|
|
Return to E-mail Discussion page Previous in threadNext in thread I must say, the chap who chose the quote this week chose a doozy (sp?). 1) Dual authorship on the quote probably because it comes from a book? 2) More impotantly, my take on the quote. Prof Prigogine has, for many years, been trying to reconcile the apparent irreversible nature of the universe (for example, "humans exist now but didn't always exist"..... not the best example, but makes for just enough confusion to pick a fight) with the fact that all of the fundamental laws of physics as we know them now are purely reversible. Of course, Entropy is the famous example (and much of what Prigogine deals with is entropy). Strictly, global entropy is seen to increase with time. I still haven't seen a proof of that fact from fundamental physics (and don't anybody say Boltzmann's H-theorem because I have Dr. Duncan's thesis which shows the contrary).3) My coal for the fire of the entropy debate (not to get too off track, but 'cmon, the quote seems to be a little off track): The laws of physics are reversible if one includes the initial conditions. However, those same laws lead to highly chaotic dynamics (exponential divergence of trajectories). Any finite representation
of the initial conditions (e.g. writing them down or storing them
in your head since any number with a finite representation cannot
be irrational) such as would be the case by making a measurement,
discards information which becomes important exponentially quickly.
Therefore, we can show that a quantity, called the entropy, will
increase in time. Entropy would not be definable because the system would be truly reversible and nor would the arrow of time exist. 4) I apologise for taking the discussion off track. 5) I really apologise to the people on this list who thought about this problem WAY MORE than me. And also for maybe stealing this interpretation from elsewhere. I think I may be paraphrasing Prigogine as I've seen him talk a bunch of times. Joseph-- |
