This is an invited contribution to Comprehensive Philosophy of Science, Elsevier (2026). I point out that a neglected principle of quantum mechanics provides a decisive defeat of the notorious “Maxwell’s Demon.” Comments welcome!
ABSTRACT. This work provides an overview of key historical developments in the for- mulation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, focusing on the notorious challenge of “Maxwell’s Demon”, a hypothetical creature who could presumably violate that law. It begins by recalling Maxwell’s challenge and discussing the apparent loophole in the Second Law that appears to make such a violation possible. An alternative formulation of the Demon challenge by Szilard is considered, along with his attempted defeat of the Demon through reference to measurement. A similar effort by Brillouin is also analyzed. The proposal of Bennett to defeat the Demon through the requirement of memory erasure is critically discussed. Finally, it is proposed that the Second Law gains a firm foundation through neglected features of quantum theory. In particular, an application of the Heisen- berg Uncertainty Principle is shown to decisively defeat the Demon, as well as to serve as justification for Landauer’s Principle, albeit in terms distinct from the usual computational formulation.
Transactional Interpretation 
This is a brilliant analysis of the necessity for quantization that I am only able to incompletely understand, a requirement for the existence of those nasty discontinuities in what would otherwise be a pathway of continuous flow from up the hidden continuity of the realm of the relational reality of the quantum substratum into the manifest discontinuous, ‘pixellated realm’ of physically observable actuality. Is it possible that quantization works as some type of a stop-gap measure. a kind of limiting ‘boundary’, to contain the flow of zero-point energy (ZPE) that circulates in the presumably continuous flows of the quantum substratum? So that if there were such a thing as a Maxwell’s Demon that could bridge the inherent discontinuity of the ‘quantum barrier’, and ‘flip the switch’ between the quantum substratum and the observable physical world, ZPE would flood into and obliterate the quantized realm of physical actuality. The other fundamental and extremely important implication is the undermining of the Newtonian mechanistic worldview at a very basic level, and recognizing that the Newtonian mechanistic understanding is fundamentally incompatible with the possibility of a living, autopoietic, organismic universe–fabricated mechanisms that operate under the rules of the Newtonian mechanistic formalism are categorically ‘inferior’ to living evolving organisms. Continuity cannot go ‘all the way up’ as the Newtonian worldview would imply and as Schrödinger was secretly hoping that it might–in his apparent ‘annoyance’ with those ‘pesky quantum leaps’…because the existence of a Maxwell’s Demon would imply the non-existence of an actively evolving, inherently ‘generative’ Universe that manifests the basic characteristics of the living organisms that inhabit it, at least in our own Earthly sector of it.
Thanks Gary! Actually, in RTI there isn’t really zero-point vacuum energy (the latter comes from reifying the mechanical ‘oscillators’ of quantum field theory that are actually stand-ins for the transactional process). But basically the quantum continuum just has ‘too many’ possibilities to ‘fit into’ 3+1 spacetime. So this picture gives meaning to possibility and the real choices that go along with actualizing select possibilities and not others. Not everything that is possible can happen, and this is probably a good thing.
Indeed, Ruth. Not everything that is possible can happen at ‘this very moment’–the issue is to match up the possibilities with the ‘moments’ ( Could we ever figure out how that works??? )–which relates at a fundamental level to what the ‘Preacher’ discovers in Chapter 3 of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the realization that there are two different kinds of ‘times’: ‘Chronos’ and ‘Kairos’ as translated to Greek in the Septuagint. Henri Bergson also recognized this and laid it out in his book ‘Creative Mind’ that I have been reading again lately. There is the ‘Time of the Physicist’ which is ‘spatialized time’ that is quantifiable because it involves counting the oscillations of a physical oscillator, be it natural or mechanical. This type of time is inherently DIScontinuous involving a series of recurring events that define distinct quantifiable intervals. This is the time that ‘exists’, but is it ‘real’? Well, there is another kind of time as we learn both in Ecclesiastes and it Bergson… It is the time that is real and Continuous. And not just any kind of continuity, but the kind that is at the ‘top of the realm of continuities’ or what CS Peirce called ‘Supermultudinous’ Continuity. The is the ‘Time of the Philosopher’ that is fundamentally relational and real, thought it may not be thought of as ‘existing’. So Einstein was right when he proclaimed on April 6, 1922 in a debate with Bergson in Paris that ‘The Time of the Philosopher does not exist!’ But the central question is what kind of time is real? The time that can be counted and analogized to space? Is that real? Or is it only ‘actual’? Is it not Bergson’s ‘Durée’ that is, in fact, ‘real’–ie. the time that can be ‘felt’ but not ‘seen’? I think that that is an important question and Bergson was laying it out for us. My own inclination is to refer to this relational form of time as the relational process of ‘semiosis’ or the process of signification. PLUS… I am now learning so much that keeps making me think that everything is founded on the fundamental process of bidirectionally ‘negotiated’ ‘Transaction’ or ‘transactional exchange.’ I am beginning to realize that it is deeply related to the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey, with his focus on the centrality of experience as a fundamental mediator of ‘transaction’. My impression is that this comes out most clearly in the book that Dewey wrote together with Arthur Bentley titled ‘Knowing and the Known’ in which they did not explicitly use the term ‘Transactionalism’ but this is the book that apparently gave rise to the philosophical concept of ‘Transactionalism’ implying that experience is founded on transactional exchange that is a bilateral process. It effectively replaces the idea of ‘observation’ which implies a ‘Yang-only’ process, with the idea of ‘transaction’ being inherently a bilateral ‘Yin-Yang’ exchange. This idea that there is a bidirectional ‘coupling’ between ‘conferral’ and ‘reception’ also runs very deep in the Kabbalah, as I am learning. The Newtonian myth of a ‘view from nowhere’ in which observation is ‘Yang-only’ needs to be overridden, and that is just what the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Physics ( which is, indeed, NOT a Mechanics ) does! The implications of this realization run very very deep, I believe, Ruth. They argue for a Bergsonian ‘élan vital’ related to the idea that ‘free will’ goes ‘all the way down’, just as you have argued in your paper on the Born Rule and its implications. OK. There is much more to be said about this, but I will stop there. Of course, besides the undermining of the mechanistic worldview, what is brilliant about the relativistic Transactional Interpretation is that it can also give us a deep and elegant understanding of how gravity works, as you and Andreas (Schlatter) have demonstrated. And, as they say, ‘that is nothing to sneeze at!’ ;-)
I am trying to understand what is meant by your statement: in RTI there isn’t really zero-point vacuum energy (the latter comes from reifying the mechanical ‘oscillators’ of quantum field theory that are actually stand-ins for the transactional process). So, in RTI, is the whole idea of a ‘zero-point’ vacuum possible? And how would it be interpreted?
So I have asked this question to Google co-Pilot:
What is the ‘zero point vacuum’ in the relativistic transactional interpretation?
And I got a really interesting and, I think, helpful response! What it says is that basically the ‘pre-spacetime’ quantum substratum (QS) in RTI substitutes for this idea of an empty floor-level vacuum-containing space with residual fluctuating energy. It is a consequence of realizing that spacetime is constructed and is not fundamental. And that the QS is a ‘reservoir of potentiality’, where “possibilist” transactions–the ‘wave-interchange negotiation’ between potential emitter and potential absorber–occur before they become manifest as actualized events within spacetime–a spacetime that is effectively constructed from such events. “In summary, the zero-point vacuum in RTI is the “quantum substratum”—a real, non-local, and pre-physical realm of possibility out of which actual physical spacetime and particles emerge through relativistic transactions.” Is Co-Pilot ‘correct’ in making this statement? The connection to the Kabbalah and the concept of the ‘Shekhinah’–the female presence of the Deity that connects to the world of physicality (which we inhabit)–is really quite striking, in that one of the alternative names for the ‘Shekhinah’ is ‘The Secret of Possibility’ ( ‘Sod HaEfshar’ in the Hebrew formulation). Which seems to fit quite well with RTI. There is a hidden realm of possibility that lies beneath the surface realm of physical ‘actuality’ which is what our physical bodies have evolved to be able to detect. Or what Donald Hoffman refers to as the human-specific evolved ‘VR headset’–which turns out to be NON-veridical and, in effect, hides the true reality from us. nSo what Donald Hoffman is saying from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience seems to fit quite nicely with RTI in this sense! At least it seems that way to me. Furthermore, every different one of the species of the about 8.7 million estimated eukaryotic species has evolved its own unique species-specific ‘VR headset’ that maximizes its own survival within the context of its environmental conditions as a physically embodied living entity. So that part of the task of quantum physics is to, effectively, ‘reverse engineer’ our evolved interface with the hidden quantum substratum!
That’s actually not a bad summary by “Copilot”. Yes, the QS is what is ‘at the bottom’ of physical reality as opposed to the so-called ‘zero point energy’ (ZPE) of conventional quantum field theory. The ZPE actually turns out to be infinite and is clearly not empirically valid. It’s an artifact of reifying an assumed mechanical system of oscillators that doesn’t really exist. In RTI these ‘oscillators’ are just a stand-in for the possibility of transactions among quantum systems. They are a computational tool and not really there, so there is no ZPE. Further, ‘Shekhinah’ as ‘The Secret of Possibility’ precisely aligns with this picture. But since Western metaphysics is uncritically actualist, it can’t see this ontology; and when it is presented, denies it as ‘unscientific’. Thanks for reminding me of this fascinating Kabbalah parallel.
Yes, this is the fundamental challenge: ‘Western metaphysics is uncritically ‘actualist’.” Indeed! Which makes it uncritically ‘mechanistic’, I think. Which is a denial of the dynamicism of the fundamentally ‘organismic’ nature of the Universe. This is a persistent relic of the Newtonian, deterministic, Nominalistic, language-confined worldview. Which is what those who held to the primacy of the process-relation over materiality, of ‘mind’ as prior to ‘matter’, are trying to bring forward. The mechanistic worldview of Cartesian Nominalism and Newtonian Mechanics is fundamentally misleading. Which means that we need to focus on what it is that ultimately differentiates living organisms from fabricated mechanisms. Which is what the theoretical biologist, Robert Rosen, was focused on in his work on trying to understand at a basic level how a living organism is categorically distinct from a fabricated mechanism, where a fabricated mechanism is a system that admits to ‘the mechanistic formalism.’ What is the mechanistic formalism? It makes the assumption that a relational dynamic model of the system can be partitioned into two basic components–a state vector that describes the momentary status of the system, and a set of differential equations that describe the temporal evolution of the state vector. This makes the mechanism a system that is strictly deterministic and which thus admits to the Laplacian Daemon (yes, another prominent ‘Demon’!). Which is such a wonderfully satisfactory and attractive feature as far as the positivistic scientist who clings to the foundations of ‘Scientism’ is concerned. This is what the finite human being ideally seeks–the sought capacity to reach a sense of deterministic ‘finalism.’ It is no wonder that we became addicted to this ultimately false and hubristic belief system which imagines that the finite human can actually have infinite and complete predictive capacity. But then along came quantum physics to put us back into the reality of our position of confined finitude! No wonder that there was a lot of kicking and screaming about fully acknowledging human finitude and the fact that we are participants in a living, actively adapting universe, not commanding imperialistic Lords over a fully grasped, entirely lawful fully deterministic Universe conferring the complete fulfillment of the human dream and the desire for certitude. But the real truth of the matter–a reality that we much face and accept–what quantum physics is telling us is that we have no choice but to learn to deal with our true reality which is ultimately beyond our full grasp and awareness. Which is in a state of growth and creative innovation, a state of true possibility. I see this as being made possible through an underlying infinitely deep temporal continuity that pervades and founds the source of possibility inherent in the quantum substratum.
Amen
This is also what was missed in the debate between Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson on the evening of April 4, 1922 in Paris at the headquarters of the French Society of Philosophy on the nature of time. Bergson had written extensively about a continuum of temporality that he called ‘La Durée’ translated to ‘Duration’ which may also be related to ‘creative possibility’ and the ‘élan vital’, as well as Bergson’s idea of ‘intuition’ as distinct from ‘intelligence’ as Bergson wrote about in his book, ‘Creative Mind’ and also in his book, ‘Creative Evolution’. Einstein just did not seem to ‘get it’ or to want to accept that there could be anything other than the physical ‘time of the physicist’ which is the constructed time of space-time, which, especially when considering the connection between this form of time and space, is very much like a fourth dimension of space–which is why Bergson called this form of time, SYNCHRONIC ‘spatialized time’ which is inherently discontinuous which could be considered the ‘time of the physicist.’ Certainly the time of special relativity. Einstein did not seem to have a clue that there might actually be another form of DIACHRONIC time that is not spatialized and discontinuous but which was fundamental, continuous, ‘flowing’, and relational. And Einstein, in effect, put an end to this ‘debate’ about time by proclaiming that ‘the Time of the Philosopher does not EXIST!’ Well, it depends on what one intends by the term ‘exist’ and by the term ‘real’.. In fact Einstein may have been correct in labelling Bergson’s ‘Durée’ as ‘non-existent’ in the sense of physicality. But the unanswered question is what form of time can be considered to be REAL? I would propose that it is the ‘Time of the Philosopher’–the ‘time of Bergson’–that is REAL, in being diachronic, relational and fundamentally processual and continuous. And perhaps this is the distinctive form of time that one could associate with the Quantum Substratum, as the ‘hidden realm’ of relational reality. Which is effectively ‘PRE spacetime’. If, in fact, in the Quantum Substratum (QS) there are ‘wave-like phenomena’ implied by the Schrödinger equation that are the means of ‘negotiation’ between potential emitters and potential absorbers, don’t they require some type of temporal mediation even if there is no real spatial aspect of the QS? After all, the general Schrödinger equation is time-dependent! Mustn’t there be some type of temporal dynamics inherent in the QS? And a special form of time that can run both ‘forward’ and ‘backward’ within the context of the QS? Since the ‘offer wave’ is ‘retarded’ while the ‘confirmation wave’ is ‘advanced’. How can this be interpreted if there is no temporality involved in the QS? And if there is a temporal aspect to the QS, even if there is no spatial aspect–because the QS does not involve ‘extension’–how can the temporal aspect of the QS be characterized?
So I went and asked Co-Pilot this question and this is the response that I received:
Yes, there is a temporal aspect to the pre-space quantum substratum in the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation (RTI), but it is fundamentally different from the continuous 3+1 spacetime experienced at the macroscopic level.In RTI, as developed by Ruth Kastner, the quantum substratum is an “extra-spatiotemporal” realm of physical possibilities (potentiae). While this realm is “pre-space” (it precedes the emergence of 3+1 spacetime), it is not completely static or timeless; it possesses an internal, structural temporality described as a “becoming” or “pre-spatiotemporal change”. Here are the key characteristics of this temporal aspect: Internal Periodicities (Proper Time): The quantum substratum consists of systems with non-vanishing rest mass. These particles possess “internal periodicities” (intrinsic vibrations) that act as “internal clocks”. These clocks define local proper times that exist before the formation of a unified, macroscopic spacetime manifold.Non-Unitary “Now” (Change): RTI posits that “change is primary”. Instead of a static “block universe,” the pre-space domain is a “Now” characterized by changing states of quantum systems, where offer/confirmation waves (OW/CW) are generated and potentially form “transactions”. “Pre-Spatiotemporal” Dynamics: The processes that produce transactions, which later become spacetime events, occur in Hilbert space, not in the 3+1 spacetime they create. Asymmetry of Time: Unlike some views that treat the quantum level as entirely time-symmetric, RTI notes that transaction formation (the collapse/actualization) acts as an irreversible process, creating a “moment” of actuality (the “Now”) from potentiality, thus providing a foundation for time asymmetry. Therefore, the pre-space substratum is not “timeless” in the sense of being frozen; it is a “pre-spatial” temporal structure where the potential for space and time to exist is actualized through “handshake” processes.
How do you think Co-Pilot did with this response to the question…’Is there a temporal aspect of the pre space quantum substratum of the relativistic Transactional Interpretation of quantum physics?’
That’s not a bad summary from Copilot. Re your latest comment, basically this is all written up and contained in my publications (which is why Copilot was able to summarize it); it is just being ignored. Of course one can further emphasize the historical context and relevance; I do have another book project with Andreas coming out, as well as an additional book of my own that I’m currently working on. Both projects have been somewhat delayed due to the press of other deadlines, and such things as papers being caught in ‘Major Revision limbo’.