Time and Chance by David Z. Albert - ISBN: 9780674011328
Paperback
This study is an attempt to get to the root of the tension between the best scientific pictures of the physical structure of the world and the everyday, empirical experience of it. This book examines the problem of the direction of time - the notion that whatever can happen, can happen backwards.

Time and Chance

$91.85

  • Paperback

    192 pages

  • Release Date

    28 February 2003

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Summary

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time. The situation (very briefly) is that it is a consequence of almost every one of those fundamental scientific pictures–and that it is at the same time radically at odds with our common sense–that whatever can happen can just as naturally h…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780674011328
ISBN-10:0674011325
Author:David Z. Albert
Publisher:Harvard University Press
Imprint:Harvard University Press
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:192
Release Date:28 February 2003
Weight:281g
Dimensions:140mm x 221mm
A-Format
B-Format
Time and Chance by David Z. Albert - ISBN: 9780674011328
140 × 221 mm
C-Format
A4
mm / in
What They're Saying

Critics Review

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 *

About The Author

David Z. Albert

David Z Albert is Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and the 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.

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