The Nature of Irreversibility

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Henry B. Hollinger, Michael John Zenzen

   Pages 1-4

3. The Paradoxes

   • Henry B. Hollinger, Michael John Zenzen

   Pages 5-29

4. The Applications

   • Henry B. Hollinger, Michael John Zenzen

   Pages 30-40

5. Return to the Paradoxes

   • Henry B. Hollinger, Michael John Zenzen

   Pages 41-56

6. Various Kinds of Irreversibility

   • Henry B. Hollinger, Michael John Zenzen

   Pages 57-86

7. Proposed Origins of Irreversibility

   • Henry B. Hollinger, Michael John Zenzen

   Pages 87-97

8. The Origin of Exclusion Irreversibility

   • Henry B. Hollinger, Michael John Zenzen

   Pages 98-112

9. Irreversibility in Fluid Dynamics

   • Henry B. Hollinger, Michael John Zenzen

   Pages 113-158

10. Irreversibility in Statistical Mechanics

    • Henry B. Hollinger, Michael John Zenzen

    Pages 159-256

11. Irreversibility in Quantum Statistical Mechanics

    • Henry B. Hollinger, Michael John Zenzen

    Pages 257-288

12. On Alternative Approaches

    • Henry B. Hollinger, Michael John Zenzen

    Pages 289-303

13. Back Matter

    Pages 304-340

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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.

• concept
• dynamics
• model
• nature
• oral discourse
• philosophy
• philosophy of science
• time

• Department of Chemistry, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA

  Henry B. Hollinger

• Department of Philosophy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA

  Michael John Zenzen

Policies and ethics