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

158 CHAPTER 34. STATISTICS: BOLTZMANN
34.4 Sommerfeld
• Thermodynamics is a funny subject. The first time you go through it,
you dont understand it at all. The second time you go through it, you
think you understand except a few small points. The third time you go
through it, you know that you dont understand it, but by that time you
are so used to it, that it doesnt bother you any more. (Sommerfeld).
34.5 Loschmidt
• There is apparently a contradiction between the law of increasing enropy
and the principles of Newtonian mechanics, since the latter do not
recognize any difference between past and future times. This is the socalled
reversibility paradox (Umkehreinwand) which was ad- vanced as
an objection to Boltzmann’s theory by Loschmidt 1876-77. (Translators
foreword to Lectures on Gas Theory by Boltzmann [3]).
34.6 Bohr
• In my impudent way I would say that...no one...not even the dear Lord
himself - can know what an expression like throwing a dice means.
34.7 Feynman
• Where does irreversibility come from? It does not come form Newton’s
laws. Obviously there must be some law, some obscure but fundamental
equation. perhaps in electricity, maybe in neutrino physics, in which it
does matter which way time goes. (The Feynman Lectures on Physics
1963)
34.8 Various
• The 2nd Law cannot be derived from purely mechanical laws. It carries
the stamp of the essentially statistical nature of heat. (Bergman in
Basic Theories of Physics 1951)