Preface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index
Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will burn and burn. -- Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as it deserves to. -- Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan
David Z Albert is Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience, Time and Chance, and After Physics. His writing has appeared in numerous scholarly journals of physics and philosophy, as well as in the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and Scientific American.
Albert is perfecting a style of foundational analysis that is
uniquely his own...It has a surgical precision...and it is ruthless
with pretensions. The foundations of thermodynamics is a topic that
has accumulated a good deal of dead wood; this is a fire that will
burn and burn. -- Simon W. Saunders, Oxford University
As usual with Albert's work, the exposition is brisk and to the
point, and exceptionally clear...The book will be an extremely
valuable contribution to the literature on the subject of
philosophical issues in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, a
literature which has been thin on the ground but is now growing as
it deserves to. -- Lawrence Sklar, University of Michigan
The foundations of statistical mechanisms are often presented in
physics textbooks in a rather obscure and confused way. By
challenging common ways of thinking about this subject, Time and
Chance can do quite a lot to improve this situation. -- Jean
Bricmont * Science *
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