| Topic: |
Science > Physics |
| User: |
"Pentcho Valev" |
| Date: |
09 Sep 2005 12:51:57 AM |
| Object: |
Honest Postscientific Education |
L. McGlashan, Chemical thermodynamics, Academic Press, London (1979),
pp. 72-73:
"For an infinitesimal change in the state of a phase alpha we write
dU = TdS - PdV + SUM_B mu_B dn_B (1)
We regard equation (1) as an axiom and call it the fundamental equation
for a change of the state of a phase alpha. It is one half of the
second law of thermodynamics. We do not ask where it comes from. Indeed
we do not admit the existence of any more fundamental relations from
which it might have been derived. Nor shall we here enquire into the
history of its formulation, though that is a subject of great interest
to the historian of science. It is a starting point; it must be learnt
by heart. It may be allowed to stand as an axiom until any single one
of the host of equations that can be derived from it (with the help of
other axioms of thermodynamics) has been shown experimentally to be
false."
Confessions of this type were extremely popular in the first half of
the 20th century: idiocies produced by the initiated are so divine that
ordinary mortals can only learn them by rote. At present the divinity
is more or less implicit and students learn by rote various
"derivations" of the respective equations. However they somehow feel
the absurdity and abandon science. Science education is dying and the
process seems irreversible. Perhaps this is only a segment of the
advancing death of human rationality in general.
Pentcho Valev
.
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