Dr Faustus of Modern Physics - Department of Speech, Music and ...

124 CHAPTER 28. BOLTZMANN
characteristics that people inherited bad philosophy from the past and
that it was hard for scientists to overcome such inheritance.
• In 1906 his mental condition became so bad that he had to resign his
position and he committed suicide in September of that same year by
hanging himself while on vacation.
28.2 Confession
• Who ... is not familiar with Maxwell’s memoirs on his dynamical theory
of gases? ... from one side enter the equations of state; from the other
side, the equations of motion in a central field. Ever higher soars the
chaos of formulae. Suddenly we hear, as from kettle drums, the four
beats, “put n = 5”. The evil spirit vanishes; and ... that which had
seemed insuperable has been overcome as if by a stroke of magic ... One
result after another follows in quick succession till at last ... we arrive
at the conditions for thermal equilibrium together with expressions for
the transport coefficients.
• A closer look at the course followed by developing theory reveals for a
start that it is by no means as continuous as one might expect, but full of
breaks and at least apparently not along the shortest logical path. Certain
methods often afforded the most handsome results only the other
day, and many might well have thought that the development of science
to infinity would consist in no more than their constant application. Instead,
on the contrary, they suddenly reveal themselves as exhausted and
the attempt is made to find other quite disparate methods. In that event
there may develop a struggle between the followers of the old methods
and those of the newer ones. The former’s point of view will be termed
by their opponents as out-dated and outworn, while its holders in turn
belittle the innovators as corrupters of true classical science.
• The most ordinary things are to philosophy a source of insoluble puzzles.
In order to explain our perceptions it constructs the concept of matter
and then finds matter quite useless either for itself having or for causing
perceptions in a mind. With infinite ingenuity it constructs a concept
of space or time and then finds it absolutely impossible that there be
objects in this space or that processes occur during this time ... The