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Causal Explanations in Classical and Statistical Thermodynamics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jeffrey S. Wicken
Jeffrey S. Wicken*
Affiliation:
Behrend College of Pennsylvania State University
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Abstract

This paper considers the problem of causal explanation in classical and statistical thermodynamics. It is argued that the irreversibility of macroscopic processes is explained in both formulations of thermodynamics in a teleological way that appeals to entropic or probabilistic consequences rather than to efficient-causal, antecedental conditions. This explanatory structure of thermodynamics is not taken to imply a teleological orientation to macroscopic processes themselves, but to reflect simply the epistemological limitations of this science, wherein consequences of heat-work asymmetries are either macroscopically measurable (entropy) or calculable (probabilities), while efficient-causal relationships are obscure or indeterminable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 65 - 77
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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