🚀 go-pugleaf

On 6 Oct, 08:33, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote in
sci.physics.relativity:
> http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
> Jos Uffink: "The Second Law made its appearance in physics around
> 1850, but a half century later it was already surrounded by so much
> confusion that the British Association for the Advancement of Science
> decided to appoint a special committee with the task of providing
> clarity about the meaning of this law. However, its final report
> (Bryan 1891) did not settle the issue. Half a century later, the
> physicist/philosopher Bridgman still complained that there are almost
> as many formulations of the second law as there have been discussions
> of it (Bridgman 1941, p. 116). And even today, the Second Law remains
> so obscure that it continues to attract new efforts at clarification.
> A recent example is the work of Lieb and Yngvason (1999)......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).......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.....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.......A
> more important objection, it seems to me, is that Clausius bases his
> conclusion that the entropy increases in a nicht umkehrbar process on
> the assumption that such a process can be closed by an umkehrbar
> 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.......On many occasions Clausius
> was criticised by his contemporaries. I do not know if, in his own
> time, he was criticised in particular for his famous formulation of
> the second law as the increase of the entropy of the universe.39
> However, Kuhn (1978, pp. 13-15, p. 260) has pointed out the remarkable
> fact that in the book (Clausius 1876) he eventually composed from his
> collected articles, every reference to the entropy of the universe and
> even to the idea that entropy never decreases in irreversible
> processes in adiabatically isolated systems is deleted! The most
> general formulation given to the second law in this book, which may be
> regarded as the mature presentation of Clausius' ideas, is again the
> relation (10), where the system is supposed to undergo a cycle, and
> entropy increase is out of the question. We must conclude that in the
> work of Clausius and Kelvin the connection between the second law and
> irreversibility is extremely fragile. Kelvin claimed that the
> irreversibility of all processes in nature is a necessary consequence
> of his principle, but gave not a shred of argumentation for this
> claim. His later versions of the second law were even completely
> disconnected from the arrow of time. Clausius does give argumentation,
> but it is so untransparent and dependent on implicit assumptions that
> his famous general conclusion (all processes in nature proceed in the
> 'positive' direction, i.e. the direction of entropy increase) cannot
> be considered as established......Conclusion: the goal of Planck's
> approach is to take the phenomenon of irreversibility of natural
> processes as the essential element of the second law. But his claim to
> have derived a formulation of universal generality cannot withstand
> scrutiny. Besides, this emphasis on irreversibelity and the universal
> validity of the second law actually remains sterile in Planck's own
> work. The final part of his book, which is devoted to applications of
> the second law, only discusses equilibrium problems......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."
>
> This "RED HERRING" destroyed, roughly speaking, half of theoretical
> science. The demolition has been completed by Divine Albert and his
> criminal cult:
>
> http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/pdf/files/975547d7-2d00-433a-b7e3-4a09145525ca.pdf
> Albert Einstein: "I consider it entirely possible that physics cannot
> be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous structures.
> Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air, including the
> theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of contemporary
> physics."
>
> http://www.bnl.gov/community/Tours/EinsteinPics/Einsteine.jpg
> http://www.haverford.edu/physics-astro/songs/divine.htm
> http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-58/iss-7/images/devine_einstein.mp3

Strangely, physicists do not sing "Divine Clausius" although the most
famous sycophant in the history of science, Arthur Eddington, has
glorified Clausius' idiocies even more fiercely than Einstein's
idiocies:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/00/engtot.pdf
Arthur Eddington: "The law that entropy always increases, - the second
law of thermodynamics - 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 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