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Physics

1925

The Animate and the Inanimate

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philosophy

physics

memorabilia

William James Sidis - 1925

What is fascinating about this book is that the deep amount of theory contained, a sort of theory of everything attempting to integrate the second law, with the nebular hypothesis, and evolution, among other phenomenon such as "black body stars" (black holes) as he called them, the "big collision" (big bang) theory of the origin of the universe, etc., was conceived in 1915-1916 as a sort of passing hobby by a seventeen-year-old child prodigy during his summer off who had just finished a mathematics degree at Harvard and was on his way to Law School at Cambridge.

To give a decent representative quote: "Our theory of the origin of life is that there is no origin, but only a constant development and change of form." He mixes this in with discussions of endothermic and exothermic movements of matter in relation to animate matter (humans) and inanimate matter (food), into and out of the body, in way that seems to foreshadow the concept of free energy coupling developed in the 1920s through the 1940s, all in relation to chemical experiments and findings, such as the Haber process.

Best ofPhysics

1925

The Animate and the Inanimate

Best of
Physics