. 다만 그가 제시한 철학적 관점을 어떻게 해석할 것인지의 문제와 관련해 여러 학자가 의견을 달리했는데, 나는 과학철학의 역사 연구자로서 (...) 본 논문에서 그의 시간 철학을 좀 더 정합적으로 이해하는 새로운 관점을 제안하고자 한다. 내가 볼 때 라이헨바흐 시간 철학의 핵심은, 엔트로피적인 의미에서의 시간방향이 우주의 부분에 따라 변동할 수 있다고 하더라도, 물리적 대상 혹은 사건들 사이의 인과적 상호작용으로서의 시간 방향은 유지될 수 있다는 관점이다. 하지만 라이헨바흐가 볼 때 이론물리학자 리처드 파인만(Richard Feynmann)이 제시한 양자 이론은 이러한 ‘초시간적’ 의미에서의 시간 방향 개념에 심각한 도전을 제시했는데, 왜냐하면 파인만은 양전자(positron)를 ‘시간을 역행하는 전자’로 볼 수 있다는 관점을 제시했기 때문이다. 이러한 파인만의 제안은 ‘닫힌 인과’의 경로가 가능함을 함축하므로, 이는 라이헨바흐가 여러 분야의 물리학 지식을 분석하면서도 끝내 유지하고자 했던 ‘인과성의 원리’에 결정적인 위협을 가하는 것처럼 보였다. 그의 논의는 그의 갑작스러운 사망으로 인해 이 지점에서 결론을 맺지 않고 끝났지만, 나는 ‘동일성 지속의 원리’를 좀 더 유연하게 하는 방식으로 ‘초시간적’ 의미의 시간 방향 개념을 유지하는 것이 가능하리라고 전망한다. 이는 곧 시간의 실재성을 긍정하는 것이며 이론물리학자 리 스몰린(Lee Smolin)의 용어법을 사용하면‘시간적 자연주의(temporal naturalism)’의 관점을 취하는 것이다. (shrink)

Reichenbach explains temporally asymmetric phenomena by appeal to entropy and ‘branch structure’. He explains why the entropic gradients of isolated subsystems are oriented towards the future and not the past, and why we have records of the past and not the future, by appeal to the fact that the universe is currently on a long entropic upgrade with subsystems that branch off and become quasi-isolated. Reichenbach’s approach has been criticised for relying too closely on entropy. The more popular (...) approach nowadays is to appeal instead to a particular low-entropy initial state—Albert’s ‘Past Hypothesis’. I’ll argue that this neglect of Reichenbach’s approach is unwarranted. A Reichenbachian account has important advantages over Albert’s: it correctly identifies the minimal temporally asymmetric posit needed to derive key temporally asymmetries and it offers a more adequate account of the record asymmetry. While a Reichenbachian account needs to be supplemented, it provides the right foundations for explaining temporally asymmetric phenomena and what we might ultimately mean by ‘the direction of time’. (shrink)

The paper proposes a re-assessment of Reichenbach’s ‘causal’ theory of time. Reichenbach’s version of the theory, first proposed in 1921, is interesting because it is one of the first attempts to construct a causal theory as a relational theory of time, which fully takes the results of the Special theory of relativity into account. The theory derives its name from the cone structure of Minkowski space–time, in particular the emission of light signals. At first Reichenbach defines an (...) ‘order’ of time, a ‘before-after’ relationship between mechanical events. In his later work, he comes to the conclusion that the ‘order’ of time needs to be distinguished from the ‘direction’ of time. He therefore abandons the sole focus on light geometry and turns to Boltzmann’s statistical version of thermodynamics. However, as Einstein pointed out, the emission and reception of light signals have thermodynamic aspects. When this is taken into account, Reichenbach’s ‘causal’ theory turns out to be an entropic theory of time. It also emerges that Reichenbach discusses phase space and typicality arguments in support of his dynamic view of time. They provide a better understanding of the notion of entropy. This unifies his approach and helps to answer some of the standard objections against a causal theory of time. (shrink)

In several previous papers we have argued for a global and non-entropic approach to the problem of the arrow of time, according to which the “arrow” is only a metaphorical way of expressing the geometrical time-asymmetry of the universe. We have also shown that, under definite conditions, this global time-asymmetry can be transferred to local contexts as an energy flow that points to the same temporal direction all over the spacetime. The aim of this paper is (...) to complete the global and non-entropic program by showing that our approach is able to account for irreversible local phenomena, which have been traditionally considered as the physical origin of the arrow of time. (shrink)

Girls Laughters Solar Eclipse Output Solar Eclipse The programmatic ontology of our contemporary technical-information age is marked by a complicity with algorithmic architectures : new models of information processing evolving with the entropically-hiden complexities and open-ended contingencies of material evolution. Algorithms are abstractly-coordinated entities of “soft thought” sui generis. In fusing generative concreteness with abstract modelling – i. e. matter with information – - Galerie sonore – Nouvel article.

Wheeler–deWitt equation as well as some relevant current research (Chiou’s timeless path integral approach for relativistic quantum mechanics; Palmer’s view of a fundamental level of physical reality based on an Invariant Set Postulate; Girelli’s, Liberati’s and Sindoni’s toy model of a non-dynamical timeless space as fundamental background of physical events) suggest that at a fundamental level the background space of physics is timeless, that the duration of physical events has not a primary existence. By taking into consideration the two fundamental (...) theories of time represented by the Jacobi-Barbour-Bertotti theory and by Rovelli’s approach, here it is shown that the view of time as emergent quantity measuring the numerical order of material changes (which can above all be derived from some significant current research, such as Elze’s approach of time, Caticha’s approach of entropic time and Prati’s model of physical clock time) introduces a suggestive unifying re-reading. (shrink)

Human life is conditioned by a very important fact: the end; death is the most significant success. Then time is thought like an arrow with two proprieties: irreversibility and direction. In fact, the entropy is which governs our lives. But, men have imagined a continuous life after death, an eternal life where time didn’t finish, and it’s not submitted to the second law of thermodynamic (entropy). But the question what is the significance of that? It is possible to (...) think about time without those two important proprieties, –a time “non-entropic–”? In other words, speak about eternal life has any meaning? (shrink)

Statistical mechanics is one of the crucial fundamental theories of physics, and in his new book Lawrence Sklar, one of the pre-eminent philosophers of physics, offers a comprehensive, non-technical introduction to that theory and to attempts to understand its foundational elements. Among the topics treated in detail are: probability and statistical explanation, the basic issues in both equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, the role of cosmology, the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics, and the alleged foundation of the very notion (...) of time asymmetry in the entropic asymmetry of systems in time. The book emphasises the interaction of scientific and philosophical modes of reasoning, and in this way will interest all philosophers of science as well as those in physics and chemistry concerned with philosophical questions. The book could also be read by an informed general reader interested in the foundations of modern science. (shrink)

Statistical mechanics is one of the crucial fundamental theories of physics, and in his new book Lawrence Sklar, one of the pre-eminent philosophers of physics, offers a comprehensive, non-technical introduction to that theory and to attempts to understand its foundational elements. Among the topics treated in detail are: probability and statistical explanation, the basic issues in both equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, the role of cosmology, the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics, and the alleged foundation of the very notion (...) of time asymmetry in the entropic asymmetry of systems in time. The book emphasises the interaction of scientific and philosophical modes of reasoning, and in this way will interest all philosophers of science as well as those in physics and chemistry concerned with philosophical questions. The book could also be read by an informed general reader interested in the foundations of modern science. (shrink)

According to the orthodox interpretation of bounce cosmologies, the universe was born from an entropy-reducing phase in a previous universe. To defend the thesis that the whole of physical reality was caused to exist a finite time ago, Craig and Sinclair have argued the low-entropy interface between universes should instead be understood as the beginning of two universes. Here, I present Craig and Sinclair with a dilemma. On the one hand, if the direction of time is reducible, as (...) friends of the Mentaculus—for example, Albert, Loewer, and Papineau—maintain, then there is reason to think that the direction of time and the entropic arrow of time align. But on that account, efficient causation is likely reducible to non-causal phenomena. In consequence, contrary to Craig and Sinclair’s theological aims, things can begin to exist without causes. On the other hand, if the direction of time is not reducible, Craig and Sinclair’s interpretation of bounce cosmologies is unjustified. Lastly, a reply to a potential objection motivates a discussion of how to interpret bounce cosmologies on the tensed theory of absolute time favoured by Craig and Sinclair. I offer two interpretations of bounce cosmologies that, given a tensed theory of absolute time, are preferable to those Craig and Sinclair offer, yet inconsistent with their project in natural theology; on one interpretation, the universe does not require a supernatural cause and, on the other, bounce cosmologies represent the universe as never having begun to exist. (shrink)

According to the orthodox interpretation of bounce cosmologies, the universe was born from an entropy-reducing phase in a previous universe. To defend the thesis that the whole of physical reality was caused to exist a finite time ago, Craig and Sinclair have argued the low-entropy interface between universes should instead be understood as the beginning of two universes. Here, I present Craig and Sinclair with a dilemma. On the one hand, if the direction of time is reducible, as (...) friends of the Mentaculus—for example, Albert, Loewer, and Papineau—maintain, then there is reason to think that the direction of time and the entropic arrow of time align. But on that account, efficient causation is likely reducible to non-causal phenomena. In consequence, contrary to Craig and Sinclair’s theological aims, things can begin to exist without causes. On the other hand, if the direction of time is not reducible, Craig and Sinclair’s interpretation of bounce cosmologies is unjustified. Lastly, a reply to a potential objection motivates a discussion of how to interpret bounce cosmologies on the tensed theory of absolute time favoured by Craig and Sinclair. I offer two interpretations of bounce cosmologies that, given a tensed theory of absolute time, are preferable to those Craig and Sinclair offer, yet inconsistent with their project in natural theology; on one interpretation, the universe does not require a supernatural cause and, on the other, bounce cosmologies represent the universe as never having begun to exist. (shrink)

Continental Philosophy Beyond "the" Continent / Brian Treanor -- Prometheus' Gift of Fire and Technics: Contemplating the Meaning of Fire, Affect, and Californian Pyrophytes in the Pyrocene / Marjolein Oele -- The West as Slaughterbench: Thinking without Revolutions in the American West / Christopher Lauer -- The End of the West: The Time of Apocalypse in the Westerns of Cormac McCarthy / Amanda Parris -- The Trees of the West: Our Elders, Our Teachers / Andrew Jussaume -- Thinking Wolves (...) / Thomas Thorpe -- Robert Smith, Entropic Art, and the West / Shannon M. Mussett -- "Westering" and "BreakingThrough": Zen Buddhism on Cannery Row / Gerard Kuperus -- Life in Interregnum: Deleuze, Guattari, and Atleo / Russell Duvernoy -- Monstrous Topologies: Edward Abbey, Reiner Schürmann, and the Fate of the American West / Josh Hayes -- Turtle Island Anarchy / Jason Wirth. (shrink)

The digital revolution invites a reconsideration of the very essence of politics. How can we think about decision, control, and will at a time when technologies of automation are transforming every dimension of human life, from military combat to mental attention, from financial systems to the intimate lives of individuals? This article looks back to a moment in the 20th century when the concept of the political as an independent logic was developed, in a time when the boundaries (...) and operations of the classic state were in question. At the same moment, a whole new technological era was opened up with the emergence of intelligent machines and computers in the postwar cybernetic age. Technology, and cybernetics in particular, loomed large in Carl Schmitt’s articulation of the concept of the political, while the problem of radical open decision was at the heart of influential cybernetic approaches to politics. Linking these was the idea of entropic decay. Schmitt’s invocation of the theological concept of the Katechon, who restrains chaos in the time before Christ’s return, in fact exemplifies the new understandings of order in a cybernetic age facing new challenges of technology in a globalized condition. (shrink)

The past hypothesis is that the entropy of the universe was very low in the distant past. It is put forward to explain the entropic arrow of time but it has been suggested. The emperor’s new mind. London:Vintage Books; Penrose, R.. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 571, 249–264; Price, H.. In S. F. Savitt, Times’s arrows today. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Price, H.. Time’s arrow and Archimedes’ point. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Price, H.. In (...) C. Hitchcock, Contemporary debates in philosophy of science. Oxford: Blackwell]) that it is itself in need of explanation. It has also been suggested that cosmic inflation could provide the explanation, but Price raises a serious objection to this suggestion, which has otherwise received very little attention in the philosophical literature. Price points out that the standard inflationary explanation involves a double standard: although the evolution of the universe described by the inflationary model seems natural from the standard temporal perspective it looks highly unnatural from the reversed temporal perspective. The main purpose of this paper is to propose a novel form of the inflationary explanation that avoids this objection. It is argued that the inflationary model would not involve a double standard if we construct the model with a global “boundary” condition instead of a conventional boundary condition: if we assume that the universe is as generic as possible overall, rather than as generic as possible at some given point as is assumed in the standard inflationary model. This novel form of the inflationary explanation is then compared with Price’s 1996 preferred explanation, a version of the so-called “Weyl hypothesis”. (shrink)

Quantum uncertainty relations have deep-rooted significance in the formalism of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg’s uncertainty relations attracted a renewed interest for its applications in quantum information science. Following the discovery of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Robertson derived a general form of Heisenberg’s uncertainty relations for a pair of arbitrary observables represented by Hermitian operators. In the present work, we discover a temporal version of the Heisenberg–Robertson uncertainty relations for the measurement of two observables at two different times, where the dynamical uncertainties (...) crucially depend on the time evolution of the observables. The uncertainties not only depend on the choice of observables but also depend on the times at which the physical observables are measured. The time correlated two-time commutator dictates the trade-off between the dynamical uncertainties. We demonstrate the dynamics of these uncertainty relations for a spin-1/2 quantum system and for a quantum harmonic oscillator. We also present the dynamical uncertainty relation in terms of entropies, where the temporal entropic uncertainties are restricted by a time-dependent complementarity factor. The temporal uncertainty relations explored in this work can be experimentally verified with the present quantum technology. (shrink)

An effective formalism is developed to handle decaying two-state systems. Herewith, observables of such systems can be described by a single operator in the Heisenberg picture. This allows for using the usual framework in quantum information theory and, hence, to enlighten the quantum features of such systems compared to non-decaying systems. We apply it to systems in high energy physics, i.e. to oscillating meson–antimeson systems. In particular, we discuss the entropic Heisenberg uncertainty relation for observables measured at different times (...) at accelerator facilities including the effect of \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$\mathcal{CP}$\end{document} violation, i.e. the imbalance of matter and antimatter. An operator-form of Bell inequalities for systems in high energy physics is presented, i.e. a Bell-witness operator, which allows for simple analysis of unstable systems. (shrink)

Characterizing the contemporary world as massively entropic and pointing to the proletarianization of human beings, Bernard Stiegler claims that we need to “bifurcate”. This paper clarifies what he means by bifurcation and examines the conditions necessary for its occurrence. After explaining how Stiegler’s general organology provides a framework for his assessment of our present, the paper focuses on how humans can become capable of producing bifurcations. Emphasizing that bifurcation must occur in relation to technology, the paper identifies it as (...) an inventive dis-closure of a current system that transforms both technology and us through the creation of knowledge. It then shows that although the problem of our time is primarily one of automatization, we must deal with it through internalization rather than disautomatization. Our very humanity is being disrupted because we are not realizing the possibilities offered by the development of technology, and this can only be achieved if we internalize technology. The process of internalizing technology is itself bifurcative and enables us to overcome our proletarianization. (shrink)

Integrating concepts of maintenance and of origins is essential to explaining biological diversity. The unified theory of evolution attempts to find a common theme linking production rules inherent in biological systems, explaining the origin of biological order as a manifestation of the flow of energy and the flow of information on various spatial and temporal scales, with the recognition that natural selection is an evolutionarily relevant process. Biological systems persist in space and time by transfor ming energy from one (...) state to another in a manner that generates structures which allows the system to continue to persist. Two classes of energetic transformations allow this; heat-generating transformations, resulting in a net loss of energy from the system, and conservative transformations, changing unusable energy into states that can be stored and used subsequently. All conservative transformations in biological systems are coupled with heat-generating transformations; hence, inherent biological production, or genealogical proesses, is positively entropic. There is a self-organizing phenomenology common to genealogical phenomena, which imparts an arrow of time to biological systems. Natural selection, which by itself is time-reversible, contributes to the organization of the self-organized genealogical trajectories. The interplay of genealogical (diversity-promoting) and selective (diversity-limiting) processes produces biological order to which the primary contribution is genealogical history. Dynamic changes occuring on times scales shorter than speciation rates are microevolutionary; those occuring on time scales longer than speciation rates are macroevolutionary. Macroevolutionary processes are neither redicible to, nor autonomous from, microevolutionary processes. (shrink)

The digital represents an oppressive apparatus of control or a new horizon for liberation? This article frames a post-deleuzian and post-guattarian line of though about the digital and the politics. Control and discontinuity of affections are the two poles for a reasoning about our involvment in the digital and our awareness of risks and opportunities. If we assume that the contemporary is characterized by the pulverization of the real, and that from the thanatology of the twentieth century could hardly be (...) born a 'providential' technology at the same time thanatology can’t stop the entropic being, which transcends all ambition of autonomy of matter. The machines were built in the frame of segmentation, but the ontological instability is able to give form to a different and new releases. However, a reflection on new technologies leads us to understand that the affectivity of matter, its discontinuities, while constituting a virtual source of potentiality with 'machinic heterogenesis', does not 'escape' the power, but urges the control to raise new challenges not in opposition but in affinity. In this mimetic interaction, then, should continue to reflect, remembering always the lure of Deleuze to irony and humour, on possible differential practices for limiting the disciplines in order to move the entropy in the logic of the database, under the sign of an aesthetics of affection, renewing the an-aestheticized subjectivity of contemporary. (shrink)

This paper proposes different approaches to design, referring to gambiarra practices and artifacts and their relation to complexity theory, evoking critical theorists that take undecidability into account in order to link gambiarra to operations that breed complexity and responsibility. The word gambiarra comes from Brazilian slang and describes an intervention or artifact meant to provide a provisory solution to an unexpected event or crisis. This kind of alternative design differs radically from conventional design because it does not come from formally (...) trained, engineer-minded, projects. Instead, it lacks control, stability and durability. As it offers no permanent solution, it opens room for further accidents and is messy, especially if compared to a conservative model for creation that praises human predominance, soundness and efficiency. Therefore, gambiarra often has negative connotations that this analysis aims to challenge, by relating it to principles of complexity theory. Complexity theory is a transdisciplinary field for research aimed at the organization of living systems, with a vast understanding of networks and what life and govern are. It gathers insights from different disciplines to explore the interconnectivity between individuals, their systems and environment. It unveils how ambivalent information/noise relationships are fundamental for the increase of diversity in a system. It also displays the intelligent dynamics resulting from seemingly insignificant neighborhood relations that collectively make it possible to adapt and continuously change structures. With that in mind, the “deficient” aspect of gambiarra becomes more valuable, as it hints at a potential to generate new information and structures beyond entropic models that perpetuate the same logics across time. Michel Serres’s information theory presented in the book The Parasite is brought up in comparison to gambiarra, in order to explore the potential of interdependent ambiguous relationships that may not fit in dominant forms of discourse. Concomitantly, Vilém Flusser’s notion of responsibility reinforces the argument that a fabric of dynamic differences can emerge out of mutual engagement and indeterminacy. Underlying, this paper concerns with drafting ecological discourses and practices that can embrace contradictions and the plurality of worlds, noticing complex phenomena that have been pushed to the margins, while also decentralizing from hegemonic models. It questions the predominance of the prevailing design paradigm in the search for non-eurocentric and non-anthropocentric human-environment relationships and forms of provision of human needs. (shrink)

The present paper is a survey of the economics of survival, a branch of ecological economics that stresses the preservation of the opportunities of future generations over an extended time horizon. It outlines the main analytical foundation of the branch - in which the concept of entropy is a major building block -, and its analysis of the interaction between the economic system and the environment. Regarding its outlook of the future, we see that the founders of the branch (...) were mainly concerned with the consequences of a serious depletion of natural resources - particularly the energetic capital of the earth. More recently, however, emphasis is being placed on problems that stem from the fragility of the global ecosystem in face of the disturbances caused by the entropic acceleration imposed by mankind. It is feared that the ongoing expansion of the scale of the economy may bring about irreversible damages to vital environmental functions, such as protection against undesirable consequences of solar radiation, maintenance of temperature within a range that will support life, and preservation of ecosystem resiliency. (shrink)

This article draws on Bernard Stiegler and Gilbert Simondon’s work to further interrogate the psychic, social, and political problems raised by the development of Artificial Intelligence. Stiegler’s political philosophy of time-consciousness reveals three concomitants urgencies: human memory is conditioned by industrial supplements that are increasingly disruptive, capitalism has produced an entropic condition where life on earth is threaten by toxic systems, the deployment of technologies of spirits has striped individuals of their psychic and collective individuation. I read media (...) theory along with Simondon’s philosophy to elucidate the question of mediation in today’s reticulated AI-driven society. (shrink)

Hume's political economy and his contributions to monetary theory are usually regarded as a minor part of his philosophic output. This paper argues that Hume's monetary ideas can, in fact, be read back into his moral and epistemological concerns so as to give the institution of money a larger significance for Humean social thought. In particular, the possibility of an abstract and entirely fiduciary money, like Hume's notion of sympathy, promises to transcend the entropic logic of representation that otherwise (...) enervates Hume's utilitarian sensationalism. At the same time, Hume's stress upon money as a social convention highlights the importance of _money illusion, and of commercial virtue more generally, as nonrational underpinnings of the capitalist ethos. (edited). (shrink)

This essay undertakes a critique of recent trends in affect theory from the standpoint of the “human motor”: a trope that presupposes a thermodynamic psychophysiology distended between energy conservation and entropy. In the course of reanimating thermodynamic motifs in Marx's labor power metabolics and Freud's trauma energetics, the essay broaches entropics as a poetics of depletion that offsets affect theories promoting open-system metaphors. Open-system affect theory sometimes amalgamates emancipatory post-humanist gestures inherited from Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari with neuroscientific terms. (...) In the course of “liberating” affect from subject-oriented topoi, this “liberation-scientistic” admixture expropriates organic matter's degeneration over time. An “entropical” perspective also challenges Antonio Negri's Spinozaist affect conceived as a capacitating power that encounters obstacles but never limits. Both “liberation scientism” and “capacitation rhetoric” mimic capital's abstraction in infinitely expanding its potential to extract surplus value from finitely embodied labor. With enervation and deterioration at its crux, entropics illuminates how people might feel individuated by their respective struggles to safeguard scarce energy and forestall “heat death” while navigating simultaneous demands. The question is whether or not open-system motifs in affect theory can effectively register the political force of this struggle with depletion and present or imminent debilitation as its common ground. (shrink)

In this paper we propose a theoretical model of protein folding and protein evolution in which a polypeptide (sequence/structure) is assumed to behave as a Maxwell Demon or Information Gathering and Using System (IGUS) that performs measurements aiming at the construction of the native structure. Our model proposes that a physical meaning to Shannon information (H) and Chaitin's algorithmic information (K) parameters can be both defined and referred from the IGUS standpoint. Our hypothesis accounts for the interdependence of protein folding (...) and protein evolution through mutual influencing relationships mediated by the IGUS. In brief, IGUS activity in protein folding determines long term tendencies that emerge at the evolutionary time-scale.Thus, protein evolution is a consequence of measurements executed by proteins at the cellular level, where the IGUS imposes a tendency to attain a highly unique stable native form that promotes the updating of the information content. The folding kinetics observed is, thus, the outcome of an evolutionary process where the polypeptide-IGUS drives the evolution of its linear sequence. Finally, we describe protein evolution as an entropic process that tends to increase the content of mutual algorithmic information between the sequence and the structure. This model enables one: 1. To comprehend that full determination of the three-dimensional structure by the linear sequence is a tendency where satisfaction is only possible at thermodynamic equilibrium .2. To account for the observed randomness of the amino acid sequences. 3. To predict an alternation of periods of selection and neutral diffusion during protein evolutionary time. (shrink)

The battlefield of the Anthropocene is a tragic one. It begins at the end. It emerges out of melancholy, in the locality of being not-dead-yet. As an Epoch dating the human impact on earth, the Anthropocene looks like a graveyard-to-come, one in which the story of humankind is writing its own epitaph in real time. The tragedy of our moment, or the tragic moment of our action means having to act despite knowing it is too late, searching for hope (...) in the dark. This tragedy produces the sensation that humankind must necessarily face its own limits. And these limits are telling a story that is not a happy one: we cannot keep up with the pace of such an entropic boneyard. When it comes to the massive eradications of people and species, no one can justify the feelings of sympathy that proliferate against a back- ground of intellectual numbness. The battlefield of the Anthropocene is one that demands action. (shrink)

The focus on discourse and communication in the recent sociology of scientific knowledge offers new perspectives for an integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches in science studies. The common point of interest is the question of how reflexive communication systems communicate. The elaboration of the mathematical theory of communication into a theory of potentially self-organizing entropical systems enables us to distinguish the various layers of communication, and to specify the dynamic changes in these configurations over time. For example, a (...) paradigmatic discourse can be considered as a virtual communication system at the supra-individual level. Communication systems, however, cannot be directly observed. One observes only their instantaneous operations. The reflexive analyst is able to attribute the observed uncertainty to hypothesized systems that interact in the events. The implications of this perspective for various programmes in the sociology of scientific knowledge are discussed. (shrink)

Jacob Bekenstein's identification of black hole event horizon area with entropy proved to be a landmark in theoretical physics. In this paper we trace the subsequent development of the resulting generalized second law of thermodynamics (GSL), especially its extension to incorporate cosmological event horizons. In spite of the fact that cosmological horizons do not generally have well-defined thermal properties, we find that the GSL is satisfied for a wide range of models. We explore in particular the case of an asymptotically (...) de Sitter universe filled with a gas of small black holes as a means of casting light on the relative entropic ‘worth’ of black hole versus cosmological horizon area. We present some numerical solutions of the generalized total entropy as a function of time for certain cosmological models, in all cases confirming the validity of the GSL. (shrink)

Based on Newton’s laws reformulated in the Hamiltonian dynamics combined with statistical mechanics, we formulate a statistical mechanical theory supporting the hypothesis of a closed universe oscillating in phase-space. We find that the behavior of this universe as a whole can be represented by a free entropic oscillator whose lifespan is nonhomogeneous, thus implying that time is shorter or longer according to the state of this universe given through its entropy. We conclude that time reduces to the (...) entropy production of this universe and that a nonzero entropy production means that local fluctuations could exist giving rise to the appearance of masses and to the curvature of the space. (shrink)