Can informational thermal physics explain the approach to equilibrium?
Autor: | Javier Anta |
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Rok vydání: | 2021 |
Předmět: |
Thermal equilibrium
Computer science 05 social sciences General Social Sciences 06 humanities and the arts Statistical mechanics 0603 philosophy ethics and religion Information theory Thermal physics Constructive 050105 experimental psychology Ideal gas Philosophy symbols.namesake 060302 philosophy Boltzmann constant symbols Entropy (information theory) 0501 psychology and cognitive sciences Mathematical economics |
Zdroj: | Javier Anta |
ISSN: | 1573-0964 0039-7857 |
Popis: | In this paper I will defend the incapacity of the informational frameworks in thermal physics, mainly those that historically and conceptually derive from the work of Brillouin (Science and information theory, Academic Press, New York, 1962) and Jaynes (Phys Rev 106:620–630, 1957a), to robustly explain the approach of certain gaseous systems to their state of thermal equilibrium from the dynamics of their molecular components. I will further argue that, since their various interpretative, conceptual and technical-formal resources (e.g. epistemic interpretations of probabilities and entropy measures, identification of thermal entropy as Shannon information, and so on) are shown to be somehow incoherent, inconsistent or inaccurate, these informational proposals need to 'epistemically parasitize' the manifold of theoretical resources of Boltzmann's and Gibbs' statistical mechanics, respectively, in order to properly account for the equilibration process of an ideal gas from its microscopic properties. Finally, our conclusion leads us to adopt a sort of constructive skepticism regarding the explanatory value of the main informationalist trends in statistical thermophysics. |
Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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