Bøger i The Frontiers Collection serien

Einstein once remarked "After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in aesthetics, plasticity, and form.

Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?" What would it have looked like if we looked at all sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein's philosophy?

This book addresses key conceptual issues relating to the modern scientific and engineering use of computer simulations. It analyses a broad set of questions, from the nature of computer simulations to their epistemological power, including the many scientific, social and ethics implications of using computer simulations.

Part III addresses experimental studies of cooperation and competition, as well as controversial ideas such as the evolution of evolvability and Stephen Jay Gould's suggestion that "spandrels" at one level of selection serve as possible sources of variability for the next higher level.

This book provides an outline of theoretical concepts and their experimental verification in studies of self-organization phenomena in chemical systems, as they emerged in the mid-20th century and have evolved since.

This book is about the mechanisms of wealth creation, or what we like to think of as evolutionary "progress."

This book considers the interaction of physical and non-physical causation in complex systems such as living beings, and in particular in the human brain, relating this to the emergence of higher levels of complexity with real causal powers.

The present book gives a multi-disciplinary perspective on the physics of life and the particular role played by lipids (fats) and the lipid-bilayer component of cell membranes.

This books sets out to explain how and why religion came into being. In contrast to the current, but incomplete approaches from disciplines such as cognitive science and psychology, the present authors adopt a new approach, equally manifest and constructive, that explains the origins of religion based strictly on behavioural biology.

An attempt is made to quantify the value of information by its ability to reduce indefiniteness.The second part explains how to handle indefiniteness with methods from fuzzy logic, decision theory, hermeneutics and semiotics.

In this fascinating journey to the edge of science, Vidal takes on big philosophical questions: Does our universe have a beginning and an end or is it cyclic?

This book offers a lively survey of the forty-year history of string theory, focusing on how what has been called both a 'theory of everything' and a 'theory of nothing' came to exist, and how it came to occupy its present position in physics.

Modern physics and cosmology reveal features of the universe that are forever out of reach: too distant, dark, dense or small to observe. This book tells of these horizons, how they shape our understanding, and what clues we have of a world beyond them.

Filled with examples from natural and social systems, this book serves as a fascinating guide to the many applications of physics. It examines topics belonging to the broad theme of complexity, from cooperation and criticality to flock dynamics and fractals.

Does economics conform to the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics? This important and fascinating tour of these laws and their influence on natural, technological, and social evolution uses them to analyze economic growth in Germany, Japan and the USA.

This book offers an accessible treatment of mind versus matter. It discusses the ethical consequences of the mind versus matter debate, and describes how quantum mechanics can radically change our understanding of the connection between mind and brain.

This book gathers concepts of information across diverse fields -physics, electrical engineering and computational science - surveying current theories, discussing underlying notions of symmetry, and showing how the capacity of a system to distinguish itself relates to information.

This book is a collection of essays written by those who have led, and continue to lead, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It reviews the history of the subject, details present-day science and technology, and looks ahead to the future.

Leading quantum physicist Stapp focuses in this book on the problem of consciousness and explains how quantum mechanics allows causally effective conscious thought to be combined in a natural way with the physical brain made of neurons and atoms.

This book develops a thorough analysis of relativistic effects to address the question of what is the nature (the ontological status) of spacetime. In this new edition, arguments are strengthened, and new developments in the field are presented and integrated.

With a Foreword by Paul Epstein

This book explores entanglement and information and their role in the quantum world. Key experiments and thought experiments in the history of quantum physics are considered, as is a range of interpretations of quantum mechanics that illuminate microphysics.

Thermodynamics was created in the ?rst half of the 19th century as a theory designed to explain the functioning of heat engines converting heat into mechanical work.

The change is from the positivistic views in which atomism, nondeterminism and measurement are fundamental, to a holistic view in realism, wherein matter - electrons, galaxies, - are correlated modes of a single continuum, the universe.

Are the particles of modern physics "real" or are they virtual entities, their existence deduced merely by abstract theories? This book examines the continuing debate regarding the inner constitution of matter by exploring the particle concept in physics. It investigates if the particles of particle physics are real or not.

This thoroughly revised 5th edition of Zeh's classic text investigates irreversible phenomena and their foundation in classical, quantum and cosmological settings.

Lipidomics is the science of the fats called lipids. Lipids are as important for life as proteins, sugars, and genes. This book presents a multi-disciplinary perspective on the physics of life and the particular role played by lipids and the lipid-bilayer component of cell membranes.

Providing an answer to open questions in our understanding of consciousness, this book examines how emergence can be understood within the scientific picture and whether a complete vision of the world can be attained that includes consciousness.

This collection of prize-winning essays addresses the controversial question of how meaning and goals can emerge in a physical world governed by mathematical laws. What are the prerequisites for a system to have goals? What makes a physical process into a signal? Does eliminating the homunculus solve the problem? The three first-prize winners, Larissa Albantakis, Carlo Rovelli and Jochen Szangolies tackle exactly these challenges, while many other aspects (agency, the role of the observer, causality versus teleology, ghosts in the machine etc.) feature in the other award winning contributions. All contributions are accessible to non-specialists.These seventeen stimulating and often entertaining essays are enhanced versions of the prize-winning entries to the FQXi essay competition in 2017.The Foundational Questions Institute, FQXi, catalyzes, supports, and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality, but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.