Today, Alchian's "Uncertainty, evolution and economic theory" (1950) is hailed by evolutionary economists as a most important piece, which resumed an evolutionary brand of theorizing in economics after the eclipse of the interwar period. On the other hand, Alchian's article is also cherished by...

In the present paper, we review the consistent definition of macroscopic total energy in classical fluid mechanics, as a function of the microscopic canonical Hamiltonian field, based on a Lennard-Jones model with some spatially varying external field. The macroscopic total energy (sum of...

This discussion paper critically reviews a new book by Aoki and Yokishawa and presents some of the techniques adopted by the authors as a new approach to the foundations of macroeconomics. The paper discusses some of the main techniques of statistical mechanics relevant in this context, namely...

We study the role of the noise in the dynamics of two competing species. We consider generalized Lotka–Volterra equations in the presence of a multiplicative noise, which models the interaction between the species and the environment. The interaction parameter between the species is a random...

A new statistical mechanics approach to dense granular media is presented. The thermodynamic formalism is set out directly in terms of elastic potential energy, such that the configurational temperature (the intensive property which defines the steady state) relates to a quadratic function of...

Evidence for Ziegler’s principle of maximum entropy production has been accumulated from different fields such as climatic studies, crystal growth, dynamics of ecosystems and cellular metabolism. However, Ziegler’s principle is still seen with scepticism by the scientific community. The...

The collective behavior of locally coupled-map lattices is investigated when the connections are defined on fractal geometries, such as generalized Sierpinski gaskets embedded in d-dimensional Euclidean spaces. The collective states are described through the mean fields of the networks. Periodic...

We discuss the relation between ensemble and time averages for quasistationary states of low-dimensional symplectic maps that present remarkable analogies with similar states detected in many-body long-range-interacting Hamiltonian systems.

Hydrodynamics equations derived directly from Boltzmann’s equation and specialized to sheared planar flow are shown to yield approximate nonlinear laws of heat transport and of viscous flow. The law of viscous flow predicts non-Newtonian effects including shear thinning and the law of heat...