This book introduces field theory as required in solid and fluid mechanics as well as in electromagnetism. It includes the necessary applied mathematical framework of tensor algebra and tensor calculus, using an inductive approach particularly suited to beginners. It is geared toward undergraduate classes in continuum theory for engineers in general, and more specifically to courses in continuum mechanics. Students will gain a sound basic understanding of the subject as well as the ability to solve engineering problems by applying the general laws of nature in terms of the balances for mass, momentum, and energy in combination with material-specific relations in terms of constitutive equations, thus learning how to use the theory in practice for themselves. This is facilitated by numerous examples and problems provided throughout the text.

Heinz von Foerster was the inventor of second-order cybernetics, which recognizes the investigator as part of the system he is investigating. The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name provides an accessible, nonmathematical, and comprehensive overview of von Foerster's cybernetic ideas and of the philosophy latent within them. It distills concepts scattered across the lifework of this scientific polymath and influential interdisciplinarian. At the same time, as a book-length interview, it does justice to von Foerster's elan as a speaker and improviser, his skill as a raconteur.
Developed from a week-long conversation between the editors and von Foerster near the end of his life, this work playfully engages von Foerster in developing the difference his notion of second-order cybernetics makes for topics ranging from emergence, life, order, and thermodynamics to observation, recursion, cognition, perception, memory, and communication.
The book gives an English-speaking audience a new ease of access to the rich thought and generous spirit of this remarkable and protean thinker.