🚀 go-pugleaf

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

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