Document Type
Article
Publication Date
3-8-2024
Department 1
Philosophy
Department 2
Judaic Studies
Abstract
Ludwig Boltzmann's move in his seminal paper of 1877, introducing a statistical understanding of entropy, was a watershed moment in the history of physics. The work not only introduced quantization and provided a new understanding of entropy, it challenged the understanding of what a law of nature could be. Traditionally, nomological necessity, that is, specifying the way in which a system must develop, was considered an essential element of proposed physical laws. Yet, here was a new understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that no longer possessed this property. While it was a new direction in physics, in other important scientific discourses of that time-specifically Huttonian geology and Darwinian evolution, similar approaches were taken in which a system's development followed principles, but did so in a way that both provided a direction of time and allowed for non-deterministic, though rule-based, time evolution. Boltzmann referred to both of these theories, especially the work of Darwin, frequently. The possibility that Darwin influenced Boltzmann's thought in physics can be seen as being supported by Boltzmann's later writings.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Copyright Note
© 2024 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
DOI
10.3390/e26030238
Version
Version of Record
Recommended Citation
Gimbel, Steven. 2024. "It Ain’t Necessarily So: Ludwig Boltzmann’s Darwinian Notion of Entropy" Entropy 26, no. 3: 238. https://doi.org/10.3390/e26030238
Required Publisher's Statement
This article is available from the publisher’s website: https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/26/3/238.