The tendency of Nature to lose heterogeneity

ERNESTO MARCECA

Berlin

Workshop; Entropy, Information and the Univers of Discourse; 2022

Cultural History of Knowledge Institute

Understand how Nature works? Not only by describing the macroscopic behavior of matter, but also in terms of the incredibly-small-size particles that conform it? Although the dream of seeing molecules and their motion ceased to be hopeless in the last decades, there are situations in which only probabilistic information of the overall system is available and, moreover, only probabilistic information is required by scientists to make incredibly precise predictions. We will briefly discuss the connection between the thermodynamic entropy concept of Rudolf Clausius (1865) and the microscopic interpretation of Ludwig Boltzmann (late 1860s). We will also trigger intriguing questions, as e.g.: which are the intrinsic factors that govern the equilibrium state (the most undetermined state of all!)?, is there an apparent rivalry between macroscopic irreversibility and microscopic reversibility?, what is the Boltzmann?s order of the energy?, and particularly don?t you feel disappointed when you learn that in every choice Nature simply chooses the better chance?