C of L49...Maxwell 's Demon: a history

[Mark Kohut]

So, what might be some other metaphorical meaning(s) of Maxwell's Demon in Cof L49?
1) We know Pynchon knew that it did NOT overturn The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
2) Koteks, who communicates via the Tristero system believes that Nefastis invention does OVERTURN 2nd Law
3) Nefastis, maybe a bit crazy ala 'creative' Tristero types, is coming up.....but we know his "invention" is founded on
a falseness.....




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From: "malignd at aol.com" <malignd at aol.com>
But it doesn't.  As has been pointed out, the Demon needs energy from without, in the form of light, to see.


-----Original Message-----
From: kelber at mindspring.com 
Maxwell's Demon gets around the Second Law, thwarting entropy.  Is entropy(or
its social analog,apathy) the "magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her
from outside and for no reason at all" that keeps Oedipa in her tower?  Then
Tristero = Maxwell's Demon?

Laura

-----Original Message-----
>From: Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>

>
>
>p. 86 hc...I won't link here to wikipedia or anything re JCMaxwell, you
can....I just want to add the personal association of the bearded Victorian that
he was with the bearded Smith Brothers of the famous coughdrops. (No P
connection;  thanks for indulging me)
> 
>He was raised and remained a VERY Christian-believing scientist and was
anti-Darwin's theory.
> 
>Maxwell is widely acknowledged as the nineteenth century scientist whose work
had the greatest influence on twentieth century physics. His electromagnetic
theory and its associated field equations 'paved the way for Einstein's special
theory of relativity, which
 established the equivalence of mass and energy.
Maxwell's ideas also ushered in the other major innovation of 20th century
physics, the quantum theory.  ----from an online bio, not wikipedia
> 
>Maxwell's Demon---wikipedia:
>Maxwell conceived a thought experiment as a way to explain the statistical
nature of the second law. He described the experiment as follows[2]:
>... if we conceive of a being whose faculties are so sharpened that he can
follow every molecule in its course, such a being, whose attributes are as
essentially finite as our own, would be able to do what is impossible to us. For
we have seen that molecules in a vessel full of air at uniform temperature are
moving with velocities by no means uniform, though the mean velocity of any
great number of them, arbitrarily selected, is almost exactly uniform. Now let
us suppose that such a vessel is divided into two portions, A and B, by a
division in which there is a small hole, and that a being, who can see the
individual molecules, opens and closes this hole, so as to allow only the
swifter molecules to pass from A to B, and only the slower molecules to pass
from B to A. He will thus, without expenditure of work, raise the temperature of
B and lower that of A, in contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics.
>
>Schematic figure of Maxwell's demon
>In other words, Maxwell imagines one container divided into two parts, A and B.
Both parts are filled with the same gas at equal tempe
ratures and placed next to
each other. Observing the molecules on both sides, an imaginary demon guards a
trapdoor between the two parts. When a faster-than-average molecule from A flies
towards the trapdoor, the demon opens it, and the molecule will fly from A to B.
The average speed of the molecules in B will have increased while in A they will
have slowed down on average. Since average molecular speed corresponds to
temperature, the temperature decreases in A and increases in B, contrary to the
second law of thermodynamics.
>
>
>
>




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