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I think most of the section "Maxwell's demon in popular culture" is pretty useless. It might be worthwhile to elaborate a bit on how the vivid idea of a "demon" has often inspired references outside of the scientific context, and how Maxwell's conception of a rather general "being" with unusual but ultimately worldly facilities evolved into the cute image of a tiny demon, and at what point in history that happened - I understand it was Kelvin who introduced the term "Maxwell's demon", and so on. I know, if I'd like to read that, I should just write it ;)

But as it stands, we have a long list of items along the lines of "M.d. is mentioned in this book", and rarely do we even get to know, really, of what kind the appearance is that the demon makes. For example, one item reads: Maxwell's demon is mentioned in the Novel Homo Faber by Swiss author Max Frisch, as well as in one of the short stories of The Cyberiad by Stanisław Lem: "The Sixth Sally, or How Trurl and Klaupacius Created a Demon of the Second Kind to Defeat the Pirate Pugg". - now, for one thing, these works are completely unrelated, so why are they mentioned in the same sentence? And second, I happen to know "Homo faber" quite well, and as far as I can see, the only reference to Maxwell's demon in the book is this (transl. by me):

... she thought I was lonely and wanted to be nice, didn't give up until she got me to chat with her - about navigation, radar, earth curvature, electricity, entropy, of which she had never heard. She was not stupid at all. Of those to whom I explained the so-called Maxwell's daemon, not many understood it as quickly as this young girl, whom I called Sabeth, because Elisabeth, in my opinion, is an impossible name. I liked her, but I didn't flirt with her in any way. ..." etc. etc.

How in the world does that amount to a significant occurrence of M.d. in "popular culture"? (Frisch's novels aren't everybody's idea of "pop culture" either, but that's another question.)

Other items range from the completely useless:

• Maxwell's demon appears in $AUTHOR's $TITLE.

... to the downright silly:

• In the manga Gundam Wing: Episode Zero, one of the Gundam engineers associates Duo Maxwell's last name with Maxwell's demon.

Should these not simply be deleted and only the helpful and significant entries, such as the band named after the demon, be kept? (Granted, there won't be much left.) --SKopp 12:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn't say "Maxwell's Demon in Helpful and Significant Popular Culture". Manga and the like are popular culture; something doesn't have to be of any major use to be popular. Also, there wouldn't be, for less-known things, a section that isn't popular culture. Having "Maxwell's Demon in Unpopular Culture" would be kind of dumb.

ChristopherEdwards 17:34, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know why that section failed to mention the Anime "El Cazador de la Bruja". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.131.23.208 (talk) 19:48, 22 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This section bothers me the most. It's a mess. My first urge wasn't to delete (I'm an inclusionist- storage is cheap) it was to sort it into Books, Music, Movies, TV. Then it will look like a list and someone will say 'WP is not for lists!' Shall I do it? Connectionfailure (talk) 01:05, 4 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Maxwell's scientific intent in posing this puzzle was mainly about statistical dynamics, but did he also wonder about agents of change? At the time, he may have wondered about evolved biologic systems such as photosynthesis, respiration, and digestion which function so reliably that they seem "informed". (Contemporary biology holds that living systems do not violate the second law, but still puzzles over the nature of information in DNA molecules and in systems.) An "informed" demon running cellular respiration is not so far fetched when one considers the organization of respiratory enzymes and atp synthase machines. We now know that these systems were naturally selected because they worked so well that reproduction of their host organisms was made more successful. But was their work due to the information in the dna that produced these enzymes?

Darwin's ideas had just been published (and have recently been verified with scientific certainty through subsequent fossil evidence and genomics), and Maxwell would have known about natural selection as an historical agency of evolution. Did he also wonder about the natural selection process as a change agent that leads to the selection of information systems? Can science respond to the puzzles of selection and information as apparent agencies, or must this be relegated to either rational or mystical philosophy?

I would rather see science or the philosophy of science give this a try, so here goes. Electron transport enzymes and atp synthase are formations of matter/energy deemed by our brains as valuable because we find meaning in the workings. It then becomes tempting to call these "informed" systems. When the thermodynamics is investigated, the second law is found to be intact, and therefore these valued selections or "informed" system end up being, not agencies, but merely intriguing after-thoughts of our brains.

Maxwell's demon lives on as to tempt us to deal with it, and I bet Maxwell would be delighted. Khobler (talk) 04:06, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello everyone, I have done some work recently on Maxwell's demon and the solution. I have published a paper on it and would like to add a short excerpt on the findings to the criticism and development section. Is everyone okay with it?