LEADER 03736nam 2200601Ia 450 001 9910778183203321 005 20221108043313.0 010 $a0-674-02013-8 024 7 $a10.4159/9780674020139 035 $a(CKB)1000000000786780 035 $a(StDuBDS)AH23050575 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000259397 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11192597 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000259397 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10275739 035 $a(PQKB)10703952 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3300346 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10315851 035 $a(OCoLC)923110751 035 $a(DE-B1597)574447 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780674020139 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3300346 035 $a(OCoLC)1294423509 035 $a(EXLCZ)991000000000786780 100 $a20000620d2000 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||||||||||| 181 $ctxt 182 $cc 183 $acr 200 10$aTime and chance$b[electronic resource] /$fDavid Z Albert 210 $aCambridge, MA $cHarvard University Press$d2000 215 $a1 online resource (xi, 172 p. ) $cill 300 $aOriginally published: 2000. 311 $a0-674-00317-9 311 $a0-674-01132-5 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $aPreface 1. Time-Reversal Invariance 2. Thermodynamics 3. Statistical Mechanics 4. The Reversibility Objections and the Past-Hypothesis 5. The Scope of Thermodynamics 6. The Asymmetries of Knowledge and Intervention 7. Quantum Mechanics Appendix: Gedankenexperiments with Heat Engines Index 330 $aThis 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. 330 $bThis 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 happen backwards. Albert provides an unprecedentedly clear, lively, and systematic new account--in the context of a Newtonian-Mechanical picture of the world--of the ultimate origins of the statistical regularities we see around us, of the temporal irreversibility of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, of the asymmetries in our epistemic access to the past and the future, and of our conviction that by acting now we can affect the future but not the past. Then, in the final section of the book, he generalizes the Newtonian picture to the quantum-mechanical case and (most interestingly) suggests a very deep potential connection between the problem of the direction of time and the quantum-mechanical measurement problem. The book aims to be both an original contribution to the present scientific and philosophical understanding of these matters at the most advanced level, and something in the nature of an elementary textbook on the subject accessible to interested high-school students. 606 $aTime reversal 606 $aPhysics$xPhilosophy 615 0$aTime reversal. 615 0$aPhysics$xPhilosophy. 676 $a530.11 700 $aAlbert$b David Z$047487 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910778183203321 996 $aTime and chance$91752523 997 $aUNINA