bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Elements of reaction theory
Authors: Hofmann Helmut 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter derives formulas for gross sections of potential scattering, and shows their generalizations to nuclear reactions. A projection technique is introduced, which allows one to separate in the T-matrix the part which varies smoothly in energy from that for resonances. For the latter, general expressions are deduced which involve partial and total widths. Non-hermitean Hamiltonians for the optical model are obtained by applying suitable energy averages. The doorway mechanism is explained by which the intermediate structure in the resonances can be understood: it employs widths for decays to the continuum and to the compound states. The statistical theory is addressed, for which on the basis of general assumptions, analytic formulas for the fluctuating cross section are derived, which are in accord with N. Bohr's hypothesis of the independence of entrance and exit channels. The Weisskopf-Ewing relations and the Hauser-Feshbach theory are described, which involve branching ratios and formation probabilities. A critique of the statistical model is included.
Density operators and Wigner functions
Authors: Hofmann Helmut 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter introduces density operators and matrices for many-body systems, and explains their reduction to one- and two-body densities. Starting from the Slater determinant, the latter are explicitly calculated for independent fermions. For such systems, the classical limit is discussed and formulas for partition function, free energy, and entropy are derived by introducing and employing the concept of Wigner transformations. The propagation of wave packets is described in one dimension, a case for which correspondence rules are derived for various combinations of quantum operators. Finally, formulas are given for the equilibrium distribution of the quantal oscillator and the associated Wigner function.
The Hartree–Fock approximation
Authors: Hofmann Helmut 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter formulates the Hartree-Fock approximation with density matrices, and discusses the properties of the Hartree-Fock equations together with the energy functional for the ground state energy. A generalization to finite thermal excitations is performed by applying the variational principle to the grand canonical ensemble. Finally, the equations for time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) are described both at zero and at finite temperature.
Transport equations for the one-body density
Authors: Hofmann Helmut 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter begins by calculating the Wigner transform for the von Neumann equation for the one-body density operator. It shows how the Liouville equation follows in leading order in an expansion to ℏ. Properties of this expansion and of the resulting equation are discussed with respect to their physical and practical importance. Semi-classical approximations to the collision term are described and interpreted in terms of relevant transition rates. In Born approximation, equations of Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (BUU)- or Landau-Vlasov-type are obtained. The relevance of the conservation laws for particle number, energy, and momentum is discussed. For relaxation processes to equilibrium, self-energies are introduced and the relaxation-time approximation to the collision term is presented. The physical meaning of self-energies is discussed, together with the formula for the leading-order dependence of their imaginary part on energy, chemical potential, and temperature.
Nuclear thermostatics
Authors: Hofmann Helmut 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter presents the basic elements of statistical mechanics, and derives differential laws of thermostatics of deformed nuclei. Adiabatic and isothermal susceptibilities are introduced. Density operators for generalized ensembles are defined, from which various extremal properties are deduced, together with the second law and the meaning of quasi-static processes. Level densities and energy distributions are discussed, for which the Darwin-Fowler procedure and Gaussian approximations are introduced, respectively. Such methods allow for simple but realistic estimates of fluctuations of energy and temperature, and thus help to understand the applicability of the canonical ensemble to nuclei as isolated and self-bound systems. This property reflects itself in inherent uncertainties in the value of temperature, as expressed most clearly by a thermal uncertainty relation. Likewise, there is the obvious lack of extensivity, which is believed to lead to negative specific heats. A critical review upon these issues is given. Finally, general formulas for thermostatic potentials of independent particles are derived.
Linear response theory
Authors: Hofmann Helmut 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter presents a universal definition of linear response, which at first is studied for the example of the damped oscillator. From the quantal time evolution operator lowest order transition rates are deduced, together with microscopic response functions. Their fundamental properties are studied, in particular, the meaning of their reactive and dissipative parts for energy transfer. Correlation functions are introduced and related to response functions by way of the fluctuation dissipation theorem. For a random matrix model, the latter is shown to also hold true for microcanonical ensembles. Connections to thermal Green functions are established and an extension of response theory to unstable modes is discussed. With the help of the Mori product, relations among the static response, the adiabatic and the isothermal susceptibilities are given. Time dependent irreversible processes are studied by introducing relaxation functions and by following the variation of the density operator and of entropy. Onsager relations are presented and Kubo's expressions for transport coefficients are given.
Functional integrals
Authors: Hofmann Helmut 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter presents a short review of path integrals in quantum mechanics. This is followed by a detailed discussion of the evaluation of the semi-classical propagator, involving quadratic expansions of the action and the calculation of determinants. The concept of functionals is introduced for multi-dimensional cases, using a system linearly coupled to many oscillators as an example. The use of path integrals in statistical mechanics is described and quantum corrections to the classical limit are obtained. The connection with Green functions and level density is presented, with an excursion to periodic orbit theory and to the Gutzwiller formula for the oscillating part of the single particle level density. Many-body systems with separable interactions are treated by the Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation. For quantum corrections to the partition function, the static- and perturbed static path approximations are developed. The breakdown for unstable modes is discussed and a possible extension to damped motion is sketched.
Properties of Langevin and Fokker–Planck equations
Authors: Hofmann Helmut 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter introduces Langevin- and Fokker-Planck equations by way of a heuristic approach to the physics of Brownian particles. Variances of physical quantities are defined and related to cumulants. General properties of stochastic processes are described, with special emphasis on Markov processes and the Chapman-Kolmogorov equation. From the latter, Fokker-Planck equations are derived by the Kramers-Moyal expansion and connections with Langevin equations are established. The meaning of additive and multiplicative noise is clarified. Mathematical problems implied by the latter are studied for a one-dimensional system. Ito's and Stratonivich's suggestions of how to handle stochastic differential equations are presented. The concept of the mean first passage time is elucidated and basic formulas for its evaluation are derived. A short excursion is devoted to the Master equation and to detailed balance. Microscopic approaches to transport problems are reviewed. The perturbative Nakajima-Zwanzig equation is derived and compared with equations used in quantum optics.
Formal means
Authors: Hofmann Helmut 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter elucidates various mathematical formulas. Based on expressions for Gaussian integrals in one and many dimensions, the methods of stationary phase and steepest descent are deduced, representations of the delta-function are given and applied to Fourier and Laplace transformations. For quantal operators, the Mori product is introduced and an important formula for the derivative of exponentials is shown. Elementary properties of spin and isospin are discussed; for fermions, the formalism of second quantization is produced.
Occasion-Sensitivity
Authors: Travis Charles 
Published: September 2008

Abstract
This book presents a series of chapters which develops the author's distinctive view of the relation of thought to language. The key idea is ‘occasion-sensitivity’: what it is for words to express a given concept is for them to be apt for contributing to any of many different conditions of correctness (notably truth conditions). Since words mean what they do by expressing a given concept, it follows that meaning does not determine truth conditions. This view ties thoughts less tightly to the linguistic forms which express them than traditional views of the matter, and in two directions: a given linguistic form, meaning fixed, may express an indefinite variety of thoughts; one thought can be expressed in an indefinite number of syntactically and semantically distinct ways. The book highlights the importance of this view for linguistic theory, and shows how it gives new form to a variety of traditional philosophical problems.
On What Is Strictly Speaking True
Authors: Travis Charles 
Published: September 2008

Abstract
Saying is one way of putting things into words. Others include hinting at, implying, suggesting, and letting slip out. But how is saying distinguished from such rival modes of conveying, or at least expressing things, and why does this matter? One answer to these twin questions was proposed some years ago by H. P. Grice, who believes that what is said is often simpler than it seems. And he offers, in effect, a way to argue that it is wherever complexities may seem to be rearing their heads. Given the seriousness with which this offer has been taken up, and the relentlessness with which it has sometimes been applied, and given the resultant dismissal of phenomena better worried about, this chapter shows why Grice's suggestion cannot be correct.
Annals of Analysis
Authors: Travis Charles 
Published: September 2008

Abstract
H. P. Grice transformed the problems he touched and, thereby, the terms of philosophical discussion. The discussions he touched most deeply concern meaning, saying, and perceiving. All Grice's work displays a particular method, practised with consummate skill. This chapter argues that the method often decides much as to what his view must be. Studies in the Way of Words, a self-selection of his work, provides an occasion for evaluating both the transformations and the method they represent.
Meaning's Role in Truth
Authors: Travis Charles 
Published: September 2008

Abstract
There is a widespread view of truth, tracing back at least to Frege, on which we may say all there is to say about what truth is without so much as mentioning words. This chapter shows that this view is wrong. It argues that what words mean plays a role in fixing when they would be true; but not an exhaustive one. Meaning leaves room for variation in truth conditions from one speaking to another. What that non-exhaustive role is depends on what it is to have said what is true. Identification of the aspect of truth which fixes this role will collapse the widespread view.
Insensitive Semantics
Authors: Travis Charles 
Published: September 2008

Abstract
What is insensitive semantics (or semantic minimalism? This may become clear in this chapter from Cappelen and Lepore's objections to their opponents. They signal two main opponents: moderate contextualists and radical contextualists. This chapter presents the position of the latter. It argues that the former position collapses into the latter; Radical contextualism is incoherent, or inconsistent, on various counts, as this chapter shows. The chapter concludes therefore that semantic minimalism is the only game in town.
Vagueness, Observation, and Sorites
Authors: Travis Charles 
Published: September 2008

Abstract
Frege believes that vagueness leads to inconsistency in language, and Michael Dummett has suggested that he may have been right, at least in some cases. Dummett writes: ‘the use of vague predicates — at least when the source of the vagueness is the non-transitivity of a relation of non-discriminable difference — is intrinsically incoherent’. The moral Dummett draws is that ‘while our language certainly contains observational predicates as well as relational expressions, the former (though not the latter) infect it with inconsistency’. This chapter argues that Dummett is mistaken on both scores. First, our language does not and could not contain observational expressions in Dummett's sense, nor is there reason to want it to. Second, our language is not and could not be inconsistent for anything like the reasons Dummett offers.
On Constraints of Generality
Authors: Travis Charles 
Published: September 2008

Abstract
Gareth Evans proposed, as a constraint on thought, that anyone, to entertain any given thought, must be able to entertain a particular (thinker-relative) system of them. This chapter argues that our thinking is not constrained by the generality constraint. So there is no legitimate philosophical work that constraint can do. The constraint seems plausible only when an over-simple picture of which capacities are in play in grasp of a thought is given. Insofar as our grasp of a particular thought to the effect that a is F involves grasp of what it is for a thing to be F, it also requires exercise of a further sort of capacity which Evans ignores, and which may be present with respect to a given thought to the effect that a is F, while missing for another thought to the effect that b is F (where a and b may, or may not, be distinct). The chapter then considers Wittgenstein's idea about systems. For Wittgenstein, a system of thoughts has certain roles to play in conferring the content they have on each of its members. It may well be that systems are needed to play such roles, and hence that any thought must be understood in terms of some system of thoughts to which it belongs. If the plausibility of the generality constraint derives in part from that of Wittgenstein's idea, it is important that the two ideas are not the same.
A Sense of Occasion
Authors: Travis Charles 
Published: September 2008

Abstract
This chapter explores the views of John Cook Wilson, J. L. Austin, and John McDowell. Some stances aim at the world: if all goes well, stance and world match. Some stances contain the world: for one to have that stance towards something is for that thing to be so (or there). Some of these simply contain their object: taking them is not aiming at their object (which then, happily, is there to hit). John Cook Wilson saw knowledge as a stance of this last sort. John McDowell showed why knowledge needs to be like that. But it was J. L. Austin who made the idea viable. He did it by showing how a sense of occasion is required for proper ascription of epistemic notions.
1 The Emergence of the Idea of Institutions as Repositories of Knowledge
Authors: Hodgson Geoffrey M. 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter traces the history of the idea of organizational learning back to last quarter of the 19th century. In focuses on George Henry Lewes's concept of the ‘general mind’ and Thorstein Veblen's notion of collective knowledge. Both point out that the social store of custom and tradition is made up of accumulated knowledge. Learning is thus a process of positive feedback between individuals and society. The recent revival of the concept of institutional knowledge is discussed.
2 Dynamic Capability as a Source of Change
Authors: Winter Sidney G. 
Published: September 2008

Abstract
This chapter examines the concept of dynamic capability as it has developed in the strategic management field, taking primarily the ‘learned competence’ perspective and emphasizing the proactive uses of dynamic capabilities by business firms. It seeks to clarify how apparent opposites — novelty and familiarity, creativity, and learned routine — come into a pragmatic synthesis in the context of dynamic capability. It also places the discussion in a broader frame than the usual profit-oriented one of strategic management, giving more emphasis to both causes and consequences at levels of analysis above that of the individual firm. The chapter begins by reviewing the intellectual background, linking the dynamic capability idea to Schumpeter's ‘routinization of innovation’ and to the analysis of routines in evolutionary economics. It then sketches two examples of dynamic capabilities: product development in semiconductors and retail outlet replication. Only after the dynamic capability concept is thus motivated and illustrated does the focus shift to more careful definitions and economic analysis of the hierarchy of change.
3 Rules, Routines, and Learning in Organizations
Authors: Kieser Alfred 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter examines the specific interplay of rules and routines in organizational learning. It is argued that rules and routines provide media of organizational learning. Organizational learning based on rules and routines comes about only when there are organizational members who actively pursue changes in rules and routines, when these members overcome the learning barriers and thus complete the learning cycle, and when the organization succeeds in correctly interpreting feedback from the environment.
4 Problemistic Search and (Inter‐)Organizational Learning
Authors: Greve Henrich R. 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter addresses the question of how the institutional environment relates to organizational learning. Two areas of research on organizational change are distinguished: the concept of problemistic search and the concept of inter-organizational diffusion. Research on problemistic search examines conditions that give rise to organizational problems, whereas the theory of diffusion emphasizes the availability of effective solutions. However, both perspectives rely on a similar model of managerial cognition and its operational effects. A theoretical synthesis thus will advance the understanding of how new behaviours are adopted by organizations.
5 Change in Institutional Fields
Authors: Hinings C. R. , Malhotra Namrata 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter examines institutional change at the field level of analysis. In doing so, it provides an overview of the work on archetypes and institutional change that has been developed theoretically and empirically through work on municipalities, accounting, law, architecture and management consulting firms, health care organizations, and sport organizations. The dynamics of change involve inter-organizational relations as well as the activities of individual organizations and groups within organizations. Organizational responses to institutional change need to involve aspects like values, interest, and power. The proposed process model of institutional change then addresses the de-institutionalization as well as the re-institutionalization of organizational components as an evolutionary process.
6 Myths of the Market
Authors: Fligstein Neil 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter aims to supplement the understanding of entrepreneurship and competition by demonstrating that they cannot occur without governments and stable social structures to support them. It considers two major developments in the American economy that have been typically hailed as emblematic of the working out of free markets: the emergence of the ‘shareholder value’ conception of the firm and the rise and growth of Silicon Valley. It is shown that these phenomena were not just caused by entrepreneurial activity, but were embedded in pre-existing social relations. In both cases, the government played a pivotal role in pushing forward the conditions for ‘entrepreneurial activity’. The chapter discusses why governments sometimes do not figure in either economic or some economic sociological arguments about markets and economic growth, and suggests how an economic sociology with a view of embeddedness that includes governments, law, and supporting institutions offers a more complete picture of market evolution.
8 Institutional Entrepreneurship and the Structuring of Organizations and Markets
Authors: Walgenbach Peter , Meyer Renate E. 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter argues that organizational actors and interests need to be regarded as cultural constructions. It considers organizational institutionalism and Giddens's structuration theory to relate strategic action with the process of institutional innovation. This allows for a reconsideration of social practices through which organizational actors reproduce certain structures. Accordingly, institutional innovation is perceived as a representation of the structuring of organizations and markets through entrepreneurial efforts.
12 Institutional Evolution and the Political Economy of Governance
Authors: Ebner Alexander 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter examines the co-evolutionary relationship between markets and states as a path-dependent process that reflects the social construction of institutional change. It reviews the major contributions to the governance approach, as originally provided by the new institutional economics and subsequently extended in the transdisciplinary discourse of the new institutionalism. Oliver E. Williamson's transaction cost approach to governance is examined, offering insights into the notion of private ordering as a governance device. Douglass C. North's theory of the institutional evolution of markets and states and, Mancur Olson's collective action approach to governance are then considered.
13 Explaining Economic Change: The Relations of Institutions, Politics, and Culture
Authors: Harriss John 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis chapter examines the role of politics, power, and culture in the explanation of institutional change. It criticizes the rational choice framework of the new institutional economics for its apparent limitations in theorizing on these issues. It underlines the analytical advantages of historical institutionalism. The conflict among social classes and the institutional substance of power structures are of particular analytical significance. They are interrelated factors in the evolution of cultural values, as exemplified by the case of Indian economic development and its socio-political underpinnings.