Because the change in entropy is Q/ T, there is a larger change in Δ S Δ S at lower temperatures (smaller T). This is because entropy increases for heat transfer of energy from hot to cold ( Figure 12.9). An important implication of this law is that heat transfers energy spontaneously from higher- to lower-temperature objects, but never spontaneously in the reverse direction. The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of a system either increases or remains constant in any spontaneous process it never decreases. In the process of picking up the cards, you may have noticed that the amount of work required to restore the cards to an orderly state in the deck is much greater than the amount of work required to toss the cards and create the disorder. In the game of 52 pickup, the prankster tosses an entire deck of playing cards onto the floor, and you get to pick them up. Like the essay from which it grew, the present volume will interest a broad spectrum of readers.Have you ever played the card game 52 pickup? If so, you have been on the receiving end of a practical joke and, in the process, learned a valuable lesson about the nature of the universe as described by the second law of thermodynamics. The author argues that, because of the very nature of exosomatic evolution, the social conflict will last under any regime as long as there is a human society. The tight-knit excursus ends with an analysis of some general economic issues, from that of the analytical representation of a process to that of social conflict. He argues that no complete description of reality, no philosophical argument (not even that of the ultrapositivists), no creative thought can dispense with dialectical concepts and reasoning, which he views somewhat differently from Hegel. This point leads the author to an extensive examination of the limitations of arithmomorphic models in all sciences. For wherever there is evolution, the author argues, there is the work of the Entropy Law with its irrevocable qualitative Change. In it, man can use exosomatic organs, i.e., organs with which he is not endowed biologically but which have evolved through a process of mutation, selection, and diffusion similar to that of biological evolution. Economic activity is in fact an extension and a complement of man’s biological evolution. Thermodynamics itself is presented by the author as the physics of economic value and man’s economic activity as analogous (though not identical) to that of the purposive sorting of the famous Maxwellian demon. In the ultimate analysis man struggles for low entropy, and economic scarcity is the reflection of the Entropy Law, which is the most economic in nature of all natural laws. Its central theme is that the economic process, instead of being a mechanical analogue as traditionally represented in mathematical economics, is an entropic process. Since the publication in 1966 of his Analytical Economics: Issues and Problems there has been great demand for elaboration, expansion, and further refining of the ideas he broached in his seminal introductory essay, “Some Orientation Issues in Economics.” The result is this new volume. The author, a mathematical economist, has been continually preoccupied not only with creating new mathematical models used in economic theorizing, but also with the delicate epistemological problem of economics. They are also available to institutions in ten separate subject-area packages that reflect the entire spectrum of the Press’s catalog. The 2,800 titles in the “e-ditions” program can be purchased individually as PDF eBooks or as hardcover reprint (“print-on-demand”) editions via the “Available from De Gruyter” link above. Harvard University Press has partnered with De Gruyter to make available for sale worldwide virtually all in-copyright HUP books that had become unavailable since their original publication.
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