🚀 go-pugleaf

> 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."

The deductive chain leading to the red herring was so biased and
invalid that the final conclusion ("Entropy always increases") was
just as meaningful as "The greenness of the crocodile exceeds its
length". So the dawn of Postscientism broke: a student who accepts the
red herring is committed to accepting anything, e.g.:

L. McGlashan, Chemical thermodynamics, Academic Press, London (1979),
pp. 72-73: "For an infinitesimal change in the state of a phase alpha
we write
dU = T dS - p dV + SUM mu_B dn_B (1)
We regard equation (1) as an axiom and call it the fundamental
equation for a change of the state of a phase alpha. It is one half of
the second law of thermodynamics. We do not ask where it comes from.
Indeed we do not admit the existence of any more fundamental relations
from which it might have been derived. Nor shall we here enquire into
the history of its formulation, though that is a subject of great
interest to the historian of science. It is a starting point ; it must
be learnt by heart."

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/barn_pole.html
"These are the props. You own a barn, 40m long, with automatic doors
at either end, that can be opened and closed simultaneously by a
switch. You also have a pole, 80m long, which of course won't fit in
the barn. Now someone takes the pole and tries to run (at nearly the
speed of light) through the barn with the pole horizontal. Special
Relativity (SR) says that a moving object is contracted in the
direction of motion: this is called the Lorentz Contraction. So, if
the pole is set in motion lengthwise, then it will contract in the
reference frame of a stationary observer.....So, as the pole passes
through the barn, there is an instant when it is completely within the
barn. At that instant, you close both doors simultaneously, with your
switch. Of course, you open them again pretty quickly, but at least
momentarily you had the contracted pole shut up in your barn. The
runner emerges from the far door unscathed.....If the doors are kept
shut the rod will obviously smash into the barn door at one end. If
the door withstands this the leading end of the rod will come to rest
in the frame of reference of the stationary observer. There can be no
such thing as a rigid rod in relativity so the trailing end will not
stop immediately and the rod will be compressed beyond the amount it
was Lorentz contracted. If it does not explode under the strain and it
is sufficiently elastic it will come to rest and start to spring back
to its natural shape but since it is too big for the barn the other
end is now going to crash into the back door and the rod will be
trapped in a compressed state inside the barn."

Sir Arthur Eddington, Einstein's original worshipper, had no doubts
about the paramount importance of the red herring:

http://web.mit.edu/keenansymposium/overview/background/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."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com