Abstract
THE opening paragraph of Mr. Ian Campbell's letter1 on the nature of entropy reads somewhat strangely to one fresh from the perusal of “Physics and Philosophy” by Sir James Jeans. Campbell argues that “a quantity which fits so completely into the mathematics of the subject must surely have some relation to the physical facts”, and suggests that entropy may be regarded as analogous to momentum in mechanics. Jeans asks whether we should adopt mechanical explanations of Nature or the mathematical description of Nature, and concludes : “whether the ghostly remains of matter should be labelled as matter or as something else is mainly a question of terminology” (p. 216).
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References
Campbell, Ian D., NATURE, 151, 138 (1943).
Allen and Maxwell, "Text-Book of Heat", Part 2, Chap. 30 (Macmillan, 1939). Reference may also be made to Part 1, Chap. 23, dealing with "Physical Magnitudes and their Measurement".
Wheeler, S. G., "Entropy as a Tangible Conception" (Crosby Lockwood, 1921). Allen, H. S., NATURE, 109, 404 (1922).
Brown, G. B., Phil. Mag., 33, 543 (1942).
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ALLEN, H. Nature of Entropy. Nature 151, 225–226 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151225b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151225b0
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