Measurements of multiplicity fluctuations of identified hadrons in inelastic proton–proton interactions at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron

Measurements of multiplicity fluctuations of identified hadrons produced in inelastic p+p interactions at 31, 40, 80, and 158 $$\text {Ge}\text {V}/c$$ Ge / c beam momentum are presented. Three different measures of multiplicity fluctuations are used: the scaled variance $$\omega $$ ω and strongly intensive measures $$\Sigma $$ Σ and $$\Delta $$ Δ . These fluctuation measures involve second and first moments of joint multiplicity distributions. Data analysis is preformed using the Identity method which corrects for incomplete particle identification. Strongly intensive quantities are calculated in order to allow for a direct comparison to corresponding results on nucleus–nucleus collisions. The results for different hadron types are shown as a function of collision energy. A comparison with predictions of string-resonance Monte-Carlo models: Epos, Smash and Venus, is also presented.

The Categorical Imperative and Not Being Unworthy of the Event: Ethics in Deleuze's Difference and Repetition

This essay starts from a consideration of Deleuze's theory of time. It begins with the empty form of time. But the essay's aim is to understand Deleuze's reversal of Platonism in his 1968 Difference and Repetition. There is no question that the stakes of the reversal of Platonism are ontological. But I argue that what is really at stake is a movement of demoralisation. The essay proceeds in three steps. First, we determine what sufficient reason or grounding is, for Deleuze. Sufficient reason is struck with an irreducible ambiguity. It is this ambiguity in sufficient reason that allows it to be taken advantage of, to be used by representation and good sense for a moral purpose. The second part of the essay will therefore concern ‘the moralisation of sufficient reason’. Its focus will be good sense. But then, third, we must understand Deleuze's ‘demoralisation of sufficient reason’, which necessarily passes through others. Like sufficient reason, others are ambiguous, at once lending themselves to what cancels differences, and opening the way towards difference and intensity. The third step focuses on what Deleuze calls ‘the ethics of intensive quantities’. In the Conclusion, I examine Deleuze's famous, almost cliché, definition of ethics as not being unworthy of the event and, through the empty form of time, I connect it to Kant's formalistic ethics.

Dissipative Endoreversible Engine with Given Efficiency

Endoreversible thermodynamics is a finite time thermodynamics ansatz based on the assumption that reversible or equilibrated subsystems of a system interact via reversible or irreversible energy transfers. This gives a framework where irreversibilities and thus entropy production only occur in interactions, while subsystems (engines, for instance) act as reversible. In order to give an opportunity to incorporate dissipative engines with given efficiencies into an endoreversible model, we build a new dissipative engine setup. To do this, in the first step, we introduce a more general interaction type where energy loss not only results from different intensive quantities between the connected subsystems, which has been the standard in endoreversible thermodynamics up to now, but is also caused by an actual loss of the extensive quantity that is transferred via this interaction. On the one hand, this allows the modeling of leakages and friction losses, for instance, which can be represented as leaky particle or torque transfers. On the other hand, we can use it to build an endoreversible engine setup that is suitable to model engines with given efficiencies or efficiency maps and, among other things, gives an expression for their entropy production rates. By way of example, the modeling of an AC motor and its loss fluxes and entropy production rates are shown.

Market Theory and Capitalist Axiomatics

Producing a properly philosophical theory of capitalism as an open axiomatic system requires adding intensive multiplicities to the mathematical account of set theory, which allows only extensive multiplicities. Doing so enables us to understand pricing as a process of transforming intensive quantities into metric quantities, and thereby develop a diagram of the dynamics of axiomatisation and of the market as the two-sided and asymmetrical recording surface of the capitalist socius whose slope represents the infinite debt owed to finance capital. The capitalist market axiomatises four kinds of flows – flows of liquid capital and abstract labour, of course, but also flows of raw materials and energy and of human populations. At the same time that axiomatisation conjugates these flows in denumerable sets to extract surplus-value, it connects flows in minor, non-denumerable sets that escape axiomatisation and may become revolutionary. Such minor connections would constitute the fabric of a post-capitalist axiomatics.

Measurement, theory of

A conceptual analysis of measurement can properly begin by formulating the two fundamental problems of any measurement procedure. The first problem is that of representation, justifying the assignment of numbers to objects or phenomena. We cannot literally take a number in our hands and ’apply’ it to a physical object. What we can show is that the structure of a set of phenomena under certain empirical operations and relations is the same as the structure of some set of numbers under corresponding arithmetical operations and relations. Solution of the representation problem for a theory of measurement does not completely lay bare the structure of the theory, for there is often a formal difference between the kind of assignment of numbers arising from different procedures of measurement. This is the second fundamental problem, determining the scale type of a given procedure. Counting is an example of an absolute scale. The number of members of a given collection of objects is determined uniquely. In contrast, the measurement of mass or weight is an example of a ratio scale. An empirical procedure for measuring mass does not determine the unit of mass. The measurement of temperature is an example of an interval scale. The empirical procedure of measuring temperature by use of a thermometer determines neither a unit nor an origin. In this sort of measurement the ratio of any two intervals is independent of the unit and zero point of measurement. Still another type of scale is one which is arbitrary except for order. Moh’s hardness scale, according to which minerals are ranked in regard to hardness as determined by a scratch test, and the Beaufort wind scale, whereby the strength of a wind is classified as calm, light air, light breeze, and so on, are examples of ordinal scales. A distinction is made between those scales of measurement which are fundamental and those which are derived. A derived scale presupposes and uses the numerical results of at least one other scale. In contrast, a fundamental scale does not depend on others. Another common distinction is that between extensive and intensive quantities or scales. For extensive quantities like mass or distance an empirical operation of combination can be given which has the structural properties of the numerical operation of addition. Intensive quantities do not have such an operation; typical examples are temperature and cardinal utility. A widespread complaint about this classical foundation of measurement is that it takes too little account of the analysis of variability in the quantity measured. One important source is systematic variability in the empirical properties of the object being measured. Another source lies not in the object but in the procedures of measurement being used. There are also random errors which can arise from variability in the object, the procedures or the conditions surrounding the observations.

Intensity and the Missing Virtual: Deleuze's Reading of Spinoza

Deleuze's interpretation of Spinozan philosophy is intrinsically related to the concept of intensity. Attributes are defined as intensive qualities, modal essences as intensive quantities or degrees of power; the life of affects corresponds to continuous variations in intensity. This essay will show why Deleuze needs the concept of intensity for his reading of Spinozan philosophy as a philosophy of expressive immanence. It will also discuss the problems that spring from this reading: in what way, if any, are modal essences modified by the intensive variations of affects? How can the Spinozan conception of eternal modal essences be reconciled with the idea of affections of essence? What is the ethical import of the life of existing modes, when modal essences are considered as eternal? While these questions, in particular the last two, confront each commentator on Spinoza and demand a solution in one way or another, the essay will conclude with a question which is posed from an exclusively Deleuzian perspective: why is the concept of the virtual, which takes centre stage in Deleuze's own philosophy of immanence, missing in his account of Spinoza?

Philosophical and Scientific Intensity in the Thought of Gilles Deleuze

The physical sciences include highly developed fields that investigate intensities in the form of intensive quantities like speeds, temperatures, pressures and altitudes. Some contemporary readers of Deleuze interested in the physical sciences at times attribute to Deleuze a common, contemporary scientific concept of intensive magnitude. These readings identify Deleuze's philosophical conception of intensity with an existing scientific conception of intensity. The essay argues that Deleuze does not in fact lift a conception of intensity from the physical sciences to embed it as the fundamental term in his differential ontology.