Maxwell's demon in biological systems

Acta Biotheoretica 25 (2-3):103-110 (1976)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Boltzmann's gas model representing the second law of thermodynamics is based on the improbability of certain molecular distributions in space. Maxwell argued that a hypothetical ‘being’ with the faculty of seeing individual molecules could bring about such improbable distributions, thus violating the law of entropy. However, it appears that to render the molecules visible for any observer would increase the entropy more than the demon could decrease it, hence ‘Maxwell's Demon cannot operate’ . In the study presented here Maxwell's Demon is interpreted in a general way as a biological observer system within systems which can upset thermodynamic probabilities provided that the relative magnitudes between observer system and observed system are appropriate.Maxwell's Demon within Boltzmann's Gas Model thus appears only as a special case of inappropriate, relative magnitude between the two systems

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 91,829

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Thought Experiment of Maxwell’s Demon and the Origin of Irreversibility.Aspasia S. Moue - 2008 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 39 (1):69 - 84.
Objectivity, information, and Maxwell's demon.Steven Weinstein - 2003 - Philosophy of Science 70 (5):1245-1255.
Maxwell's demon and computation.Richard Laing - 1974 - Philosophy of Science 41 (2):171-178.

Analytics

Added to PP
2009-01-28

Downloads
63 (#256,247)

6 months
7 (#428,584)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?