From: paul cockshott (clyder@GN.APC.ORG)
Date: Mon Mar 26 2007 - 11:24:35 EDT
-------Original Message-------
From: Jerry Levy
Date: 3/26/2007 15:56:01
To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
Subject: [OPE-L] advances and ongoing debates in physics and statistical
mechanics?
> > <http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_132.html>
> Having checked your reference it appears that these debates
> were an early investigation as to whether Angels followed Fermi-Dirac
> or Bose-Einstein statistics, and as we now know, the latter
> has some pretty damned weird consequences.
Hi Paul C:
OK, I'll a couple of bites: a small and a large bite:
[putting aside the Estimation of the Magnitude of the Spatial
Concentration of Angels Question:]
small bite: what are the "pretty damned weird consequences"
of B-E statistics?
----------------------------
The most famous are superfluidity of liquid helium and superconductivity,
more recently the demonstration that matter can be made to interfere like
light. The point about Bose Einstein statistics is that the more bosons you
have the more likely that they are all to be in the same place and behaving
the same way. Thus the helium atoms in liquid helium follow these statistics
as do the cooper pairs in superconducting currents. In both cases you get
bulk behaviours in which the atomic character of the particles seems to
vanish.
-------------------------
Large bite: what advances and ongoing debates in physics have
Occurred in the last 30 years which Marxians interested in
Political economy should be aware of?
-------------------------------------------
The relevance to the TP is that the assumption of a degnerate rate of profit
amounts to assuming that capitalism follows B-E statistics with all capitals
moving in lockstep in the same direction. I suspect that the apparently
unsatisfactory nature of Klimans models stem from him needing to assume this
kind of lockstep condensed behaviour by all of the capitals. In my opinion
the only plausible target for such a behaviour in economics is not
capitalism but a planned economy - which is what stands behind Samuelsons
suggestion that prices of production are the approrpiate regulator for
socialist economies.
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