Demons in Physics [Book Review]

Metascience 23 (2):1-10 (2014)
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Abstract

In their book The Road to Maxwell's Demon Hemmo & Shenker re-describe the foundations of statistical mechanics from a purely empiricist perspective. The result is refreshing, as well as intriguing, and it goes against much of the literature on the demon. Their conclusion, however, that Maxwell's demon is consistent with statistical mechanics, still leaves open the question of why such a demon hasn't yet been observed on a macroscopic scale. This essay offers a sketch of what a possible answer could look like.

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10.1007/s11016-014-9882-y

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Amit Hagar
Indiana University, Bloomington

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References found in this work

Time and chance.David Z. Albert - 2000 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
What could be objective about probabilities?Tim Maudlin - 2007 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 38 (2):275-291.
Typicality and the role of the Lebesgue measure in statistical mechanics.Itamar Pitowsky - 2012 - In Yemima Ben-Menahem & Meir Hemmo (eds.), Probability in Physics. Springer. pp. 41--58.

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