Abstract
A RECENT article1 by the molecular physics correspondent of Nature began: “If there is an orthodoxy in the theory of liquids … it has little place for notions which depart very far from the familiar, well founded and regrettably somewhat sterile formalism of Gibbsian statistical mechanics”. We suggest that the problem with the statistical mechanics of Gibbs and Boltzmann is more closely related to frigidity than sterility; the response is difficult to evoke, but once evoked is usually fruitful. It is surely unfair to brand as sterile a septuagenarian formalism which gives birth to a complete description of solids2, liquids3,4 and gases5 and of the phase equilibria between them6. No doubt the impression of sterility arose from the long gestation period which was necessary before modern computers permitted the explicit demonstration of the full richness of content of statistical mechanics.
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BARKER, J., HENDERSON, D. Fluid Orthodoxy ?. Nature 230, 379–380 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1038/230379c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/230379c0
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