Weaver, Christopher (2020) In Praise of Clausius Entropy: Reassessing the Foundations of Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics. [Preprint]
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Abstract
I will argue, pace a great many of my contemporaries, that there's something right about Boltzmann's attempt to ground the second law of thermodynamics in a suitably amended deterministic time-reversal invariant classical dynamics, and that in order to appreciate what's right about (what was at least at one time) Boltzmann's explanatory project, one has to fully apprehend the nature of microphysical causal structure, time-reversal invariance, and the relationship between Boltzmann entropy and the work of Rudolf Clausius.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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| Additional Information: | I thank Olivier Darrigol and Matthew Stanley for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I thank Jochen Bojanowski for a little translation help. I presented a version of the paper at the NY/NJ (Metro Area) Philosophy of Science group meeting at NYU in November of 2019. I’d like to especially thank Barry Loewer, Tim Maudlin, and David Albert for their criticisms at that event. Let me extend special thanks to Tim Maudlin for some helpful correspondence on various issues addressed in this paper. While Professor Maudlin and I still disagree, that correspondence was helpful. I also presented an earlier draft of this work to the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in January 2020. I thank many of the physics faculty and graduate students for their questions and objections. A comment from Nigel D. Goldenfeld as well as a challenging question from Michael B. Weissman benefited the final product. Finally, I’d like to express an additional special thanks to Olivier Darrigol with whom I corresponded on various issues in Boltzmann scholarship as well as numerous points made in this paper. I owe a great debt to him for that enlightening correspondence and for his Atoms, Mechanics, and Probability (OUP 2018) from which I learned so much. | ||||||
| Keywords: | Boltzmann; Maxwell; Clausius; Second Law of Thermodynamics; Causation | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
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| Depositing User: | Dr. Christopher Weaver | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 08 Jul 2020 02:53 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 08 Jul 2020 02:53 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 17444 | ||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Causation Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Statistical Mechanics/Thermodynamics |
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| Date: | 7 April 2020 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/17444 |
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In Praise of Clausius Entropy:
Reassessing the Foundations of Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics. (deposited 09 Apr 2020 02:42)
- In Praise of Clausius Entropy: Reassessing the Foundations of Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics. (deposited 08 Jul 2020 02:53) [Currently Displayed]
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