Table of Contents

1. Mathematics, Mysticism, and more

2. Mass in Motion

3. From Engines to Entropy: Carnot and Clausius develop the Yardstick of Engine Efficiency

4. From Statistical Entropy to Statistical Time: Thermodynamics evolves from being an Engineers' Tool to becoming a Philosophers' Gold Mine

5. Maxwell's Demon leads us to combine Consciousness, Entropy, and Information

6. Quantum Mechanics I: From Micromagnets to Micromasers

7. Using Quantum Mechanics to Resolve the Maxwell Demon Paradox

8. Quantum Mechanics II: The Wave Side of Particles and the Particle Side of Waves

9. From Wigner's Friend to Quantum Erasure: Of Wigner's Friends and their Amnesia

10. On Quantum Mechanics and the Big Questions

About the Author

Marlan O. Scully holds joint appointments at Texas A&M and Princeton Universities. He is a member of the National Academy of Science and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. During the course of his life work on the foundations and applications of quantum mechanics, he has come to know many of the pioneers in the field and has collected biographical material on them, which R. Scully has woven into this book.



Robert J. Scully is a heavy equipment diesel mechanic living and working in Irving, Texas, where he is employed by the Caterpillar Corporation. His academic connections include the University of New Mexico and the University of Texas at Dallas. He was a tank diesel mechanic in the marine corps from 1988 to 1993. Robert Scully writes biographies for the National Academy of Sciences, including one on William Hewlett of the Hewlett Packard Corporation and one on quantum physicist Leonard Mandel.

Reviews

"The Demon and the Quantum is accessible to a large spectrum of readers of PHYSICS TODAY; it is worthwhile reading…" (Physics Today, November 2008)
"The relation between information and our current understanding of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and thermodynamics is profound, subtle, and complex…" (CHOICE, May 2008)




By focusing on entropy, information, and observation,
the authors bring a unique perspective to this subject, providing an insight into the strange
ways of the quantum that will fascinate scientists and lay readers alike.
"By focusing on entropy, information, and observation, the authors bring a unique perspective to this subject, providing an insight into the strange ways of the quantum that will fascinate scientists and lay readers alike." (Zentralblatt MATH 2016)