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

1.2. BOLTZMANN: TRAGEDY OF CLASSICAL PHYSICS 9
• Ludwig Boltzmann (1844 - 1906)
• Max Planck (1858 - 1947)
• Niels Bohr (1885 -1962)
• Ludwig Prandtl(1875 - 1953).
Generations of modern physicists (and scientists) have followed selling their
souls of different dimensions to acquire the magics of science. This book
seeks to analyze this deal from both sides of the game:
• What science was won and what soul was lost?
• What is the deal for the 21st century?
We shall find that Planck, Bohr and Prandtl built scientific empires of this
world, while Boltzmann tended to philosphy and Einstein was lonely idealist
in search of an empires not of this world. All of them started out young with
big ambitions.
1.2 Boltzmann: Tragedy of Classical Physics
The German physicist Ludwig Boltzmann had taken on the duty to free
physics from the paradoxes of the new field of thermodynamics opened by
the German physicist Rudolf Clausius, paradoxes which had to be solved by
the science of the emerging German Empire with ambitions.
Boltzmann was searching for a mechanical model of thermodynamics
based on an atomistic theory of a gas as as large collection of particles or
atoms or molecules interacting by collisions. This was before the physical
reality of atoms had been confirmed and Boltzmann met a lot of opposition,
in particular from the Austrian physicist Ernst Mach advocating positivist
phenomenalism instead of materialistic atomism. Boltzmann’s goal was to
give Clausius 2nd law of thermodynamics a mechanical atomistic basis, and
to this end he was ready to make any deal, even introducing statistics in
the form of molecular disorder...But misgivings took over and Boltzmann
hanged himself, shortly before atomistic theory started to boom crowned by
quantum mechanics...
Boltzmann took the game, but had to pay the price of giving up his
life...the essence of tragedy. Boltzmann did not doubt atoms; it was the
molecular disorder that wrecked his life.