If thermodynamics is to physics as logic is to philosophy, recent theoretical advancements lend new coherence to the marvel and dynamism of life on Earth. Enzo TiezziÂ’s "Steps Towards an Evolutionary Physics" is a primer and guide, to those who would to stand on the shoulders of giants to attain this view: Heisenberg, Planck, Bateson, Varela, and Prigogine as well as notable contemporary scientists. The adventure of such a free and enquiring spirit thrives not so much on answers as on new questions. The book offers a new gestalt on the uncertainty principle and concept of probability. A wide range of examples, enigmas, and paradoxes lead oneÂ’s imagination on an exquisite dance. Among the applications are: songs and shapes of nature, oscillatory reactions, orientors, goal functions and configurations of processes, and "dissipative structures and the city". Ecodynamics is a new science, which proposes a cross-fertilization between Charles Darwin and Ilya Prigogine. As an enigma in thermodynamics, Entropy forms the basis for this linkage, because it has the intrinsic properties of time irreversibility, quality and information that other thermodynamic functions lack. With fantastic illustration of cycles, the arrow of time, and events, Tiezzi presents a new lexicon for an evolutionary approach to chemistry and physics. This book provides a foothold, a step itself, in the climb toward understanding complexity in an evolving biosphere.

Steps Towards an Evolutionary Physics (The Sustainable World)

Science & Math

E. Tiezzi

Biological Sciences

Wit Press/Computational Mechanics

This book introduces concepts from thermodynamics, non equilibrium systems theory and evolutionary physics in order to approach contemporary cities and to understand how human systems interact with the built environment. This theoretical framework asserts that cities can be conceived as ecosystems and dissipative structures with the emergence of collective properties and self-organization processes. Methods for understanding complexity of contemporary cities and life of human systems are thus investigated. A series of city-scape analysis will be presented. In particular, a method for monitoring intensity of mobile phones activity in urban areas was developed to visualize evolutionary patterns of urban dynamics and self-organization processes. Furthermore, an environmental accounting method, namely emergy evaluations, was applied to different processes, from the scale of a building to the dimension of the city, to figure out spatial patters of urban relative to the intensity of resource exploitation. Values of specific emergy of processes were associated to land uses and developed through geographic information systems. Generating maps of non-homogeneous patterns, even unexpected, this book offers an opportunity to understand the mutating complexity of the contemporary city. Its focus on temporal, rather than spatial patterns suggests a possible new paradigm for urban analysis: dynamics represents the key to all of this.The book will be useful to students and practitioners in numerous fields, including urban studies, natural and environmental science, and architecture. The book will also interest those interested in evolutionary theories; people interested in understanding the effects of new technologies in the life of contemporary cities; managers of telecommunications companies (especially mobile phone companies) and the construction industry, and policy makers and other stakeholders engaged in the challenge of moving towards more sustainable architecture and planning practices.

City Out of Chaos: Urban Self Organization and Sustainability (The Sustainable World)

R. M. Pulselli

Is the concept of sustainability strongly founded on solid scientific bases? And can this elusive concept be introduced in the economic framework and embodied in people's behavior as well as public and private institutions' decision making? This book presents a view of sustainability that starts from the acknowledgment of physical conditions and limits that humans can no longer neglect. It also includes some epistemological foundations of the concept of sustainability and historical backgrounds. The view is optimistic to the extent that economics, the compass of our industrial society, is open to inputs and suggestions coming from outside orthodox schemes. Transdisciplinary science is one key element of such a change, and this book is a transdisciplinary project. In the field of criticism of GDP as an omni-comprehensive instrument, the book also describes the methodology of the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW), proposed by H. Daly and John Cobb in 1989. They proposed some revisions to the System of National Accounts and GDP in order to add sustainability information for policy makers. Starting with consumption, some adjustments are proposed to allow for inequality of income distribution, environmental problems (such as pollution costs, long-term environmental damage, and depletion of non-renewable resources) and social issues (such as commuting costs, urbanization costs, and public expenditure for health and education). Computations for different nations have shown that ISEW increases together with increasing GDP up to a point, beyond which it stagnates or even decreases, due to the environmental and social pressure of economic growth. The ISEW is a feasible calculation and some experiments at the local level in Italy are presented. Advances in integrating different sustainability indicators (both economic-based and physical-based) are also presented as well as their use under a sustainability viewpoint.

The Road to Sustainability: GDP and future generations (The Sustainable World)

Business & Money

F. Pulselli

S. Bastianoni

N. Marchettini

Economics

WIT Press

Technology subjugates the environment for economic purposes. Biotechnologies exploit life and living organisms. Science, now preoccupied with applied knowledge, has lost its ancient appreciation of beauty. In this book, the distinguished author argues that the aim of science should not be to dominate nature but to live in harmony with it. If we do not make reference to our "common biological origin" (Jean-Paul Sartre) or find the umbilical cord that binds us to nature, his conviction is that we risk destroying the life cycles of our planet. He demonstrates that the role of form, colour, flavour, sound, scent - and beauty - was fundamental for biological evolution, and is still fundamental today for a scientific view of complexity. This is especially so with nature threatened by the linear, mechanistic, arrogant and crude approach of science at the service of a society that "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing". In order to avert catastrophe, Tiezzi asserts, science cannot be based only on reason but must combine reason, passion, intuition, emotion, logic and "global feeling": science cannot be cold.

Beauty and Science (The Sustainable World)

Reference

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Books by E. Tiezzi