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Entropy: A New World View is a non-fiction book by Jeremy Rifkin and Ted Howard, with an Afterword by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen. It was first published by Viking Press, New York in 1980 (ISBN 0-670-29717-8). A paperback edition was published by Bantam in 1981, in a paperback revised edition, by Bantam Books, in 1989 (ISBN 0-553-34717-9).
Entropy is a scientific concept that is most commonly associated with a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics, where it was first recognized, to the microscopic description of nature in statistical physics, and to the principles of information theory.
Entropy is one of the few quantities in the physical sciences that require a particular direction for time, sometimes called an arrow of time. As one goes "forward" in time, the second law of thermodynamics says, the entropy of an isolated system can increase, but not decrease. Thus, entropy measurement is a way of distinguishing the past from ...
Research concerning the relationship between the thermodynamic quantity entropy and both the origin and evolution of life began around the turn of the 20th century. In 1910 American historian Henry Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a theory of history based on the second law of ...
Thus, if entropy is associated with disorder and if the entropy of the universe is headed towards maximal entropy, then many are often puzzled as to the nature of the "ordering" process and operation of evolution in relation to Clausius' most famous version of the second law, which states that the universe is headed towards maximal "disorder".
Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe is a science book by mathematical physicist Roger Penrose published by The Bodley Head in 2010. The book outlines Penrose's Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC) model, which is an extension of general relativity but opposed to the widely supported multidimensional string theories and cosmological inflation following the Big Bang.
Rifkin's 1980 book, Entropy: A New World View, discusses how the physical concept of entropy applies to nuclear and solar energy, urban decay, military activity, education, agriculture, health, economics, and politics. It was called "A comprehensive worldview" and "an appropriate successor to...
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (born Nicolae Georgescu, 4 February 1906 – 30 October 1994) was a Romanian mathematician, statistician and economist.He is best known today for his 1971 magnum opus The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, in which he argued that all natural resources are irreversibly degraded when put to use in economic activity.