🚀 go-pugleaf

On Aug 5, 4:29 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >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."
>
> Part of the idiocy involved in the red herring, "the law that entropy
> always increases":
>
> Peter Atkins, Physical Chemistry, 5th ed., p. 127: "Let the original
> change in the entropy of the system when the process of interest
> occurs be dS (this is the change we want to measure). The process need
> not be reversible, but we suppose that we can find a path that joins
> the same initial and final states and which is reversible."
>
> For 140 years the above idiocy has been questioned only once:

   Well, that's fiben, since when the only thing you  even know about
paths
   is phase-space integrals, the sane people are going to work
   on AI, Digital Computers, and Self-Replicating Machines Anyway.



>
> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
> p.39: "A more important objection, it seems to me, is that Clausius
> bases his conclusion that the entropy increases in a nicht umkehrbar
> [irreversible] process on the assumption that such a process can be
> closed by an umkehrbar [reversible] process to become a cycle. This is
> essential for the definition of the entropy difference between the
> initial and final states. But the assumption is far from obvious for a
> system more complex than an ideal gas, or for states far from
> equilibrium, or for processes other than the simple exchange of heat
> and work."
>
> Pentcho Valev
> pva...@yahoo.com- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -