http://web.mit.edu/keenansymposium/o...und/index.html
ARTHUR EDDINGTON: "The law that entropy always increases, holds, I
think, the SUPREME POSITION among the laws of Nature. If someone
points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in
disagreement with Maxwell's equations--then so much the worse for
Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation--
well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your
theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics, I can
give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest
humiliation."

http://www.phys.uu.nl/igg/jos/

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
JOS UFFINK: "This summary leads to the question whether it is fruitful
to see irreversibility or time-asymmetry as the essence of the second
law. Is it not more straightforward, in view of the unargued
statements of Kelvin, the bold claims of Clausius and the strained
attempts of Planck, to give up this idea? I believe that Ehrenfest-
Afanassjewa was right in her verdict that the discussion about the
arrow of time as expressed in the second law of the thermodynamics is
actually a RED HERRING."

http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/homepage.htm

http://www.beilstein-institut.de/boz...nishBowden.htm
ATHEL CORNISH-BOWDEN: "The concept of entropy was introduced to
thermodynamics by Clausius, who deliberately chose an obscure term for
it, wanting a word based on Greek roots that would sound similar to
"energy". In this way he hoped to have a word that would mean the same
to everyone regardless of their language, and, as Cooper [2] remarked,
he succeeded in this way in finding a word that meant the same to
everyone: NOTHING. From the beginning it proved a very difficult
concept for other thermodynamicists, even including such accomplished
mathematicians as Kelvin and Maxwell; Kelvin, indeed, despite his own
major contributions to the subject, never appreciated the idea of
entropy [3]. The difficulties that Clausius created have continued to
the present day, with the result that a fundamental idea that is
absolutely necessary for understanding the theory of chemical
equilibria continues to give trouble, not only to students but also to
scientists who need the concept for their work."

Perhaps it is time now, after 150 years of head-in-the-sand-another-
part-of-the-body-up position, to reconsider Clausius' 1850 INVALID
deduction of the original version of the second law of thermodynamics:

http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/Clausius.html
"Ueber die bewegende Kraft der Warme" 1850 Clausius: "If we now
suppose that there are two substances of which the one can produce
more work than the other by the transfer of a given amount of heat,
or, what comes to the same thing, needs to transfer less heat from A
to B to produce a given quantity of work, we may use these two
substances alternately by producing work with one of them in the above
process. At the end of the operations both bodies are in their
original condition; further, the work produced will have exactly
counterbalanced the work done, and therefore, by our former principle,
the quantity of heat can have neither increased nor diminished. The
only change will occur in the distribution of the heat, since more
heat will be transferred from B to A than from A to B, and so on the
whole heat will be transferred from B to A. By repeating these two
processes alternately it would be possible, without any expenditure of
force or any other change, to transfer as much heat as we please from
a cold to a hot body, and this is not in accord with the other
relations of heat, since it always shows a tendency to equalize
temperature differences and therefore to pass from hotter to colder
bodies."

Pentcho Valev

Clausius deduced his famous "Entropy always increases" from two
premises:

1. Any irreversible process can be closed by a reversible process to
become a cycle.

2. Closed integral of dQ/T is negative or zero for any cycle (Q is the
heat absorbed, T is the temperature).

The falsehood of the first premise is almost obvious. I am not able to
prove RIGOROUSLY the falsehood of the second, but its truth is not
proved either (Clausius' proof is invalid). The problem with the
second premise is mentioned he

http://www.chem.umd.edu/~devoe/thermo/3steps.pdf

Unfortunately the analysis is too technical to be discussed via
email.

Pentcho Valev

In article ,
Pentcho Valev says...

Clausius deduced his famous "Entropy always increases" from two
premises:

1. Any irreversible process can be closed by a reversible process to
become a cycle.

2. Closed integral of dQ/T is negative or zero for any cycle (Q is the
heat absorbed, T is the temperature).

The falsehood of the first premise is almost obvious. I am not able to
prove RIGOROUSLY the falsehood of the second, but its truth is not
proved either (Clausius' proof is invalid). The problem with the
second premise is mentioned he

http://www.chem.umd.edu/~devoe/thermo/3steps.pdf

Unfortunately the analysis is too technical to be discussed via
email.

It's refreshing to see people who are crackpots about something
other than relativity for a change.

--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY

Boltzmann proposed as the measure of entropy the function H.
He connected it with the logarithm of a polynomial coefficient.
This polynomial coefficient is a measure of distribution of
velocities of molecules, and simultaneously of distribution their kinetic energies.
Another expression for this is the word symmetry.
Using this magic word, we can say, that the symmetry of the Universe is
spontaneously growing from the bing bang. At the beginning, there was only
one symmetry element, the identity, as in isolated systems at 0 K.
kunzmilan

La courbe de poursuite du psychiatre qui essaie de rattraper Pentcho Valev.
C'est pour quand ?

On Feb 16, 8:55 am, "diegel" wrote:
La courbe de poursuite du psychiatre qui essaie de rattraper Pentcho Valev..
C'est pour quand ?

Cela dépendra de quel type de camion le psychiatre conduit.

Tom Davidson
Richmond, VA

http://www.phys.uu.nl/igg/jos/

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
pp. 7-8, Jos Uffink: "The historian of science and mathematician
Truesdell made a detailed study of the historical development of
thermodynamics in the period 1822-1854. He characterises the theory,
even in its present state, as 'a dismal swamp of obscurity' (1980, p.
6) and 'a prime example to show that physicists are not exempt from
the madness of crowds' (ibid. p. 8). He is outright cynical about the
respect with which nonmathematicians treat the Second Law: "Clausius'
verbal statement of the second law makes no sense [. . . ]. All that
remains is a Mosaic prohibition; a century of philosophers and
journalists have acclaimed this commandment; a century of
mathematicians have shuddered and averted their eyes from the unclean.
(ibid. p. 333). Seven times in the past thirty years have I tried to
follow the argument Clausius offers [. . . ] and seven times has it
blanked and gravelled me. [. . . ] I cannot explain what I cannot
understand (ibid. p. 335)." From this anthology it emerges that
although many prominent physicists are firmly convinced of, and
express admiration for the Second Law, there are also serious
complaints, especially from mathematicians, about a lack of clarity
and rigour in its formulation. At the very least one can say that the
Second Law suffers from an image problem: its alleged eminence and
venerability is not perceived by everyone who has been exposed to it.
What is it that makes this physical law so obstreperous that every
attempt at a clear formulation seems to have failed? Is it just the
usual sloppiness of physicists? Or is there a deeper problem? And what
exactly is the connection with the arrow of time and irreversibility?
Could it be that this is also just based on bluff? Perhaps readers
will shrug their shoulders over these questions. Thermodynamics is
obsolete; for a better understanding of the problem we should turn to
more recent, statistical theories. But even then the questions we are
about to study have more than a purely historical importance. The
problem of reproducing the Second Law, perhaps in an adapted version,
remains one of the toughest, and controversial problems in statistical
physics."

Pentcho Valev

On Feb 16, 3:17 am, (Daryl McCullough)
wrote:
In article ,
Pentcho Valev says...





Clausius deduced his famous "Entropy always increases" from two
premises:

1. Any irreversible process can be closed by a reversible process to
become a cycle.

2. Closed integral of dQ/T is negative or zero for any cycle (Q is the
heat absorbed, T is the temperature).

The falsehood of the first premise is almost obvious. I am not able to
prove RIGOROUSLY the falsehood of the second, but its truth is not
proved either (Clausius' proof is invalid). The problem with the
second premise is mentioned he

http://www.chem.umd.edu/~devoe/thermo/3steps.pdf

Unfortunately the analysis is too technical to be discussed via
email.

It's refreshing to see people who are crackpots about something
other than relativity for a change.

http://bip.cnrs-mrs.fr/bip10/valevfaq.htm


--
Daryl McCullough
Ithaca, NY

Pentcho Valev wrote on Sat, 16 Feb 2008 22:17:12 -0800:

http://www.phys.uu.nl/igg/jos/

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/ pp. 7-8, Jos Uffink:
"The historian of science and mathematician Truesdell made a detailed
study of the historical development of thermodynamics in the period
1822-1854. He characterises the theory, even in its present state, as 'a
dismal swamp of obscurity' (1980, p. 6) and 'a prime example to show
that physicists are not exempt from the madness of crowds' (ibid. p. 8).
He is outright cynical about the respect with which nonmathematicians
treat the Second Law: "Clausius' verbal statement of the second law
makes no sense [. . . ]. All that remains is a Mosaic prohibition; a
century of philosophers and journalists have acclaimed this commandment;
a century of mathematicians have shuddered and averted their eyes from
the unclean. (ibid. p. 333). Seven times in the past thirty years have I
tried to follow the argument Clausius offers [. . . ] and seven times
has it blanked and gravelled me. [. . . ] I cannot explain what I cannot
understand (ibid. p. 335)." From this anthology it emerges that although
many prominent physicists are firmly convinced of, and express
admiration for the Second Law, there are also serious complaints,
especially from mathematicians, about a lack of clarity and rigour in
its formulation. At the very least one can say that the Second Law
suffers from an image problem: its alleged eminence and venerability is
not perceived by everyone who has been exposed to it. What is it that
makes this physical law so obstreperous that every attempt at a clear
formulation seems to have failed? Is it just the usual sloppiness of
physicists? Or is there a deeper problem? And what exactly is the
connection with the arrow of time and irreversibility? Could it be that
this is also just based on bluff? Perhaps readers will shrug their
shoulders over these questions. Thermodynamics is obsolete; for a better
understanding of the problem we should turn to more recent, statistical
theories. But even then the questions we are about to study have more
than a purely historical importance. The problem of reproducing the
Second Law, perhaps in an adapted version, remains one of the toughest,
and controversial problems in statistical physics."

Pentcho Valev


Actually Truesdell complaints are about mathematical deficiencies on some
archaic presentations of the subject (exactly he critize the CKC
formulation of thermodynamics).

In his own mathematical approach (rational thermodynamics) Truesdell, of
course, maintains the Second Law as *valid* and *universal*.

He simply gives a more mathematicall rigorous formulation like a positive
definite form: d_i(s) = 0 in the thermodynamical 'phase' space.


--
I follow http://canonicalscience.org/en/misce...guidelines.txt

I couldn't resist commenting on the title of this thread.

Entropy as the supreme law of nature? It may be the "supreme law" of
this universe, but I see no evidence that it is the supreme law of
nature (by "nature" I mean the way all things are, including God as below).

How did this universe get here? Well, we don't know, but there
is undoubtedly a lot of negentropy about. Let's say "God" created the
universe, where "God" can be a thinking entity or a blind process as you
please.

Two possibilities arise: the negentropy was created by God de novo, or
it was moved from a store of negentropy God has control of.

If the negentropy was created de novo, then there is some process (God)
which can create negentropy, and the law of entropy is not the supreme
law of nature.


If the negentropy was moved from a store of negentropy, where did the
store of negentropy come from? Without descending into infinite
recursion ("it came from another store, and it's turtles all the way
down forever"), which I dislike, perhaps the store "just is", or even
"just was".

Then we ask, is the store of negentropy infinite in extent? If so the
law of entropy is void for nature (as defined above). If not then the
law of entropy may be the supreme law of nature - but I don't know of
any evidence that that is the case.

The answer may be ineffable of course, or even not exist (though they
may be the same thing as far as we are concerned).


-- Peter Fairbrother