Nobody doubted that atoms were real once atomic energy was developed, but in the early 20th-century and before their existence was widely doubted. Defending Materialism follows the political and theoretical background of this intense philosophical controversy, defending atomistic and mechanical materialism against idealist paradigms. These accounts range from the explicit idealism criticised by Lenin and Einstein to the implicit Hegelian idealism that inf...

A sweeping history of the full range of human laborFew authors are able to write cogently in both the scientific and the economic spheres. Even fewer possess the intellectual scope needed to address science and economics at a macro as well as a micro level. But Paul Cockshott, using the dual lenses of Marxist economics and technological advance, has managed to pull off a stunningly acute critical perspective of human history, from pre-agricultural societies to the ...

This monograph examines the domain of classical political economy using the methodologies developed in recent years both by the new discipline of econo-physics and by computing science. This approach is used to re-examine the classical subdivisions of political economy: production, exchange, distribution and finance.The book begins by examining the most basic feature of economic life – production – and asks what it is about physical laws that allows production to take place. How is...

Computation and its Limits is an innovative cross-disciplinary investigation of the relationship between computing and physical reality. It begins by exploring the mystery of why mathematics is so effective in science and seeks to explain this in terms of the modelling of one part of physical reality by another. Going from the origins of counting to the most blue-skies proposals for novel methods of computation, the authors investigate the extent to which the laws of nature and of...

From the inability of wealth to make us happier, to our catastrophic blindness to the credit crunch, "Economyths" reveals ten ways in which economics has failed us all. Forecasters predicted a prosperous year in 2008 for financial markets - in one influential survey the average prediction was for an eleven per cent gain. But by the end of the year, the Standard and Poor's 500 index - a key economic barometer - was down 38 per cent, and major economies were plunging into recession. Even the...

Boost Your grades with this illustrated Study Guide. You will use it from college all the way to graduate school and beyond.FEATURES:- Clear and concise explanations - Difficult concepts are explained in simple terms - Illustrated with graphs and diagrams TABLE OF CONTENTS:I. Linear equations System of linear equations Determinant Minor Cauchy-Binet formula Cramer's rule Gaussian elimination Gauss-Jordan elimination Strassen algorithm II. Matrices Matrix addition Matrix multiplication Basi...

A powerful tool for the approximate solution of differential equations, the finite element is extensively used in industry and research. This book offers students of engineering and physics a comprehensive view of the principles involved, with numerous illustrative examples and exercises.Starting with continuum boundary value problems and the need for numerical discretization, the text examines finite difference methods, weighted residual methods in the context of continuous trial f...

Computational Economics: A concise introduction is a comprehensive textbook designed to help students move from the traditional and comparative static analysis of economic models, to a modern and dynamic computational study. The ability to equate an economic problem, to formulate it into a mathematical model and to solve it computationally is becoming a crucial and distinctive competence for most economists.This vital textbook is organized around static and dynamic models, covering...

In the second edition of this user-friendly book, Olivier de La Grandville provides a clear and original introduction to the theory of economic growth, its mechanisms and its challenges. The book has been fully updated to incorporate several important new results and proofs since the first edition. In addition to a progressive treatment of dynamic optimization, readers will find intuitive derivations of all central equations of the calculus of variations and of optimal control theory. It o...

The Finite Element Method for Solid and Structural Mechanics is the key text and reference for engineers, researchers and senior students dealing with the analysis and modeling of structures, from large civil engineering projects such as dams to aircraft structures and small engineered components. This edition brings a thorough update and rearrangement of the book's content, including new chapters on: - Material constitution using representative volume elements - Differential geometry and ...

The causal relationship between growth and inequality is complex, and there have been many scholarly works to study this relationship since the seminal work of Kuznets in the 1950s. Few recent studies in this field have shown that the nature of relationship is multifaceted and non-linear. In addition to the intrinsic non-linear nature of the relationship, government and institutions play pivotal role in distributing the benefits of growth to reduce inequality. The responsiveness greatly de...

This edition of Ronald Miller and Peter Blair's classic textbook is an essential reference for students and scholars in the input-output research and applications community. The book has been fully revised and updated to reflect important developments in the field since its original publication. New topics covered include SAMs (and extended input-output models) and their connection to input-output data, structural decomposition analysis (SDA), multiplier decompositions, identifying importa...