E-Book Overview
The book begins with familiar designs found all around and inside us (such as the ‘trees’ of river basins, human lungs, blood and city traffic). It then shows how all flow systems are driven by power from natural engines everywhere, and how they are endlessly shaped because of freedom. Finally, Professor Bejan explains how people, like everything else that moves on earth, are driven by power derived from our “engines” that consume fuel and food, and that our movement dissipates the power completely and changes constantly for greater access, economies of scale, efficiency, innovation and life. Written for wide audiences of all ages, including readers interested in science, patterns in nature, similarity and non-uniformity, history and the future, and those just interested in having fun with ideas, the book shows how many “design change” concepts acquire a solid scientific footing and how they exist with the evolution of nature, society, technology and science.
E-Book Content
Adrian Bejan
Hieraarchy in Nature, Society and Science
Freedom and Evolution
Adrian Bejan
Freedom and Evolution Hierarchy in Nature, Society and Science
123
Adrian Bejan Duke University Durham, NC, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-34008-7 ISBN 978-3-030-34009-4 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34009-4
(eBook)
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Preface
Evolution is the defining phenomenon of nature. Everywhere we look what we see is evolving becaue it is free to move and morph. Without freedom to change, there is nothing, no design, no evolution, and therefore no future. Freedom is everywhere because evolution (design change) is everywhere in the inanimate, animate and human realms. Yet, unlike evolution, freedom is not a scientific subject. This struck me as strange. It is as if scientists are afraid to speak the word “freedom” even though every day they rely on the reality (the physics) behind that word. For example, every single book of thermodynamics is filled with analyses and designs of “processes”. The definition of process is the change in the description (the “state”) of the system. Clearly, if the system is to change, then it must have in its description the property called freedom. It’s not surprising that freedom has been overlooked in physics. The more common a physical presence, the more likely it is that it is overlooked. It happened this way with gravity, sound, turbulence, and fish swimming. It to