Nonextensive Entropy: Interdisciplinary Applications (Santa Fe Institute Studies on the Sciences of Complexity) - Hardcover

9780195159769: Nonextensive Entropy: Interdisciplinary Applications (Santa Fe Institute Studies on the Sciences of Complexity)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195159764 ISBN 13: 9780195159769

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2004

A great variety of complex phenomena in many scientific fields exhibit power-law behavior, reflecting a hierarchical or fractal structure. Many of these phenomena seem to be susceptible to description using approaches drawn from thermodynamics or statistical mechanics, particularly approaches involving the maximization of entropy and of Boltzmann-Gibbs statistical mechanics and standard laws in a natural way. The book addresses the interdisciplinary applications of these ideas, and also on various phenomena that could possibly be quantitatively describable in terms of these ideas.

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About the Author:

Murray Gell-Mann, the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor Emeritus of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics. In 1984, he helped establish the Santa Fe Institute, where he now works. A longtime director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Professor Gell-Man served as chairman of its Committee on World Environment and Resources.

Review:

"Gell-Mann (Science Board, Santa Fe Institute) and Tsallis (Brazilian Center for Physics Research) present material on interdisciplinary applications of ideas related to the nonextensive generalization of entropy, Boltzmann- Gibbs statistical mechanics, and standard thermodynamics. Applications relate to dynamical, physical, geophysical, biological, economic, financial, and social systems, and to networks, linguistics, and plectics. A dripping faucet as a nonextensive system, the pricing of stock options, and spatial patterns in forest ecology are some subjects discussed. Material originated at an April 2002 workshop held at the Santa Fe Institute."--SciTech Book News

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