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In 1824 Sadi Carnot advanced a false premise and deduced a conclusion
later called "the second law of thermodynamics":

Kelvin's version: It is impossible to perform a cyclic process with no
other result than that heat is absorbed from a reservoir, and work is
performed.

This implies that, when two INTERACTING heat engines absorb heat from
a reservoir (the surroundings) and perform reversible work, the
following equality of partial derivatives holds:

dF1 / dX2 = dF2 / dX1

where F1 and F2 are work-producing forces and X1 and X2 are the
respective displacements.

The above implication is more or less an oxymoron since the equality
clearly characterizes NON-INTERACTING heat engines. At least in two
cases (see http://www.wbabin.net/valev/valev2.htm ) the partial
derivatives are not equal and therefore the second law of
thermodynamics is false.

The next development of thermodynamics can be characterized in the
following way:

Camouflaging the falsehood of the second law of thermodynamics by
introducing a red herring called "the law of entropy increase":

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."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com