On Mon, Jan 6, 2014 at 2:36 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
> he assumed this time asymmetry was fundamental, not a mere statistical > effect related to the low entropy of the initial conditions of the > experiment. > A mere statistical effect?? I would argue that the second law of thermodynamics is much more fundamental than the first. The first law, the idea that matter and energy can not be created or destroyed is not a logical necessity it's merely a empirical observation, up to now we've just never seen that law violated and we use induction to conclude that we never will. Induction is a very good rule of thumb but it you wait long enough it can sometimes lead you astray. I don't expect it to happen but I can at least conceive of the idea that someday we will find a circumstance where the first law is untrue. But the second law is not like that, conceiving of a world where entropy doesn't increase with time is like imagining what the world would be like if 2+2=5. The second law is not based on observation but on pure logic and the fact that there are just more ways to be disorganized than organized. Science always changes but if I had to pick one thing that would still be valid in a thousand or even a million years it would be the second law. What Sir Arthur Eddington said about it is as true today as it was in 1928 when he said it: "The second law of thermodynamics holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the Universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, those experimentalists do bungle things up sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing to do but to collapse in deepest humiliation." John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
