Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 10, Issue 22
At 5:37 PM 01/20/2015, Malcom Dean wrote: Entropy is a mathematical variable which balances equations, but cannot possibly describe the conditions and actual processes which lead to work, enable its completion, or detail its purpose. May I add some qualifications? Entropy must be a nice item to talk about if the issue is on the whole bookkeeping on a long time scale. Instead, if one is interested in the nitty-gritty of concrete events and processes in thermodynamics, what may be observed there must be the principle of first come, first served. That is the participation of the rate-dependent processes. Thermodynamics allows at least two distinct classes of rate process. One is quasi static as riding on the slowly moving equilibrium, and one more is adiabatic as responding very rapidly to the changes occurring in the neighborhood. If we are interested in the concrete processes on a short time scale, the dominance of the adiabatic processes may explicitly be visible there. There would be no hurricanes nor typhoons in the tropical ocean if the adiabatic processes are dismissed. Of course, the entropy business could eventually enter in the long run if we do not care much about the difference making a difference in between. Koichiro ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 10, Issue 22
Dear Malcom Dean, Unless you are claiming that the past 150 year of thermodynamics is bunk, I think your denial needs qualification. Of course "entropy" is a mathematical variable. And yes it balances equations. And yes it assesses only one aspect of the changes that occur in a physical transformation. And yes we should be wary of reifying every operator or variable in our mathematical models of physical processes. But this particular measure of state is not just a figment of some mathematician's imagination. It does a terrific job of making predictions about the outcomes of physical processes. To deny that the measurable value called 'entropy' increases with mechanical or chemical work in an isolated system seems to deny a pretty clean paraphrasing of the 2nd law. Is that really your claim? Or is this merely a quibble about phraseology? Although I have problems with some overstated versions of the maximum entropy production principle (MEPP), I think that for the most part it captures an important attribute of far-from-equilibrium processes. Yes "creation" of entropy was perhaps an odd way to describe this "production", but you seem to be reading something into this phraseology that I don't think was intended. This did not read to me like a something-from-nothing claim or to reify entropy as some sort of substance. However, your last "it from bit" statement, though coined by an eminent physicist and very popular in some domains, does in my opinion make an unwarranted claim of this sort. At the very least it collapses some critical distinctions about what information is that my piece attempts to unpack. I consider the use of the term 'information' in this context to be quite misleadingly metaphoric. Finally, your claim about information and object creation seem vastly more speculative and ambiguous than any of the statements made about entropy and work. How about some constructive criticism of the paper, since it develops ideas that appear to be in conflict with some of your assumptions? — Terry On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 12:36 AM, Malcolm Dean wrote: > On 2015-01-19 20:37 GMT+01:00 Joshua Augustus Bacigalupi < > bacigalupiwo...@gmail.com> wrote to the FIS list: > > > > > Josh Bacigalupi here, fellow pirate. Thank you all for this > thoughtful discussion. > > > > > > ... We can all agree that the creation of entropy is necessary to do > work; ... > > > With respect, this statement should not continue to go unchallenged. I for > one do not agree. > > Entropy is a mathematical variable which balances equations, but cannot > possibly describe the conditions and actual processes which lead to work, > enable its completion, or detail its purpose. The variable "entropy" > describes only one aspect. It is like claiming homeostasis as a complete > description of a human. > > The constant danger is coming to believe in variables thrown into some > picture, such as we see in recent cosmology. They are reified. They become, > as a result, objects of faith, even worldviews (Rifkin 1981). If someone > claims mathematics as prior to cosmology, that scientific faith should not > be presented as if it is a proven fact. > > It is ridiculous to continue talking about "creation" of entropy. What is > created are new conditions, fresh processes, and objects. The point of a > thermodynamic process, or more generally, an Information process, is > object-creation. It from bit. > > Thermodynamics is only a part of an Information process (Lerner 2014) [ > http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.7041 ]. > > Malcolm Dean > > > > > > > > ___ > Fis mailing list > Fis@listas.unizar.es > http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis > > -- Professor Terrence W. Deacon University of California, Berkeley ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
Re: [Fis] Fis Digest, Vol 10, Issue 11
Pedro, this image is strongly related to my research. My graduation and master degree was in Physics. But now I am in IS world through PhD program of IBICT/UFRJ in Brazil. As you, Jorge and Raquel said (Navarro, Moral, Marijuan, 2013), IS is about to become one of four great scientific domains. Don't you think that one of the greatest reasons of it is the (big) interdisciplinar nature of IS? (Saracevic, 1995). Interdisciplinarity is in IS's "DNA" :-) I am investigating some aspects of interdisciplinarity between IS and Natural Sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) (inspired by Capurros's work http://www.capurro.de/infoconcept.html). Some questions of this research are: 1) why (or how) a natural scientist enters in IS world? What are their motivations?; 2) how strong this interdisciplinarity is? (inspired by Loet's works on the theme - for example, Leydesdorff, Rafols (2011)); 4) How the physical concepts of information are present in IS articles. I believe that inside FIS I will find many answers to my questions. By observation of Scientific Communication and Bibliometrics and of course, if I have the opportunity, by interviewing the members of FIS :-) I can say that in only few weeks of FIS I already have learned a lot :-) Best, Moises. Navarro, J.; Moral, R; Marijuan, P; Uprising of the Informational: Towards a New Way of Thinking In Information Science. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Philosophy of Information, Xi'an (2013) Saracevic, Tefko. "Interdisciplinary nature of information science." Ciência da informação 24.1 (1995): 36-41. Leydesdorff, Loet, and Ismael Rafols. "Indicators of the interdisciplinarity of journals: Diversity, centrality, and citations." Journal of Informetrics 5.1 (2011): 87-100. 2015-01-19 10:19 GMT-02:00 Pedro C. Marijuan : > Thanks Moises, here it is --in case the list server suppresses the image > again, the dropbox link below contains the image too (at the end of the > philoinfo paper, belonging to the Proceedings of the Xian Conference, > 2013). best ---Pedro > > https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wslnk41c3lquc55/AADpm_U6xuhm6jHK0esyN-29a?dl=0 > > > > *Figure 1. The Four Great Domains of Science*. The graphic shows the > network of contemporary disciplines in the background (following Bollen *et > al*., 2009); while the superimposed “four-leaf clover” represents the > four great scientific domains: physical, biological, social, and > informational. > > > > Moisés André Nisenbaum wrote: > > Hi, Pedro. > I didnt receive th image (Figure 1. The Four Great Domains of Science) > Would you please send it again? > > Thank you. > > Moises > > > > -- > - > Pedro C. Marijuán > Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group > Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud > Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) > Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X > 50009 Zaragoza, Spain > Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& > 6818)pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.eshttp://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/ > - > > -- Moisés André Nisenbaum Doutorando IBICT/UFRJ. Professor. Msc. Instituto Federal do Rio de Janeiro - IFRJ Campus Maracanã moises.nisenb...@ifrj.edu.br ___ Fis mailing list Fis@listas.unizar.es http://listas.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
