🚀 go-pugleaf

On Oct 4, 2:04 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Can a false premise produce, validly, a true conclusion? Generally,
> yes:
>
> If it rains, then the soil is wet.
>
> The argument is valid, the premise "it rains" can be false and yet the
> conclusion "the soil is wet" can be true (the gardener has watered the
> lawn). However there is a type of valid arguments for which a false
> premise necessarily entails a false conclusion. The so-called Carnot
> theorem is an argument of this type:

  We knew that 100 years ago, though.
  Which is really why we invented GPS for logic morons like chemists,
  mircoprocessors for enginnering morons like physicists,
  fiber optics for efficiency morons like IBM,
  left-handed robots for ergonomics morons like GM,
  laser pointers for argumentum-premise philosophy morons like
mathematicians,
  and cruise missiles and DVD for global-warming idiots like NASA.




> If heat is conserved (cannot be converted into work in the heat
> engine), then all reversible heat engines working between the same two
> temperatures T1 and T2 (T2 > T1) have the same efficiency.
>
> The premise "heat is conserved (cannot be converted into work in the
> heat engine)" is false. However by 1850 Clausius and Kelvin had built
> their scientific careers on the false conclusion "all reversible heat
> engines working between the same two temperatures T1 and T2 (T2 > T1)
> have the same efficiency" and decided to save it. In 1850 Clausius
> deduced the false conclusion from a true premise but the argument was
> invalid:
>
> If heat always flows spontaneously from hot to cold, then all
> reversible heat engines working between the same two temperatures T1
> and T2 (T2 > T1) have the same efficiency:
>
> 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