The Demons of Science ― What They Can and Cannot Tell Us About Our World

This book is the first all-encompassing exploration of the role of demons in philosophical and scientific thought experiments. In chap. I, the author explains the importance of thought experiments in science and philosophy. Chapter II considers Laplace’s Demon, whose claim is that the world is completely deterministic. Chapter III introduces Maxwell’s Demon, who - by contrast - experiences a world that is probabilistic and indeterministic. Chapter IV explores Nietzsche’s thesis of the cyclic and eternal recurrence of events. In each case a number of philosophical consequences regarding determinism and indeterminism, the arrows of time, the nature of the mind and free will are said to follow from the Demons’s worldviews. The book investigates what these Demons - and others - can and cannot tell us about our world.  

Friedel Weinert is professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Bradford in the UK. He is the author of several books about the interactions of science and philosophy –The Scientist as Philosopher (2004); Copernicus, Darwin and Freud (2009); The March of Time (2013)– as well as editor ofLaws of Nature (1995) and co-editor of Compendium of Quantum Physics (2009) andEvolution 2.0 (2012).