The result was merge to Principle of maximum entropy. The keeps failed to satisfy the content fork concerns. \ Backslash Forwardslash / ( talk) 01:47, 17 October 2009 (UTC) reply
Not notable. POVed. Ϙ ( talk) 18:51, 30 September 2009 (UTC) reply
Oh, dear, I wouldn't like to think these principles were almost platitudes! I am not sure if they are really well defined or true or general. I think the serious experts find them problematic. To read Swenson you would think they are platitudes, but that's just because he doesn't seem to care about accuracy, or doesn't understand the problems. I think it really matters whether Dewar's proof is valid or not. I have an idea that perhaps he may be able to remedy the defect that Grinstein and Linsker 2007 found. I think accuracy matters a lot here. I would like to read a paper that made the physical meanings of the various principles and quantities clearer. Chjoaygame ( talk) 15:20, 5 October 2009 (UTC) reply
Hmm. Chjoaygame ( talk) 21:10, 5 October 2009 (UTC) reply
I have now read Swenson and Turvey 1991. I am reaching the conclusion that Swenson's work is a pollyanna wish list rather than a scientific achievement list. The notion of entropy arose in thermodynamics where it has a precise meaning. The stretched notion that entropy and 'disorder' are closely related is a vulgar error, as explained clearly in Entropy and the Time Evolution of Macroscopic Systems (Oxford, 2008, ISBN 9780199546176) by W.T. Grandy Jr, who there in secction 4.3 examines the serious literature about it. As explained by E.T. Jaynes in many places (for example, E.T. Jaynes (1965), Gibbs vs Boltzmann entropies, American Journal of Physics 33: 391-398), entropy in thermodynamics is about experimental reproducibility, not about 'order', whatever that might mean. Pace Swenson, the entropy of thermodynamics is not a prime candidate to explain the origin of species. Swenson takes entropy far beyond what its thermodynamic basis will carry. Swenson does not really understand the thermodynamic meaning of entropy. Perhaps the Swensonist would like to try to refute this statement of mine: the Wikipedia page on the "Law of Maximum Entropy Production" is not the place for him in the meantime to claim the benefit of what he would perhaps call 'the doubt'; Swenson has not made a good enough case to earn a place in the Wikipedia as a serious contributor to understanding of thermodynamic entropy production, which he is ostensibly claiming.
That is not to say that the origin and survival of species is not explicable in physical terms, but it is to say, contrary to Swenson, that thermodynamic entropy is not the main relevant physical concept. Also it is not to say that irreversible processes and entropy production are irrelevant to the origin and survival of species, but it is to say that they are not the main explanation. Entropy is not a force of nature, it is an explanatory concept, linking explanatory ideas, not describing a physical force. Swenson's work is really a grandiose and vapid misuse of a word, which apart from his misuse of it, has a well established precise meaning; the misuse works by baffling and impressing the ignorant. Swenson, like many others, would like to see that precise meaning extended to a wider domain, but such an extension is easier wished for than achieved. Swenson and Turvey 1991 set up a straw man: "... ordered states ... are the inexorable products of natural law rather than miraculous debt payers fighting against it." No scientist thinks that ordered states, nor living organisms (which, by the way, Swenson would like us to equate to 'ordered states'), are "miraculous debt payers fighting against [natural law]". To accept that living organisms are not "miraculous debt payers fighting against [natural law]" is not to accept that the principle or "Law" of maximum entropy production, with entropy defined as in thermodynamics, is the only explanation left. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The straw man is testimony to the rhetorical skills of Swenson and Turvey, not evidence of their contribution to the understanding of the thermodynamic concept of entropy.
Entropy production is the path to empirical reproducibility, not 'order', and evolution is the creative advance of nature into novelty, not its inexorable advance into mere colourless 'order'. This is far from saying that natural creation disobeys physical causality, but it is saying that the path of evolution is unique and not reproducible in any empirically verifiable sense. Getting down to hard brass tacks, Swensonism is nonsense clothed in fancy dress. The Wikipedia is not the place to invite novices to struggle through this kind of critical reasoning. An Wiki article on Swenson would be better written as showing how even today someone can get away with using pseudo-science to bluff the ignorant, than as an article about how entropy is a useful thermodynamic concept. Chjoaygame ( talk) 04:48, 6 October 2009 (UTC) reply
Thermodynamics is an exact science. "Principles" that have simple counterexamples are not part of it. An approximation in an exact science is distinguished by its stating exactly how far it can be relied upon.
Cyclopia writes above: "Article is problematic but subject is clearly academically notable and well referenced." This shows how easy it is for pseudo-science to be taken as if it were real science. Work is not academically notable to Wikipedia standards unless it is referenced by reliable secondary sources, which Swenson's is not, whether Cyclopia thinks so or not. Swenson is perhaps the only writer (or one of a fringe few) to propose that title "Law" for a principle of maximum entropy production. This is evidence of his boldness, but not of his correctness.
The Wikipedia does not aim to promote pseudo-science as if it were real science. The Swensonist wants to promote the work of Swenson as if it were part of thermodynamics, when in fact it is pseudo-science. An article in the Wikipedia is not the place for him to do so, nor for an accumulation of more or less related statements that might be mistaken for a scientific debate. Chjoaygame ( talk) 22:23, 6 October 2009 (UTC) reply
Cyclopia: Thank you for your two comments. As to the first: I am pointing out that at present one might very easily get the impression that the article on Law of Maximum Entropy Production was an article about an area within thermodynamics; but it is not so. As to your second comment: the Boltzmann definition of entropy is far from the only one. Boltzmann's definition is not suitable for defining the time rate of entropy production: Boltzmann's definition is very strictly an equilibrium definition, as usual for classical thermodynamics, while entropy production is specifically a non-equilibrium concept. If you would like to make thermodynamics your cup of tea, you might, I suggest, do well to read the references to Jaynes and Grandy that I gave above. For me, classical thermodynamics is perhaps best set out by the masterly E.A. Guggenheim in Thermodynamics: An Advanced Treatment for Chemists and Physicists, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1987, seventh edition ISBN 0444869514 (paperback). You are right that there are conflicting points of view about the statistical mechanics of thermodynamics. It is not an easy subject. When one is confronted with pseudo-science, one can be led into endless arguments, and that is not our purpose here. I suggest you carefully examine the content of Swenson's work for the sake of getting a clear idea of its status.
Nerdseeksblonde: Thank you for your comments. Swenson was bold to assert as a Law what others had long considered a possibility, but Swenson seems hardly to understand why they were not asserting it as a law; the use of the word "independent" seems intended to indicate his originality, but it does not establish the validity of his work as a part of thermodynamics. Is the use of the word "independent" intended to mean that he had not read the long-standing literature? Swenson's Chapter 6 of Cybernetics and Applied Systems (1992) cites not Rayleigh, Onsager, Ziegler, Gyarmati, Prigogine. Swenson's 2000 paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences cites 13 papers by Swenson including Swenson and Turvey 1991; it cites Schroedinger 1945; from the just-previous list it cites only Prigogine 1977. Swenson and Turvey 1991 cites 11 papers by Swenson; it cites Haken 1983, Malkus 1954, Nicolis and Prigogine 1989, Schroedinger 1945, Thompson 1852, but not others on the just-previous list. For thermodynamics, the problem is to define the precise meaning and range of applicability of the principle. Chjoaygame ( talk) 09:26, 7 October 2009 (UTC) reply
- Ziegler, e.g.,[3], a contemporary of Prigogine, but whose work had previously gone largely unnoticed, has recently received recognition as person who believed the idea of entropy production maximization had an important role to play in physics early on. His work went mostly unnoticed for a number of reasons. One of them was that he did not come at the problem from the view of trying to solve the problem of why the world inexorably and opportunistically produced order, with life as a manifestation, but instead as a theorist in the specialized field of continuum mechanics. There was no suggestion by him that entropy production maximization might play a role in solving these larger theoretical problems, and thus his work escaped the attention of those with these broader, more general theoretical interests. Another reason is that while he stated a maximum entropy production principle, it was never stated as a universal law although it would seem he intuited this. His principle which he demonstrated using the geometry of vector space relied on a “orthogonality condition” which only worked for systems where the velocities define a single vector or tensor. It was thus, in his own words “impossible to test by means of macroscopic mechanical models”[27] and was invalid in “compound systems where several elementary processes take place simultaneously”. Such limitations are severe, but although Ziegler thus only went a certain distance with his intuition, he deserves credit for being there early at a time when the tide was running the other way.
This is a travesty of the meaning of Ziegler's conclusions on 346-347 of the second revised edition of An Introduction to Thermomechanics, North-Holland 1983. The travesty is slanted, perhaps unintentionally, to make it look as if Swenson has discovered and revealed to the world something that Ziegler missed. The reality is that Ziegler found that the principle of maximum entropy production does not make sense for and cannot be applied to compound processes, because the latter are not of essentially thermodynamic nature. Swenson may wish they were of essentially thermodynamic nature so that the principle of maximum entropy production might apply to them, but he is not remotely able to show that it is so, because in fact, as pointed out by the thoroughly expert Ziegler, it is not so. Swenson's arguments do not come within 100 miles of dealing with these problems with the precision that Ziegler has mastered. Glansdorff and Prigogine 1971 on page 15 make a point close to that just quoted from Ziegler: "Let us emphasize from the outset, that the local equilibrium assumption implies that the dissipative processes are sufficently dominant to exclude large deviations from statistical equilibrium." This means not that some better definition of entropy will make the principle apply, as Swenson evidently hopes and asserts without justification, but it means that the principle is undefined or often violated when the required conditions do not hold; but Swenson just shuts his eyes to this and asserts the principle as a "law" regardless, and congratulates himself on his boldness of intuition. The Swensonist condescendingly congratulates Ziegler on his intuition: no, Ziegler does not rely on intuition, rather he relies on a seriously rational scientific approach. If at some future time, a further extension of the principle of maximum entropy production should be validated, Swenson cannot claim that his work anticipated it; he has just guessed blindly.
It is also the case that the Swensonist, perhaps unintentionally, has previously seriously misrepresented the statement of Mahulikar and Herwig 2004 about "The major revolution in the latter half ... etc". And that he has, perhaps unintentionally, seriously misrepresented what Grinstein and Linsker 2007 had to say about Dewar's purported proof.
There is a fair amount of literature on entropy production, and different experts, including two Nobel Prize winners, have tackled the problem in different ways. It is not at all easy for a non-expert to write a fair sampling of the literature. It is not an easy subject. The degree of difficulty is illustrated by the absence of references to Rayleigh, Onsager or Gyarmati in the present article, and by the leading place given to the article by Mahulikar and Herwig 2004 (which, by the way, is cited once without listing Herwig as an author and a second time with his name misspelt). And while we are on spelling, principle is so spelt, not as principal. Chjoaygame ( talk) 15:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC) reply
The result was merge to Principle of maximum entropy. The keeps failed to satisfy the content fork concerns. \ Backslash Forwardslash / ( talk) 01:47, 17 October 2009 (UTC) reply
Not notable. POVed. Ϙ ( talk) 18:51, 30 September 2009 (UTC) reply
Oh, dear, I wouldn't like to think these principles were almost platitudes! I am not sure if they are really well defined or true or general. I think the serious experts find them problematic. To read Swenson you would think they are platitudes, but that's just because he doesn't seem to care about accuracy, or doesn't understand the problems. I think it really matters whether Dewar's proof is valid or not. I have an idea that perhaps he may be able to remedy the defect that Grinstein and Linsker 2007 found. I think accuracy matters a lot here. I would like to read a paper that made the physical meanings of the various principles and quantities clearer. Chjoaygame ( talk) 15:20, 5 October 2009 (UTC) reply
Hmm. Chjoaygame ( talk) 21:10, 5 October 2009 (UTC) reply
I have now read Swenson and Turvey 1991. I am reaching the conclusion that Swenson's work is a pollyanna wish list rather than a scientific achievement list. The notion of entropy arose in thermodynamics where it has a precise meaning. The stretched notion that entropy and 'disorder' are closely related is a vulgar error, as explained clearly in Entropy and the Time Evolution of Macroscopic Systems (Oxford, 2008, ISBN 9780199546176) by W.T. Grandy Jr, who there in secction 4.3 examines the serious literature about it. As explained by E.T. Jaynes in many places (for example, E.T. Jaynes (1965), Gibbs vs Boltzmann entropies, American Journal of Physics 33: 391-398), entropy in thermodynamics is about experimental reproducibility, not about 'order', whatever that might mean. Pace Swenson, the entropy of thermodynamics is not a prime candidate to explain the origin of species. Swenson takes entropy far beyond what its thermodynamic basis will carry. Swenson does not really understand the thermodynamic meaning of entropy. Perhaps the Swensonist would like to try to refute this statement of mine: the Wikipedia page on the "Law of Maximum Entropy Production" is not the place for him in the meantime to claim the benefit of what he would perhaps call 'the doubt'; Swenson has not made a good enough case to earn a place in the Wikipedia as a serious contributor to understanding of thermodynamic entropy production, which he is ostensibly claiming.
That is not to say that the origin and survival of species is not explicable in physical terms, but it is to say, contrary to Swenson, that thermodynamic entropy is not the main relevant physical concept. Also it is not to say that irreversible processes and entropy production are irrelevant to the origin and survival of species, but it is to say that they are not the main explanation. Entropy is not a force of nature, it is an explanatory concept, linking explanatory ideas, not describing a physical force. Swenson's work is really a grandiose and vapid misuse of a word, which apart from his misuse of it, has a well established precise meaning; the misuse works by baffling and impressing the ignorant. Swenson, like many others, would like to see that precise meaning extended to a wider domain, but such an extension is easier wished for than achieved. Swenson and Turvey 1991 set up a straw man: "... ordered states ... are the inexorable products of natural law rather than miraculous debt payers fighting against it." No scientist thinks that ordered states, nor living organisms (which, by the way, Swenson would like us to equate to 'ordered states'), are "miraculous debt payers fighting against [natural law]". To accept that living organisms are not "miraculous debt payers fighting against [natural law]" is not to accept that the principle or "Law" of maximum entropy production, with entropy defined as in thermodynamics, is the only explanation left. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The straw man is testimony to the rhetorical skills of Swenson and Turvey, not evidence of their contribution to the understanding of the thermodynamic concept of entropy.
Entropy production is the path to empirical reproducibility, not 'order', and evolution is the creative advance of nature into novelty, not its inexorable advance into mere colourless 'order'. This is far from saying that natural creation disobeys physical causality, but it is saying that the path of evolution is unique and not reproducible in any empirically verifiable sense. Getting down to hard brass tacks, Swensonism is nonsense clothed in fancy dress. The Wikipedia is not the place to invite novices to struggle through this kind of critical reasoning. An Wiki article on Swenson would be better written as showing how even today someone can get away with using pseudo-science to bluff the ignorant, than as an article about how entropy is a useful thermodynamic concept. Chjoaygame ( talk) 04:48, 6 October 2009 (UTC) reply
Thermodynamics is an exact science. "Principles" that have simple counterexamples are not part of it. An approximation in an exact science is distinguished by its stating exactly how far it can be relied upon.
Cyclopia writes above: "Article is problematic but subject is clearly academically notable and well referenced." This shows how easy it is for pseudo-science to be taken as if it were real science. Work is not academically notable to Wikipedia standards unless it is referenced by reliable secondary sources, which Swenson's is not, whether Cyclopia thinks so or not. Swenson is perhaps the only writer (or one of a fringe few) to propose that title "Law" for a principle of maximum entropy production. This is evidence of his boldness, but not of his correctness.
The Wikipedia does not aim to promote pseudo-science as if it were real science. The Swensonist wants to promote the work of Swenson as if it were part of thermodynamics, when in fact it is pseudo-science. An article in the Wikipedia is not the place for him to do so, nor for an accumulation of more or less related statements that might be mistaken for a scientific debate. Chjoaygame ( talk) 22:23, 6 October 2009 (UTC) reply
Cyclopia: Thank you for your two comments. As to the first: I am pointing out that at present one might very easily get the impression that the article on Law of Maximum Entropy Production was an article about an area within thermodynamics; but it is not so. As to your second comment: the Boltzmann definition of entropy is far from the only one. Boltzmann's definition is not suitable for defining the time rate of entropy production: Boltzmann's definition is very strictly an equilibrium definition, as usual for classical thermodynamics, while entropy production is specifically a non-equilibrium concept. If you would like to make thermodynamics your cup of tea, you might, I suggest, do well to read the references to Jaynes and Grandy that I gave above. For me, classical thermodynamics is perhaps best set out by the masterly E.A. Guggenheim in Thermodynamics: An Advanced Treatment for Chemists and Physicists, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1987, seventh edition ISBN 0444869514 (paperback). You are right that there are conflicting points of view about the statistical mechanics of thermodynamics. It is not an easy subject. When one is confronted with pseudo-science, one can be led into endless arguments, and that is not our purpose here. I suggest you carefully examine the content of Swenson's work for the sake of getting a clear idea of its status.
Nerdseeksblonde: Thank you for your comments. Swenson was bold to assert as a Law what others had long considered a possibility, but Swenson seems hardly to understand why they were not asserting it as a law; the use of the word "independent" seems intended to indicate his originality, but it does not establish the validity of his work as a part of thermodynamics. Is the use of the word "independent" intended to mean that he had not read the long-standing literature? Swenson's Chapter 6 of Cybernetics and Applied Systems (1992) cites not Rayleigh, Onsager, Ziegler, Gyarmati, Prigogine. Swenson's 2000 paper in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences cites 13 papers by Swenson including Swenson and Turvey 1991; it cites Schroedinger 1945; from the just-previous list it cites only Prigogine 1977. Swenson and Turvey 1991 cites 11 papers by Swenson; it cites Haken 1983, Malkus 1954, Nicolis and Prigogine 1989, Schroedinger 1945, Thompson 1852, but not others on the just-previous list. For thermodynamics, the problem is to define the precise meaning and range of applicability of the principle. Chjoaygame ( talk) 09:26, 7 October 2009 (UTC) reply
- Ziegler, e.g.,[3], a contemporary of Prigogine, but whose work had previously gone largely unnoticed, has recently received recognition as person who believed the idea of entropy production maximization had an important role to play in physics early on. His work went mostly unnoticed for a number of reasons. One of them was that he did not come at the problem from the view of trying to solve the problem of why the world inexorably and opportunistically produced order, with life as a manifestation, but instead as a theorist in the specialized field of continuum mechanics. There was no suggestion by him that entropy production maximization might play a role in solving these larger theoretical problems, and thus his work escaped the attention of those with these broader, more general theoretical interests. Another reason is that while he stated a maximum entropy production principle, it was never stated as a universal law although it would seem he intuited this. His principle which he demonstrated using the geometry of vector space relied on a “orthogonality condition” which only worked for systems where the velocities define a single vector or tensor. It was thus, in his own words “impossible to test by means of macroscopic mechanical models”[27] and was invalid in “compound systems where several elementary processes take place simultaneously”. Such limitations are severe, but although Ziegler thus only went a certain distance with his intuition, he deserves credit for being there early at a time when the tide was running the other way.
This is a travesty of the meaning of Ziegler's conclusions on 346-347 of the second revised edition of An Introduction to Thermomechanics, North-Holland 1983. The travesty is slanted, perhaps unintentionally, to make it look as if Swenson has discovered and revealed to the world something that Ziegler missed. The reality is that Ziegler found that the principle of maximum entropy production does not make sense for and cannot be applied to compound processes, because the latter are not of essentially thermodynamic nature. Swenson may wish they were of essentially thermodynamic nature so that the principle of maximum entropy production might apply to them, but he is not remotely able to show that it is so, because in fact, as pointed out by the thoroughly expert Ziegler, it is not so. Swenson's arguments do not come within 100 miles of dealing with these problems with the precision that Ziegler has mastered. Glansdorff and Prigogine 1971 on page 15 make a point close to that just quoted from Ziegler: "Let us emphasize from the outset, that the local equilibrium assumption implies that the dissipative processes are sufficently dominant to exclude large deviations from statistical equilibrium." This means not that some better definition of entropy will make the principle apply, as Swenson evidently hopes and asserts without justification, but it means that the principle is undefined or often violated when the required conditions do not hold; but Swenson just shuts his eyes to this and asserts the principle as a "law" regardless, and congratulates himself on his boldness of intuition. The Swensonist condescendingly congratulates Ziegler on his intuition: no, Ziegler does not rely on intuition, rather he relies on a seriously rational scientific approach. If at some future time, a further extension of the principle of maximum entropy production should be validated, Swenson cannot claim that his work anticipated it; he has just guessed blindly.
It is also the case that the Swensonist, perhaps unintentionally, has previously seriously misrepresented the statement of Mahulikar and Herwig 2004 about "The major revolution in the latter half ... etc". And that he has, perhaps unintentionally, seriously misrepresented what Grinstein and Linsker 2007 had to say about Dewar's purported proof.
There is a fair amount of literature on entropy production, and different experts, including two Nobel Prize winners, have tackled the problem in different ways. It is not at all easy for a non-expert to write a fair sampling of the literature. It is not an easy subject. The degree of difficulty is illustrated by the absence of references to Rayleigh, Onsager or Gyarmati in the present article, and by the leading place given to the article by Mahulikar and Herwig 2004 (which, by the way, is cited once without listing Herwig as an author and a second time with his name misspelt). And while we are on spelling, principle is so spelt, not as principal. Chjoaygame ( talk) 15:54, 8 October 2009 (UTC) reply