By the beginning of the 1860s, any objection to the new theory of heat came to
an end and the MTH was entrenched into science. The MEH was upgraded to, or
treated synonymously to be, the interconvertibility principle: heat and mechanical
work are universally and uniformly interconvertible in all circumstances [10].
The crucial matter is that of causality of the heat$work energy transformations
as Kelvin put it “cause and effect.” It is clear that mechanical work will spontaneously be degraded into heat so that one can say that work causes heat. How heat
causes work is a different matter. As Carnot stated, “Heat alone is not sufficient to
give birth to the impelling power: it is necessary that there should also be cold;
without it, the heat would be useless.” It is in this sense that we say heat (see
Sect. 3.5 and Figs. 4.6, 4.7) can give birth to work, but heat cannot.
If we do use the same word “cause” for both, the former kind of work ! heat
causation is efficient cause,
8 which is the only acceptable use of cause-and-effect in
physics, whereas the latter kind of “cause”-and-effect (heat ! work as in a steam
engine) is a fundamentally different kind (to be called efficacious cause [15]), often
used in engineering. An engineered process of how heat “causes” work is different
from the dissipative (Humean) regularity of how work causes heat. All these
important issues would have been swept under the rug if one treats MEH and
universal interconvertibility to be synonymous. It is a deliberating choice in
Fig. 4.7 that a distinction is made between MEH and universal interconvertibility.
With this distinction, it is possible to embrace the ontological doctrine of
heat-as-energy in accordance with MEH, while reject, as we shall in Chapter 8,
interconvertibility as an inference of the ontological doctrine: that the ontology
infers equivalence-convertibility synonym.
The years between 1854 and 1865 marked a maturing stage of thermodynamics
from childhood to adolescence in searching of the second universal principle. By
1865, Clausius realized that it was not possible to formulate the second universal
principle without moving beyond energy and thereby introduced the new concept of
entropy.
Problems
4:1 Show by example such as Fig. 4.3 that a heat engine that is more efficient than
a reversible one will lead to the violation of the Clausius statement. Explain
why this amounts to, by syllogism,
The Clausius statement ) Carnot’s principle.
8
Efficient cause may be characterized by the description,
Physics knows nothing of causation except that it is the invariable and unconditional sequence of
one event upon another:
July does not cause August, though it invariably precedes it.
That is, cause-and-effect in science is characterized by constant conjunction (of force and
acceleration, e.g.,) and invariable sequence (July and August, e.g.,).
88
4 Carnot’s Theory of Heat, and Kelvin’s Adoption …
an end and the MTH was entrenched into science. The MEH was upgraded to, or
treated synonymously to be, the interconvertibility principle: heat and mechanical
work are universally and uniformly interconvertible in all circumstances [10].
The crucial matter is that of causality of the heat$work energy transformations
as Kelvin put it “cause and effect.” It is clear that mechanical work will spontaneously be degraded into heat so that one can say that work causes heat. How heat
causes work is a different matter. As Carnot stated, “Heat alone is not sufficient to
give birth to the impelling power: it is necessary that there should also be cold;
without it, the heat would be useless.” It is in this sense that we say heat (see
Sect. 3.5 and Figs. 4.6, 4.7) can give birth to work, but heat cannot.
If we do use the same word “cause” for both, the former kind of work ! heat
causation is efficient cause,
8 which is the only acceptable use of cause-and-effect in
physics, whereas the latter kind of “cause”-and-effect (heat ! work as in a steam
engine) is a fundamentally different kind (to be called efficacious cause [15]), often
used in engineering. An engineered process of how heat “causes” work is different
from the dissipative (Humean) regularity of how work causes heat. All these
important issues would have been swept under the rug if one treats MEH and
universal interconvertibility to be synonymous. It is a deliberating choice in
Fig. 4.7 that a distinction is made between MEH and universal interconvertibility.
With this distinction, it is possible to embrace the ontological doctrine of
heat-as-energy in accordance with MEH, while reject, as we shall in Chapter 8,
interconvertibility as an inference of the ontological doctrine: that the ontology
infers equivalence-convertibility synonym.
The years between 1854 and 1865 marked a maturing stage of thermodynamics
from childhood to adolescence in searching of the second universal principle. By
1865, Clausius realized that it was not possible to formulate the second universal
principle without moving beyond energy and thereby introduced the new concept of
entropy.
Problems
4:1 Show by example such as Fig. 4.3 that a heat engine that is more efficient than
a reversible one will lead to the violation of the Clausius statement. Explain
why this amounts to, by syllogism,
The Clausius statement ) Carnot’s principle.
8
Efficient cause may be characterized by the description,
Physics knows nothing of causation except that it is the invariable and unconditional sequence of
one event upon another:
July does not cause August, though it invariably precedes it.
That is, cause-and-effect in science is characterized by constant conjunction (of force and
acceleration, e.g.,) and invariable sequence (July and August, e.g.,).
88
4 Carnot’s Theory of Heat, and Kelvin’s Adoption …