knowledge of the system could manipulate the system in a way to avoid the second law of thermodynamics. This has also been supported by other experiments, such as the Szilard engine experiment (Parrondo). Furthermore, in class we have learned information on entropy that can help to understand this situation. For example, the entropy of a system where it always increases is known as the coarse entropy is when the system is not well understood, and if all the variables are known, the entropy would be zero. This is because the entropy changes depending on how much information is known about the system, with a lower entropy the more of the information is known. Some of the information that could be known include temperature and pressure, or the position of all the molecules and their velocities and accelerations; the second set of information is a lot more detailed than the first, so there are fewer possibilities that could fulfill the requirements (woods).
The most important concept for this idea is how the change in the flow of entropy would change human perception in any way. For this part of the paper I am going to start with explaining entropy and the universe, a human 's psychological abilities at telling time, and try to view how the human perception could be affected by the flip of the flow of entropy.
Additionally, section 22.4 of the physics text “Physical Origin of Time Asymmetry” starts the chapter by describing the arrow of time as the difference between the low-entropy beginning and the high-entropy finish. It then continues to say that a system without a set boundary condition can be just as likely to go to a state of lower entropy as it can be to grow in entropy. The text then describes an experiment called the Ehren...
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...s in the returning stage of a cyclic universe, an outlook I was not able to find, but was informed about by Professor Halley is that the human mind could possible view the future and past in very different and possibly strange ways compared to the current human outlook. This would entirely change the timeline that we currently use. This could add some more questions the minds of humanity, such as how would this affect a human’s life, or even if humanity could survive if the entropy direction switched. If everything disintegrated like the article “turnaround in Cyclic Cosmology” claimed, which would definitely destroy humanity. Conclusively, with the information that I found, it appears that the likelihood of a cyclic universe with the survival of an intelligent life-form to be very unlikely, and the effects on a human could cause the perception of time to flip around.
Another result of the second law of thermodynamics is that spontaneous changes are always accompanied by a dispersal of energy into a more disordered form.
John McTaggart in his essay “Time” presents a radical argument that claims time is unreal. While the argument is interesting and has attracted much attention for his arguments, I remain unconvinced of the argument he makes. This paper will lay out McTaggart’s argument that time in unreal, critically analyze why I believe McTaggart’s argument fails and present an alternative idea about time, utilizing aspects of McTaggart’s argument.
Leibniz (1686), for example, argued that only physical events could cause physical events and only mental events could cause mental events. Fortunately, he thought, God has arranged physical events and mental events into a pre-established harmony so that given sequences of mental and physical events unfailingly accompany each other ("parallelism"). Co...
Lucretius. On the Nature of the Universe. Tr. R. E. Latham. Introduction by John Godwin. Penguin Books, London: 1994.
In this essay we will consider a much more recent approach to time that came to the fore in the twentieth century. In 1908 James McTaggart published an article in Mind entitled 'The Unreality of Time', in which, as the title implies, he argued that there is in reality no such thing as time. Now although this claim was in itself startling, probably what was even more significant than McTaggart's arguments was his way of stating them. It was in this paper that McTaggart first drew his now standard distinction between two ways of saying when things happen. In this essay we shall outline these ways of describing events and then discuss the merits and demerits of each, and examine what has become known as the 'tensed versus tenseless' debate on temporal becoming.
However, this cannot be extrapolated indefinitely. The universe’s expansion helps us to appreciate the direction in which time flows. This is referred to as the Cosmological arrow of time, and implies that the future is -- by definition -- the direction towards which the universe increases in size. The expansion of the universe also gives rise to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the overall entropy (or disorder) in the Universe can only increase with time because the amount of energy available for work deteriorates with time. If the universe was eternal, therefore, the amount of usable energy available for work would have already been exhausted. Hence it follows that at one point the entropy value was at absolute 0 (most ordered state at the moment of creation) and the entropy has been increasing ever since -- that is, the universe at one point was fully “wound up” and has been winding down ever since. This has profound theological implications, for it shows that time itself is necessarily finite. If the universe were eternal, the thermal energy in the universe would have been evenly distributed throughout the cosmos, leaving each region of the cosmos at uniform temperature (at very close to absolute 0), rendering no further work
It’s impossible to decipher how other people view your image. It’s a hypothesis, an educated guess. Projected images can sometimes be misunderstood, viewed as negative, self-serving transparencies. In my experience a large segment of the population attempts to portray a false image of someone they are not, but someone they would like to emulate. Without a solid relationship with someone, it can be difficult to decide if their image is real or delusional. I have been conscious of self image since my youth. My life has provided me with many challenges and opportunities that have resulted in the evolution of my image that has transitioned from a rebellious teenager to a 55-year-old displaced worker going back to college.
Our world is filled with complex systems which defy reductionist understanding. Systems ranging from the self-organization of life and emergent intelligence to the chaos of fluid dynamics and dripping faucets. Just as surely as these systems exhibit a synergistic process of generating information they share some analogous processes on their most basic levels.
Howard, T , Rifkin, J. Entropy: A New world View. 1980. New York: Bantam Books. Print.
Sense data are the empirical mind-dependent ingredients of perception. They are the colours, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures out of which all experience is built. The idea of sense data is the cornerstone of the theory of Representative Realism, which states that immediate objects of awareness are not physical objects, but are sense data. Sense data are the subjective mind-dependent intermediaries that give us all of our knowledge of the external world through a veil of perception, representing the real world. The theory of Representative Realism is similar to Direct Realism, in that there is an objective mind independent physical world; however, we only ever perceive it vie a subjective mind-dependent intermediary (called sense data).
In the book, Stephen Hawking talks about time specifically in Einstein’s theory of relativity. Einstein predicted that time will go by sl...
Quoidbach, J., Gilbert, D. T., & Wilson, T. D. (2013). The end of history illusion. Science, 339(6115), 96–98.
The first concept to be addressed is determinism. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, determinism is “the idea that every event is necessitated by antecedent events and conditions together with the laws of nature.” Essentially, it is the philosophy that all events are determined by a fixed set of causes, so that the future is as rigid as the past. Some religious forms of determinism assert that events are decided by the will of a deity. For our purposes, however, we will consider the scientific form of determinism that is based on basic causality. Consider, for example, throwing a die. We might see this as a way to determine a random result (between 1 and 6). But, thrown from a certain height and with a certain velocity, the die will land on a certain edge or corner and roll a certain number of times before it slows down and stops. Because the die is bound by the laws of physics, the outcome of the roll is determined as we roll it, although we may be unable to calculate all the factors involved and predict the outcome.
Thermodynamics is the branch of science concerned with the nature of heat and its conversion to any form of energy. In thermodynamics, both the thermodynamic system and its environment are considered. A thermodynamic system, in general, is defined by its volume, pressure, temperature, and chemical make-up. In general, the environment will contain heat sources with unlimited heat capacity allowing it to give and receive heat without changing its temperature. Whenever the conditions change, the thermodynamic system will respond by changing its state; the temperature, volume, pressure, or chemical make-up will adjust accordingly in order to reach its original state of equilibrium. There are three laws of thermodynamics in which the changing system can follow in order to return to equilibrium.
This slide describes how H.G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine became the most prominent story about time travel. I think this is important because as the most vital time travel story, it created many of the time travel elements we know today. The questions of what will happen if we meet ourselves in the past and the “butterfly effect” could only be answered through the use of a fiction story. However, these questions may become a reality someday and it is best to think about them before the advent of time travel brings about the end of the world as we know