About 120 years ago, James Clerk Maxwell introduced his now
legendary hypothetical "demon" as a challenge to the integrity of
the second law of thermodynamics. Fascination with the demon
persisted throughout the development of statistical and quantum
physics, information theory, and computer science--and linkages
have been established between Maxwell's demon and each of these
disciplines. The demon's seductive quality makes it appealing to
physical scientists, engineers, computer scientists, biologists,
psychologists, and historians and philosophers of science. Until
now its important source material has been scattered throughout
diverse journals.
This book brings under one cover twenty-five reprints, including
seminal works by Maxwell and William Thomson; historical reviews by
Martin Klein, Edward Daub, and Peter Heimann; information theoretic
contributions by Leo Szilard, Leon Brillouin, Dennis Gabor, and
Jerome Rothstein; and innovations by Rolf Landauer and Charles
Bennett illustrating linkages with the limits of computation. An
introductory chapter summarizes the demon's life, from Maxwell's
illustration of the second law's statistical nature to the most
recent "exorcism" of the demon based on a need periodically to
erase its memory. An annotated chronological bibliography is
included.
Originally published in 1990.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books
from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press.
These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these
important books while presenting them in durable paperback
editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly
increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the
thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since
its founding in 1905.
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