A Scientific Reading of Levinas’ Response to Heidegger: The Redemptive Edge of Time

KronoScope ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-89
Author(s):  
David Grandy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Emmanuel Levinas ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Second Law ◽  
Arrow Of Time ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Heat Death

AbstractIn responding to Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas characterized time as revelatory and redemptive. For Levinas, Heideggerian being was self-contained and self-identical, and therefore unable to generate the sense of novel possibility which occasions the fleeting present. Something similar to Heideggerian Being may be said to have taken hold in the nineteenth century with the development of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics was portrayed as the “arrow of time” moving inevitably toward universal heat death—cosmic stasis or self-identity. I argue that modern physical science itself does not fully validate this portrayal. There are, at the metaphysical level, explanatory gaps or openings which suggest other, more hopeful possibilities. These openings, I submit, are analogous to the ruptures of otherness which Levinas identified with the generosity of being and time’s redemptive aspect.

Frederic Leighton's Flaming June, Thermodynamics, and the Heat Death of the Sun

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-125
Author(s):  
Laura Franchetti
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Second Law ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Dominant Focus ◽  
Cultural Milieu ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Heat Death ◽  
The Impact

At the close of the nineteenth century, amid pervasive fears of decadence and widespread pessimism, Frederic Leighton (1830–96) completed Flaming June (1895). Taking as its starting point Victorian responses to the work that seem incomprehensible to viewers today, this paper examines the possible meaning behind Flaming June's more impenetrable iconography. The following discussion highlights the significance of thermodynamics in the work's cultural context. It examines the impact of an implication of the second law of thermodynamics, known as the Sun's heat death – a fated apocalyptic event – and suggests that this resonated with late Victorian audiences plagued by concerns of degeneration and decadence. Considered within this context, this paper reveals further layers of meaning embedded within the imagery of Flaming June available to a Victorian audience, but which have since been eclipsed by a dominant focus on other aspects of the painting's cultural milieu.

scholarly journals Maxwell’s Demon in Quantum Mechanics

Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 269
Author(s):  
Orly Shenker ◽  
Meir Hemmo
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Classical Mechanics ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Quantum Mechanical ◽  
Second Law ◽  
Arrow Of Time ◽  
Maxwell’S Demon ◽  
Counter Example ◽  
Maxwell's Demon

Maxwell’s Demon is a thought experiment devised by J. C. Maxwell in 1867 in order to show that the Second Law of thermodynamics is not universal, since it has a counter-example. Since the Second Law is taken by many to provide an arrow of time, the threat to its universality threatens the account of temporal directionality as well. Various attempts to “exorcise” the Demon, by proving that it is impossible for one reason or another, have been made throughout the years, but none of them were successful. We have shown (in a number of publications) by a general state-space argument that Maxwell’s Demon is compatible with classical mechanics, and that the most recent solutions, based on Landauer’s thesis, are not general. In this paper we demonstrate that Maxwell’s Demon is also compatible with quantum mechanics. We do so by analyzing a particular (but highly idealized) experimental setup and proving that it violates the Second Law. Our discussion is in the framework of standard quantum mechanics; we give two separate arguments in the framework of quantum mechanics with and without the projection postulate. We address in our analysis the connection between measurement and erasure interactions and we show how these notions are applicable in the microscopic quantum mechanical structure. We discuss what might be the quantum mechanical counterpart of the classical notion of “macrostates”, thus explaining why our Quantum Demon setup works not only at the micro level but also at the macro level, properly understood. One implication of our analysis is that the Second Law cannot provide a universal lawlike basis for an account of the arrow of time; this account has to be sought elsewhere.

scholarly journals Arrow of time: Metaphorical construals of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics

2012 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 818-848 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamer G. Amin ◽  
Fredrik Jeppsson ◽  
Jesper Haglund ◽  
Helge Strömdahl
Keyword(s):  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Second Law ◽  
Arrow Of Time

scholarly journals Asymmetry of counterfactual dependence and defense of Lewis's argument

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 21-42
Author(s):  
Nenad Filipovic
Keyword(s):  
David Lewis ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Counterfactual Dependence ◽  
Second Law ◽  
Counterfactual Analysis ◽  
Arrow Of Time ◽  
The Third ◽  
Time Problem ◽  
The Status ◽  
Future Work

Arrow of time is well known problem in physics and concerns explanation of the status of the second law of thermodynamics. The problem, however, soon made noise in various philosophical discussions: on knowledge, causality, etc. David Lewis, partially motivated by his counterfactual analysis of causality, introduced the problem of arrow of time in discussion on counterfactuals. After his article in which he had tried to ground asymmetry of counterfactuals in the second law of thermodynamics, there were numerous reactions on such kind of project. In the first part, I will introduce Lewis' theory in detail, and in the second part I will introduce some of the main critiques of such a view, focusing on Elga's critique. The third part will be saved for Loewer's and Albert's argument in favor of a very broad view of Lewis' project. In the part four, I will present strengthening of their argument, while explaining how we could apply it closer to Lewis' original view. Finally, I will make some concluding remarks regarding possible confusion on argument for supporting Lewis, as well as the additional requirements for any future work in that direction. Also, because of the nature of the mentioned arguments, in the appendix I will, very briefly, present an overview of the arrow of time problem from the perspective of physics.

Nineteenth Century

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don S. Lemons
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Magnetic Effect ◽  
Second Law ◽  
Experimental Demonstration ◽  
Electrical Currents ◽  
First Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Mechanical Equivalent ◽  
Romantic Movement

The Romantic Movement gave impetus to a process of unifying the forces of nature – an impetus that bore fruit in, especially, Oersted’s demonstraton of the magnetic effect of electrical currents (1820) and Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism (1865). Also, during this period Sadi Carnot articulated the first version of the second law of thermodynamics (1836) while James Joule’s painstaking experimental demonstration of the mechanical equivalent of heat (1847) is an essential foundation of the first law of thermodynamics.

4. The arrow of time

2021 ◽  
pp. 64-79
Author(s):  
Jenann Ismael
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Mechanics ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Second Law ◽  
Arrow Of Time ◽  
Temporal Asymmetry ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Everyday World ◽  
Laws Of Motion

‘The arrow of time’ discusses where the arrow of time comes from. The fundamental laws of motion do not distinguish past and future. And yet the everyday world is full of manifestly asymmetric processes. This chapter discusses the apparent mismatch between the fundamental laws of nature and the manifest asymmetry of the everyday world. The temporal asymmetry is made precise by the second law of thermodynamics and the tension between the second law and the fundamental laws is addressed by the development of statistical mechanics.

Modelling ‘Life’ against ‘heat death’

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-69
Author(s):  
Michail Zak
Keyword(s):  
Dynamical Systems ◽  
Liouville Equation ◽  
Second Law Of Thermodynamics ◽  
Quantum Systems ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Second Law ◽  
New Class ◽  
Heat Death ◽  
The Universe

AbstractThis work is inspired by the discovery of a new class of dynamical system described by ordinary differential equations coupled with their Liouville equation. These systems called self-controlled since the role of actuators is played by the probability produced by the Liouville equation. Following the Madelung equation that belongs to this class, non-Newtonian properties such as randomness, entanglement and probability interference typical for quantum systems have been described. Special attention was paid to the capability to violate the second law of thermodynamics, which makes these systems neither Newtonian, nor quantum. It has been shown that self-controlled dynamical systems can be linked to mathematical models of living systems. The discovery of isolated dynamical systems that can decrease entropy in violation of the second law of thermodynamics, and resemblances of these systems to livings suggests that ‘Life’ can slow down the ‘heat death’ of the Universe and that can be associated with the Purpose of Life.

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