Order out of chaos : man's new dialogue with nature
xxxi, 349 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
9780553340822, 9781786631008, 9780553343632, 0553340824, 1786631008, 0553343637
10146336
Alvin Toffer / Science and change. Man's new dialogue with nature. The challenge to science. Book one: the delusion of the universal. Chapter 1: the triumph of reason
The new Moses
A dehumanized world
The Newtonian synthesis
The experimental dialog
The myth at the origin of science
The limits of classical science. The identification of the real. Newton's laws
Motion and change
The language of dynamics
Laplace's demon. The two cultures
Diderot and the discourse of living
Kant's critical ratification
A philosophy of nature? Hegel and Bergson
Process and reality: whitehead
"Ignoramus, ignoramibus": the positivist's strain
A new start. The science of complexity
Energy and the industrial age
Heat, the rival of gravitation
The principle of the conservation of energy
Heat engines and the arrow of time
From technology to cosmology
The birth of entropy
Boltzmann's Order Principle
Carnot and Darwin. The three stages of thermodynamics
Flux and force
Linear thermodynamics
Far from equilibrium
Beyond the threshold of chemical instability
The encounter with moleular biology
Bifurcations and symmetry-breaking
Cascading bifurcations and the transitions to chaos
From Euclid to Aristotle. Order through fluctuations
Fluctuations and chemistry
Fluctuations and corralations
The amplifications of fluctuations
Structural stability
Logistic evolution
Evolutionary feedback
Modelizatitons of complexity
An open world. From being to becoming. Rediscovering time
A change of emphasis
The end of universality
The rise of quantum mechanics
Heisenburg's uncertainty relation
The temporal evolution of quantum systems
A nonequilibrium universe
The clash of doctrines
Probability and irreversibility
Boltzmann's breakthrough
Questioning Boltzmann's interpretation
Based on the authors' La nouvelle alliance