Jonathan Bain
Dept. of Technology, Culture and Society
Tandon School of Engineering, New York University

STS-UY.3264 Physics, Information, and Computation

Courses


Syllabus

Revised Class Schedule

Required reading:

1.
[B04] Bub, J. (2004) "Why the Quantum?", Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 35: 241-66.
2.
[B01] Bub, J. (2001) "Maxwell's Demon and the Thermodynamics of Computation", Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 32: 569-79.
3.
[DM18] de Mol, L. (2018) "Turing Machines", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, E. Zalta (ed.).
4.
[EN99] Earman, J. & J. Norton (1999) "Exorcist XIV: The Wrath of Maxwell's Demon. Part II. From Szilard to Landauer and Beyond", Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 30: 1-40.
5.
[EN98] Earman, J. & J. Norton (1998) "Exorcist XIV: The Wrath of Maxwell's Demon. Part I. From Maxwell to Szilard", Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 29: 435-71.
6.
[EN93] Earman, J. & J. Norton (1993) "Forever is a Day: Supertasks in Pitowski and Malament-Hogarth Spacetimes", Philosophy of Science 60: 22-42.
7.
[F93] Finn, C. P. (1993) Thermal Physics, Chapman & Hall (excerpts).
8.
[Fr99] Friedan, B. R. (1999) Physics from Fisher Information, Cambridge Univ Press (excerpts).
9.
[G01] Goldstein, S. (2001) "Boltzmann's Approach to Statistical Mechanics", in Bricmont, J. et al. (eds.) Chance in Physics: Foundations and Perspectives, Lecture Notes in Physics 574, Springer: 39-54.
10.
[H94] Hogarth, M. (1994) "Non-Turing Computers and Non-Turing Computability", in Hull, D. et al. (eds.) PSA 1994, Philosophy of Science Association: 126-38.
11.
[RP00] Rieffel, E. & W. Polak (2000) "An Introduction to Quantum Computing for Non-Physicists", arXiv: quantu-ph/9808016v2.
12. [T08] Timpson, C. (2008) "Philosophical Aspects of Quantum Information Theory", in Rickles, D. (ed.) The Ashgate Companion to the New Philosophy of Physics, Ashgate.
13.
[T04] Timpson, C. (2004) Quantum Information Theory and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, PhD Dissertation, University of Oxford (excerpt).
 
Lecture Slides:
01. Heat Engines and the 2nd Law
02. Entropy and Maxwell's Demon
03. Entropy: Boltzmann, Gibbs, Shannon
04. Information and Maxwell's Demon
05a. Turing Machines and Spacetime I
05b. Turing Machines and Spacetime II
06. Malament-Hogarth Spacetimes and Non-Turing Computability
07. Quantum Mechanics Basics
08. Quantum Information Theory I
09. Quantum Information Theory II
10. Physics from Quantum Information
11. Physics from Fisher Information

Assignments:
hw01
hw02
hw03
hw04
hw05
hw06
hw07
extra credit 1
extra credit 2

Paper #1 topics
Paper #2 topics
Paper guidelines

Handouts:
TD/SM Summary

Relevant articles in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
"Boltzmann's Work in Statistical Physics"
"Computation in Physical Systems"
"Information Processing and Thermodynamic Entropy"
"Philosophy of Statistical Mechanics"
"Quantum Entanglement and Information"
"Quantum Computing"
"Supertasks"