On the ubiquity of entropy. Nietzschean reflections on recurrence and time reversion in science and science fiction
Is there anything more theological than late modern scientific speculations on the birth(s) and end(s) of the universe? By theology I mean the one after Nietzsche’s proclaimed ‘death of God,’ with the re-divinization or trans-humanization of Man as its corollary. It has not escaped the attention of recent scientific popularizers that Nietzsche’s doctrines, and in particular that of eternal recurrence, coincide with the birth of thermodynamics, the discovery of entropy and its statistical-mechanical explanation given by Boltzmann. In this talk I discuss how Boltzmann’s dramatic struggles with ‘Maxwell’s demon’ prepared the ground for the renewal in the 20th century of Nietzsche’s hypothesis of eternal recurrence and temporal reversal, giving rise to something like a late modern mythology or theology of entropy. In my talk I will illustrate my hypothesis through an interpretation of Philip K. Dick’s novel Ubik as a thermodynamical fable in which the fundamental problem posed by entropy, namely, how to explain irreversible physical processes by appealing only to time-reversible physical laws, offers the central theoretical framework of the novel.
Date:
11 June 2024, 14:30 (Tuesday, 8th week, Trinity 2024)
Venue:
New College, Holywell Street OX1 3BN
Venue Details:
Room 'Spooner 2' in Sacher Buildings
Speaker:
Miguel Vatter (Deakin University)
Organiser:
Laura Langone (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
laura.langone@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Laura Langone
