Angelo Vulpiani – författare

This book offers an informal, easy-to-understand account of topics in modern physics and mathematics. The focus is, in particular, on statistical mechanics, soft matter, probability, chaos, complexity, and models, as well as their interplay. The book features 28 key entries and it is carefully structured so as to allow readers to pursue different paths that reflect their interests and priorities, thereby avoiding an excessively systematic presentation that might stifle interest. While the majority of the entries concern specific topics and arguments, some relate to important protagonists of science, highlighting and explaining their contributions. Advanced mathematics is avoided, and formulas are introduced in only a few cases. The book is a user-friendly tool that nevertheless avoids scientific compromise. It is of interest to all who seek a better grasp of the world that surrounds us and of the ideas that have changed our perceptions.

Scientists have always attempted to explain the world in terms of a few unifying principles. In the fifth century B.C. Democritus boldly claimed that reality is simply a collection of indivisible and eternal parts or atoms. Over the centuries his doctrine has remained a landmark, and much progress in physics is due to its distinction between subjective perception and objective reality. This book discusses theory reduction in physics, which states that the whole is nothing more than the sum of its parts: the properties of things are directly determined by their constituent parts. Reductionism deals with the relation between different theories that address different levels of reality, and uses extrapolations to apply that relation in different sciences. Reality shows a complex structure of connections, and the dream of a unified interpretation of all phenomena in several simple laws continues to attract anyone with genuine philosophical and scientific interests. If the most radical reductionist point of view is correct, the relationship between disciplines is strictly inclusive: chemistry becomes physics, biology becomes chemistry, and so on. Eventually, only one science, indeed just a single theory, would survive, with all others merging in the Theory of Everything. Is the current coexistence of different sciences a mere historical venture which will end when the Theory of Everything has been established? Can there be a unified description of nature? Rather than an analysis of full reductionism, this book focuses on aspects of theory reduction in physics and stimulates reflection on related questions: is there any evidence of actual reduction? Are the examples used in the philosophy of science too simplistic? What has been endangered by the search for (the) ultimate truth? Has the dream of reductionist reason created any monsters? Is big science one such monster? What is the point of embedding science Y within science X, if predictions cannot be made on that basis?

The present volume, published at the occasion of his 100th birthday anniversary, is a collection of articles that reviews the impact of Kolomogorov''s work in the physical sciences and provides an introduction to the modern developments that have been triggered in this way to encompass recent applications in biology, chemistry, information sciences and finance. This book addresses scientists and postgraduate students in applied mathematics and theoretical physics.