The Animate and the Inanimate in Pure Mathematics: A Modern Reappraisal of William James Sidis's Underrated Viewpoint
Abstract
This paper re-examines William James Sidis’s 1925 work, which proposed a division of the universe
into 'animate' regions where entropy locally decreases and 'inanimate' regions where it
increases. De Ceuster provides a mathematical formalization of Sidis’s ideas, connecting them to
modern concepts in non-equilibrium thermodynamics, information theory, and cosmology.
Keywords & Fields
Cite this work (BibTeX)
@article{deceuster2025_13-the-animate-and-t,
title = {The Animate and the Inanimate in Pure Mathematics: A Modern Reappraisal of William James Sidis's Underrated Viewpoint},
author = {De Ceuster, Peter},
year = {2025},
month = {06},
institution = {SIG Labs},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.16879071},
url = {https://peterdeceuster.uk/papers/13-the-animate-and-the-inanimate-in-pure-mathematics},
note = {Full text available at https://peterdeceuster.uk/articenter/work/animate.pdf}
}