Christopher Weaver: In Praise of Clausius Entropy: Reassessing the Foundations of Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics

Christopher Weaver (University of Illinois)
4:30-6:30pm Wednesday Nov 13; NYU Philosophy Department (5 Washington Place, New York, NY), room 202.

Title: In Praise of Clausius Entropy: Reassessing the Foundations of Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics

Abstract: I will argue, pace a great many of my contemporaries, that there’s something right about Boltzmann’s attempt to ground the 2nd law of thermodynamics in deterministic time-reversal invariant classical dynamics, and that in order to appreciate what’s right about (what was at least at one time) Boltzmann’s explanatory project one has to fully apprehend the nature of (a) microphysical causal structure, (b) time-reversal invariance, and (c) the relationship between Boltzmann entropy and the work of Rudolf Clausius.

There will be dinner after the talk. If you are interested, please send an email with “Dinner” in the heading to nyphilsci@gmail.com (please note that all are welcome, but only the speaker’s dinner will be covered.) If you have any other questions, please email denise.dykstra@rutgers.edu.