4 ms·

This is eye opening. Thanks a lot for this comment and linking the pdf. I loved E.T. Jayne's Probability Theory book, so looking forward to reading this pdf too

This is eye opening. Thanks a lot for this comment and linking the pdf. I loved E.T. Jayne's Probability Theory book, so looking forward to reading this pdf too.

kgwgk 3y ago
There are a few chapters of an unpublished book on thermodynamics here: https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/thermo.html https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/thermo.html This article is also interesting: "THE EVOLUTION OF CARNOT'S PRINCIPLE" https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/ccarnot.pdf https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/ccarnot.pdf Building on these ideas, the first five chapters of this (draft of a) book from Ariel Caticha are quite readable: https://www.arielcaticha.com/my-book-entropic-physics https://www.arielcaticha.com/my-book-entropic-physics
- rssoconnor 3y ago
  I want to add this quote that I was originally looking for, and at last found in Jaynes's "Where do we Stand on Maximum Entropy?" (page 237 of http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/33178/1/R.%20D.%20Rosenkrantz_1989.pdf http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/33178/1/R.%20...) --- In the Summer of 1951, Professor G. Uhlenbeck gave his famous course on Statistical Mechanics at Stanford, and fol- lowing the lectures I had many conversations with him, over lunch, about the foundations of the theory and current progress on it. I had expected, naively, that he would be enthusiastic about Shannon's work, and as eager as I to exploit these ideas for Statistical Mechanics. Instead, he seemed to think that the basic problems were, in principle, solved by the then recent work of Bogoliubov and van Hove (which seemed to me filling in details, but not touching at all on the real basic problems)--and adamantly rejected all suggestions that there is any connection between entropy and information. His initial reaction to my remarks was exactly like my initial reaction to Shannon's: "Whose information?" His position, which I never succeeded in shaking one iota, was: "Entropy cannot be a measure of 'amount of ignorance,' because different people have different amounts of ignorance; entropy is a definite physical quantity that can be measured in the laboratory with thermometers and calorimeters." Although the answer to this was clear in my own mind, I was unable, at the time, to convey that answer to him. In trying to explain a new idea I was, like Maxwell, groping for words because the way of thinking and habits of language then current had to be broken before I could express a different way of thinking. Today, it seems trivially easy to answer Professor Uhlen- beck's objection as follows: "Certainly, different people have different amounts of ignorance. The entropy of a thermo- dynamic system is a measure of the degree of ignorance of a person whose sole knowledge about its microstate consists of the values of the macroscopic quantities Xi which define its thermodynamic state. This is a completely 'objective' quantity in the sense that it is a function only of the Xi, and does not depend on anybody's personality. There is then no reason why it cannot be measured in the laboratory."

This is eye opening. Thanks a lot for this comment and linking the pdf. I loved E.T. Jayne's Probability Theory book, so looking forward to reading this pdf too.

kgwgk 3y ago

There are a few chapters of an unpublished book on thermodynamics here: https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/thermo.html https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/thermo.html This article is also interesting: "THE EVOLUTION OF CARNOT'S PRINCIPLE" https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/ccarnot.pdf https://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/ccarnot.pdf Building on these ideas, the first five chapters of this (draft of a) book from Ariel Caticha are quite readable: https://www.arielcaticha.com/my-book-entropic-physics https://www.arielcaticha.com/my-book-entropic-physics

rssoconnor 3y ago
I want to add this quote that I was originally looking for, and at last found in Jaynes's "Where do we Stand on Maximum Entropy?" (page 237 of http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/33178/1/R.%20D.%20Rosenkrantz_1989.pdf http://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/33178/1/R.%20...) --- In the Summer of 1951, Professor G. Uhlenbeck gave his famous course on Statistical Mechanics at Stanford, and fol- lowing the lectures I had many conversations with him, over lunch, about the foundations of the theory and current progress on it. I had expected, naively, that he would be enthusiastic about Shannon's work, and as eager as I to exploit these ideas for Statistical Mechanics. Instead, he seemed to think that the basic problems were, in principle, solved by the then recent work of Bogoliubov and van Hove (which seemed to me filling in details, but not touching at all on the real basic problems)--and adamantly rejected all suggestions that there is any connection between entropy and information. His initial reaction to my remarks was exactly like my initial reaction to Shannon's: "Whose information?" His position, which I never succeeded in shaking one iota, was: "Entropy cannot be a measure of 'amount of ignorance,' because different people have different amounts of ignorance; entropy is a definite physical quantity that can be measured in the laboratory with thermometers and calorimeters." Although the answer to this was clear in my own mind, I was unable, at the time, to convey that answer to him. In trying to explain a new idea I was, like Maxwell, groping for words because the way of thinking and habits of language then current had to be broken before I could express a different way of thinking. Today, it seems trivially easy to answer Professor Uhlen- beck's objection as follows: "Certainly, different people have different amounts of ignorance. The entropy of a thermo- dynamic system is a measure of the degree of ignorance of a person whose sole knowledge about its microstate consists of the values of the macroscopic quantities Xi which define its thermodynamic state. This is a completely 'objective' quantity in the sense that it is a function only of the Xi, and does not depend on anybody's personality. There is then no reason why it cannot be measured in the laboratory."