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See main: Two cultures (call)The call for the development of an interdisciplinary field of mathematics, chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, and engineering overlapping and integrated into the subjects of the humanities, in such a way to dissolve the ever-growing two cultures divide, has been wanting for nearly two-centuries. To exemplify, the following is Austrian social economist Werner Stark's noted 1962 self-query as to why Thomas Huxley’s 1871 call for the development of the field of social chemistry has never actuated: [19]
“Why should no social chemistry ever been developed?” He states that “nobody would suggest that the social scientists should imitate meteorology, for this discipline does not appear to have got very far … but what about chemistry? A sociology based on chemistry [has] in fact been called for, but, significantly, [this call has] found no echo. It would have been easy to take up this suggestion and develop it further. An intending social chemist would have found it one whit more difficult to manufacture a sociological parallel to the Boyle-Charles law than Haret did to the Newtonian propositions. But the experiment appears never to have been tried. Why?”
The template design for Libb Thims-conceived C.P. Snow-themed Two Cultures Department, teaching the subject matter structured about the interdisciplinary relationship between second law (Clausius) and the various branches of the humanities (Shakespeare), bridging the gap between the famously left-brain right-brain divided "two cultures"; the synthesis of which being first captured in the mind of Goethe (see: Goethe timeline), and tested in the coursework of Leon Winiarski at the University of Geneva (1894-1900), in his thermodynamics-based socio-political economics course (see: social mechanics). [23] |
“In March 2011, I graduated with a master's degree in theoretical physics at the University of Bologna (Italy). I am strongly interested in sociophysics or in general in physics applied to human behavior: in my thesis I solved a sociological problem using statistical mechanics, and machine learning methods. I am looking for a PhD in socio-physics or human thermodynamics and/or funds for it. Do you know something about it? Any advice is welcome.”
“Most such subjects [social thermodynamics] are more to the future of thermodynamics rather than to its history.”
Year | Textbook | Human thermodynamics branch |
1964 | by Ivan Bazarov (1916-2005) Russian physicist | ● Heat death argument for the existence of god (Friedrich Engels) ● Heat death argument against the existence of god (Bazarov) ● Universal origins |
1973 | by Gordon van Wylen (1920-) American mechanical engineer Richard Sonntag (1933-2010) American mechanical engineer | ● Philosophical thermodynamics ● Argument for/belief in the existence of God/Creationism ● Universal origins (low entropy state)/Eschatology ● Destiny of humans (second law) |
1999 | by Benjamin Kyle (1927-) American chemical engineer | ● Two cultures (C.P. Snow) ● Universal origins/Eschatology/Heat death (Friedrich Engels, Ivan Bazarov) ● Religious thermodynamics (William Inge, Pope Pius XII, Pierre Teilhard) ● Animate thermodynamics (life, origin of life; defunct theory of life) ● Social thermodynamics/Anthropological thermodynamics (Claude Levi-Strauss) ● History thermodynamics (Henry Adams) ● Economic thermodynamics (Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen) ● Ecological economics (Herman Daly, Jeremy Rifkin) ● Literature thermodynamics (John Barth, Donald Barthelme, Saul Bellow, Stanley Elkin, Norman Mailer, Walker Percy, Thomas Pynchon, John Updike) ● Art thermodynamics (Rudolf Arnheim) ● Philosophical thermodynamics (Kyle) ● Psychological thermodynamics (Sigmund Freud) |
2004 | by Tominaga Keii (1920-2009) Japanese chemical engineer | ● Chemical Affinity in 1806 ● Human chemical thermodynamics: Elective Affinities; human elective affinity; human chemical reaction, Goethe's affinity table, Goethe's human chemistry (Johann Goethe) |
1999 thru 2010 | by Yunus Cengel (1955-) Turkey mechanical engineer Michael Boles (1943-) American mechanical engineer | ● Economic thermodynamics (Robert Ayres) ● Human thermodynamics (human performance/efficiency in daily existence, learning (low-entropy learning), work place friction, human friction, social friction (entropy generation), etc.) ● War thermodynamics |
2010 | by Hans Kreuzer (c.1945-) Canadian atmospheric physicist Isaac Tamblyn (c.1983-) Canadian physicist | ● Economic thermodynamics (Wayne Saslow) |
2011 | by Kalyan Annamalai (c.1943-) Ishwar Puri Milind Jog | ● Human molecular formula (Libb Thims) |
2011 | by Donna Riley (c.1971-) | ● Entropy as a Social Construct (social thermodynamics) ● Entropy’s Philosophical Implications (philosophical thermodynamics) ● Thermo to Life (defunct theory of life) ● Ethics of Energy Disasters (ethics) |
Dates | Teacher | Course | School |
1894-1900 | Léon Winiarski | Taught a course on "social mechanics", focused on economics and sociology, based on the thermodynamics of German physicist Rudolf Clausius and the dynamics of Italian mathematician Joseph Lagrange. | University of Geneva |
1930s | Robert Lindsay | Taught an entropy ethics theory courses | Brown University |
1980s | Dick Hammond | Promoted the teaching of "entropy ethics" and "energy education" in various schools (elementary, high school, and college) | University of Texas |
1997-2006 | Richard Piccard | Taught a general education course called "Entropy and Society", associated with the physics department, intermittently, based on American economist Jeremy Rifkin's 1989 book Entropy: Into the Greenhouse World, called "Entropy and Society". The course is for seniors, with focus on developing a general education student's ability to interrelate, synthesize, and integrate knowledge from different academic disciplines, and examines Rifkin’s theory that matter and energy are conserved, but that physical processes transform both into forms less readily useful (thereby "increasing entropy") according to the material entropy hypothesis. They apply this concept of entropy to human activity, critically examining works by advocates of solar and nuclear power, from the viewpoints of, and using the patterns of inquiry of, several disciplines (e.g., history, theology, economics, physics, politics, engineering, biology, chemistry, ethics, and sociology). Using Rifkin’s 1989 book Entropy: Into the Greenhouse World, which sets forth the thesis that this concept of entropy has a much broader applicability, in such fields as social science, politics, health, etc., the course explores whether this broadening of application makes sense. The immediate goal for students is to try to get some understanding of what entropy means when the term is used in its home territory, physical science and engineering. On this basis, the problem immediately arises when applying entropy to society is that the basic definition of entropy is mathematical. As such, the course focuses on the philosophical aspects (i.e. philosophical thermodynamics) rather than the practical aspects of entropy; and avoids mathematics, for the most part. | Ohio University |
2008 | Richard Hughes | A course on a thermodynamical interpretation of politics and world government. | California State University, Sacramento |
2009 | Bruce Clarke | English 4342.001: a course called "Literary and Narrative Theory", where one of the five reading material selections is American novelist Thomas Pynchon’s thermodynamic themed novel The Crying of Lot 49, in which students are assigned to critique Pynchon’s views on thermodynamic entropy and information theory entropy in relation to the plot. [14] Clarke has begun using EoHT.info as reference material for his class. | Texas Tech University |
c.2008 | Joseph McCauley | Founded the econophysics department at the University of Houston, pictured below right, which touches on aspects of applied thermodynamics in economics. | University of Houston |
“The revision carried out by the thermodynamics from the mid XIXth is critical when reconsidering the architectural and landscape conception of this element, thus happened to be a real building material. This is enabled by parametric digital media, which allows not only deciphering its changing nature over time but also conceiving artificial environments, opening new territories at the scale of buildings, public spaces [see also: personal space] and the landscape. Now, the air in movement demands to be studied in its different manifestations, to reveal its power through meticulous analysis, to map them and to conceptualize what we are calling a new idea of thermodynamic beauty [see: beauty] which completes the tectonic tradition and points new directions to architect´s work.”
A snapshot of the econophysics department a the University of Houston, run by Joseph McCauley, who specializes in financial physics, but is against thermodynamics applied to economics (thermoeconomics). [18] |
See main: Thermodynamics dissertationsIn 1969, English science historian Jeremy Adler completed his PhD thesis, at Westfield College, London, on the underlying chemists, affinity theory (affinity being a function of free energy), and specific affinity reactions in Goethe’s novella Elective Affinities; work later becoming very instrumental in American chemical engineer Libb Thims’ 2007 textbook Human Chemistry.
German socio-economic physicist Jürgen Mimkes lecturing, at the 2005 2005 Navodari Econophysic Conference, , on the thermodynamic applications in economics. [6] |
“The arguments presented here are exploratory in nature, and they are hoped to initiate some interesting discussion and research that may lead into better understanding of performance in various aspects of daily life. The second law may eventually be used to determine quantitatively the most effective way to improve the quality of life and performance in daily life, as it is presently used to improve the performance of engineering systems.”
Left: American electrochemical engineer Libb Thims lecturing in 2010 on an introduction to human thermodynamics to bioengineering students, at a local Chicago university, standing adjacent to pictures of Clausius, Gibbs, and Lewis. Right: Thims explaining how the Papin engine relates to human chemical affinities, Gibbs free energy, and morality (right or wrong). |
The physics class at Naga City Science High School using American electrochemical engineer Libb Thims’ 2009 “Human Thermodynamics Pioneers” video to supplement the thermodynamics portion of the class. [20] |
“One day instead of (or in addition to) regular math, chemistry, physics, etc., kids in school will be learning something like one human molecule + another human molecule = ? ... it's just a crazy thought, but hey, we'll see or somebody will.”