Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy is a study of one of the most important debates in 17th- and 18th-century philosophy: the nature of causation. Ott offers controversial readings of such canonical figures as Descartes, Locke, and Hume, and explores related topics such as intentionality, necessity, and relations.
It can seem obvious that we live in a world governed by laws of nature, yet it was not until the seventeenth century that the concept of a law came to the fore. Ever since, it has been attended by controversy: what does it mean to say that Boyle's law governs the expansion of a gas, or that the planets obey the law of gravity? Laws are rules that permit calculations and predictions. What does the universe have to be like, if it is to play by them? This book sorts the most prominent answers into three families. Laws first arose in a theological context; they govern events only because God enforces them. Those wishing to reverse the order of explanation, and argue that the powers of objects fix the laws, struggled to claim for themselves the results of new science. The stand-off between these two families bred a third which rejects any kind of enforcer for the laws. On this view, laws summarize events; they do not govern anything. This book traces the fortunes of the three families, from their origins to the present day. It uses objections - and the revisions needed to answer them - to produce the best representative of each. Along the way, it tries to settle the rules of this game, the debate over laws of nature. What should we expect from an account of laws? The book aims to help readers develop their own desiderata and judge the merits of the competing positions.
This book examines John Locke's claims about the nature and workings of language. Walter Ott proposes an interpretation of Locke's thesis in which words signify ideas in the mind of the speaker, and argues that rather than employing such notions as sense or reference, Locke relies on an ancient tradition that understands signification as reliable indication. He then uses this interpretation to explain crucial areas of Locke's metaphysics and epistemology, including essence, abstraction, knowledge and mental representation. His discussion challenges many of the orthodox readings of Locke, and will be of interest to historians of philosophy and philosophers of language alike.
The seventeenth century witnesses the demise of two core doctrines in the theory of perception: naïve realism about color, sound, and other sensible qualities and the empirical theory, drawn from Alhacen and Roger Bacon, which underwrote it. This created a problem for seventeenth century philosophers: how is that we use qualities such as color, feel, and sound to locate objects in the world, even though these qualities are not real? Ejecting such sensible qualities from the mind-independent world at once makes for a cleaner ontology, since bodies can now be understood in purely geometrical terms, and spawns a variety of fascinating complications for the philosophy of perception. If sensible qualities are not part of the mind-independent world, just what are they, and what role, if any, do they play in our cognitive economy? We seemingly have to use color to visually experience objects. Do we do so by inferring size, shape, and motion from color? Or is it a purely automatic operation, accomplished by divine decree? This volume traces the debate over perceptual experience in early modern France, covering such figures as Antoine Arnauld, Robert Desgabets, and Pierre-Sylvain Régis alongside their better-known countrymen René Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche.
As a self-study guide, course primer or teaching aid, Borchardt-Ott's Crystallography is the perfect textbook for students and teachers alike. In fact, it can be used by crystallographers, chemists, mineralogists, geologists and physicists. Based on the author's more than 25 years of teaching experience, the book has numerous line drawings designed especially for the text and a large number of exercises - with solutions - at the end of each chapter. This 3rd edition is the translation of the seventh German edition with new chapters focused on crystal chemistry and x-ray diffraction methods.
As a self-study guide, course primer or teaching aid, Borchardt-Ott's Crystallography is the perfect textbook for students and teachers alike. In fact, it can be used by crystallographers, chemists, mineralogists, geologists and physicists. Based on the author's more than 25 years of teaching experience, the book has numerous line drawings designed especially for the text and a large number of exercises - with solutions - at the end of each chapter. This 2nd edition is the translation of the fifth German edition. The heart of the book is firmly fixed in geometrical crystallography. It is from the concept of the space lattice that symmetry operations, Bravais lattices, space groups and point groups are all developed. The symmetry of molecules is described including the resulting non-crystallographic point groups. Crystal forms and the relationship between point groups and physical properties are treated. Much emphasis is placed on the correspondence between point groups and space groups. The sections on crystal chemistry and X-ray diffraction are intended as an introduction to these fields.
Data centers consume roughly 1% of the total electricity demand, while ICT as a whole consumes around 10%. Demand is growing exponentially and, left unchecked, will grow to an estimated increase of 20% or more by 2030. This book covers the energy consumption and minimization of the different data center components when running real workloads, taking into account the types of instructions executed by the servers. It presents the different air- and liquid-cooled technologies for servers and data centers with some real examples, including waste heat reuse through adsorption chillers, as well as the hardware and software used to measure, model and control energy. It computes and compares the Power Usage Effectiveness and the Total Cost of Ownership of new and existing data centers with different cooling designs, including free cooling and waste heat reuse leading to the Energy Reuse Effectiveness. The book concludes by demonstrating how a well-designed data center reusing waste heat to produce chilled water can reduce energy consumption by roughly 50%, and how renewable energy can be used to create net-zero energy data centers.
This practical guide offers all important digital television, sound radio, and multimedia standards such as MPEG, DVB, DVD, DAB, ATSC, T-DMB, DMB-T, DRM and ISDB-T. It provides an in-depth look at these subjects in terms of practical experience. In addition explains the basics of essential topics like analog television, digital modulation, COFDM or mathematical transformations between time and frequency domains. The fourth edition addresses many new developments and features of digital broadcasting. Especially it includes Ultra High Definition Television (UHDTV), 4K, HEVC / H.265 (High Efficiency Video Coding), DVB-T2 measurement techniques and practice, DOCSIS 3.1, DVB - S2X, and 3DTV, as well as VHF-FM radio, HDMI, terrestrial transmitters, and stations. In the center of the treatments are always measuring techniques and of measuring practice for each case consolidating the knowledge imparted with numerous practical examples. The book is directed primarily at the specialist working in the field, on transmitters and transmission equipment, network planning, studio technology, playout centers and multiplex center technology and in the development departments for entertainment electronics or TV test engineering. Since the entire field of electrical communications technology is traversed in a wide arc, those who are students in this field are not excluded either.
Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts, which has appeared in semi-annual volumes since 1969, is de voted to the recording, summarizing and indexing of astronomical publications throughout the world. It is prepared under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (according to a resolution adopted at the 14th General Assembly in 1970). Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts aims to present a comprehensive documentation of literature in all fields of astronomy and astrophysics. Every effort will be made to ensure that the average time interval between the date of receipt of the original literature and publication of the abstracts will not exceed eight months. This time interval is near to that achieved by monthly abstracting journals, com pared to which our system of accumulating abstracts for about six months offers the advantage of greater convenience for the user. Volume 20 contains literature published in 1977 and received before February 20, 1978; some older literature which was received late and which is not recorded in earlier volumes is also included. We acknowledge with thanks contributions to this volume by Dr. J. BouSka, Prague, who surveyed journals and publications in Czech and supplied us with abstracts in English, and by Prof. P. Brosche, Bonn, who supplied us with literature concerning some border fields of astronomy.
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