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James Putnam

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About James Putnam

  • Birthday 03/26/1943

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  • Website URL
    http://newphysicstheory.com

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  • Location
    Colorado
  • Interests
    I write about physics, life and intelligence.
  • Occupation
    Retired

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  1. I viewed this at: http://lcni.uoregon.edu/~mark/Stat_mech/thermodynamic_entropy_and_information.html Excerpt: "The bottom line is that thermodynamic entropy is best understood not as a property or macroscopic state of matter (like mass, temperature, or pressure), but as a lack of knowledge of the detailed configuration of matter. In particular, thermodynamic entropy is a measure of our lack of information about the microstate of a closed system of matter near equilibrium. To make this concrete, I'll compare two similar simple systems, one of particles and one of bits. Although the concept of entropy in classical thermodynamics was elucidated long before information theory was developed, thermodynamic entropy can be viewed as a straight-forward application of information theory to a physical problem." Interesting. I see this opinion as clearly, scientifically evasive. Something that was precisely defined in terms of temperature, energy transiting into or out of a system in thermal equilibrium, and something that required the passage of time, is dismissed as being a counting problem unrelated to the definition of thermodynamic entropy. This appears to be an example of avoiding answering a fundamental question before racing off into an unrelated area. Thermodynamic entropy was defined long before space-cells were defined for reasons of sort-kinda calculating thermodynamic entropy, or long before microstates were discovered. Clausius discovered thermodynamic entropy, a macroscopic thermodynamic property. If one does not know what it is, then, one should admit that and not divert attention to something else. That is what I think. James
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