ON A VICIOUS INTERPRETATION OF THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

(N. V. Kashin, Course of Physics for Teachers’ Institutes, Vol. I, Uchpedgiz, Moscow, 1948)

I. V. Kuznetsov

The laws of thermodynamics have long since become the object of embittered attacks and antiscientific falsifications on the part of idealists. Immediately after the discovery of the law of conservation and transformation of energy, the idealists tried to deny its universality, its applicability—knowing no exceptions—to all phenomena of nature. One of the most reactionary manifestations of such attempts was the “doctrine” of the vitalists concerning the inapplicability of the law of conservation and transformation of energy to living organisms, concerning the existence of some supramaterial “vital force,” “entelechy,” supposedly regulating the processes of exchange of matter and energy in the organism in a special direction desirable for this force. When direct experiments and, in particular, the brilliant experiments of K. A. Timiryazev had indisputably proved the dominion of this law in all processes occurring in animals and plants, the idealists changed tactics. They “recognized” this law, “agreed” with its universality and necessity, but began to interpret it in their own way. It was declared that all phenomena in nature can be understood and strictly interpreted with the aid of the single concept of energy. At the same time, energy was declared to be immaterial, not requiring any material bearer.

V. I. Lenin subjected to annihilating criticism the idealistic “energetics” invented by the obscurantist W. Ostwald. The history of science cruelly mocked Ostwald’s attempts to deny the reality of matter, the objective existence of atoms.

But in physics there existed yet another form of attack on the law of conservation and transformation of energy. In its external expression it was not connected with denial of this law itself. It only “illuminated” this law from a special point of view. This masked

form of an attack on the law of conservation and transformation of energy, so to speak from the rear, was the theory of the “heat death of the universe,” put forward by Clausius. Having done much to formulate the basic propositions of thermodynamics (to him, in particular, belongs the introduction of the concept of entropy), Clausius distorted the essence of the second law of thermodynamics. According to the “theory” of heat death, quantitatively energy in nature is conserved. However, natural processes in the world proceed in such a direction that all forms of energy are incessantly transformed into heat, while heat is dissipated throughout the universe, destroying any differences whatsoever of temperature, pressure, concentration, and so forth. Thus, according to Clausius, the world, in which the quantity of energy has remained unchanged, comes to a state in which any physical processes become impossible. Energy allegedly loses its capacity for transformations. Hence there is an “end” of the universe. But a necessary supplement to the idea of the “end” of the universe is the idea of its “beginning”: the world must once have been set in motion by the will of an almighty creator. The circle is closed!

In drawing such anti-scientific, priestly conclusions, Clausius speculated on the circumstance that science did not yet know precisely how heat dissipated in space is transformed again into other forms of energy.

Engels, in his Dialectics of Nature, exposed the complete untenability of the theory of the heat death of the universe. He showed that the reactionary sophistries of the adherents of the heat death of the universe are based on a distorted interpretation of the law of conservation and transformation of energy, on an entirely unfounded restriction of the content of this “absolute law of nature,” and on the suppression and casting aside of its most important aspect.

Engels emphasized in every way the profound thought that the indestructibility of motion, of which the law of conservation of energy is an expression, must be understood not only in a quantitative, but also in a qualitative sense—in the sense that the motion of matter preserves an unlimited capacity for qualitative transformations from one form into another, a capacity never lost under any circumstances. That new element in the doctrine of the conservation of motion which nineteenth-century science brought in comparison with the science of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Engels saw precisely in the discovery of the transformability of all forms of motion into one another, of the indestructibility of motion’s capacity for qualitative transformations. As Engels pointed out, “motion which has lost the capacity to transform itself into the various forms proper to it, although it still possesses dynamis (possibility), no longer possesses energeia (actuality), and thus has been partially destroyed.”*) He emphasized that matter, incapable with iron

) F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature*, 1946, p. 19.

necessity of itself producing the conditions under which the reverse transformation of heat into mechanical motion, of heat into electricity, and other forms of energy takes place—“such matter has suffered a definite loss in its motion”*).

Thus, the theory of the heat death of the universe stands in direct contradiction to the basic law of nature—the law of the conservation and transformation of energy—since, in a disguised form, it denies the indestructibility of the motion of matter.

Pointing to the utter scientific untenability of the theory of heat death, Engels at the same time set before natural science the task of finding out precisely by what path the transformation of dissipated heat into other forms of energy takes place. The idealists glossed over this question, trying to lead science into a blind alley. Engels, posing this great question in its full scope, as one still unresolved in its details, advanced natural science. And in this lies one of the manifestations of the great progressive role of the ideas of dialectical materialism.

Engels never doubted that this question could be solved and would be solved: “... it is possible that no little time will pass before, with our modest means, we achieve its solution,” wrote Engels. “But it will be solved; this is just as certain as that no miracles occur in nature and that the original heat of the nebula was not miraculously obtained by it from outside the world”**).

Contemporary “physical” idealists have once again galvanized the ancient little idea of the heat death of the universe. It is very much in circulation in foreign bourgeois popular and “scientific” literature. It is preached by seasoned bisons of popovshchina and philosophical reaction, despite the fact that modern physics has contributed much that is new toward solving the question posed by Engels.

Everything that has been said above is well known to the Soviet reader and, it would seem, there would be no need to return to it. But, alas!—this little idea has appeared in our Soviet educational literature as well, and Prof. N. V. Kashin has undertaken to preach it in veiled form in his Course of Physics, intended for broad circles of students of teachers’ institutes.

Prof. N. V. Kashin devotes the concluding part of the volume to questions of thermodynamics. In Chapter XIII the author specially concentrates on an analysis of the physical meaning and content of the second law of thermodynamics.

Prof. N. V. Kashin presents the first and second laws of thermodynamics as completely equal in their general significance, as equally “most general” truths. He believes that the second law, just like the law of the conservation and transformation of energy,

) F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 1946, p. 19.
*) Ibid., p. 230.

applies decisively to all phenomena of nature and nowhere—neither in the infinitely large nor in the infinitely small—knows any exceptions or limitations.

If Prof. N. V. Kashin unconditionally broadens the scope of applicability of the second principle, then, along with this, he narrows and impoverishes the content of the first.

Chapter XI, devoted to the first principle of thermodynamics, presents it as a law of purely quantitative conservation of energy. Engels’s considerations on the qualitative aspect of the law of conservation and transformation of energy remained outside the author’s attention. Moreover, in Chapter XII Prof. N. V. Kashin comes out against Engels’s ideas on the qualitative indestructibility of motion.

In bringing the reader to the concept of entropy, the author analyzes the Carnot cycle. Here he convinces the reader that the heat unused in this cycle is “as it were waste heat” (p. 414,—here, as below, emphasized by the author), that the heat transferred to the refrigerator is “devalued,” has “a lower quality or dignity.” The author gives the following example: a glass of hot water is poured into a barrel of cold water. In this connection he observes: the heat that has passed from the hot water to the colder water, although it has been preserved quantitatively, has lowered its quality—it has been devalued, “for the possibility of its (the transferred calories of heat—I. K.) transformation into other forms of energy has significantly fallen” (p. 414). By this example Prof. N. V. Kashin directly brings the reader to the following extremely general conclusion: “We are surrounded on all sides by processes of degradation of energy, or of its dissipation. We have just seen that even an ideal process is connected with a qualitative worsening of part of the energy; every process of friction, radiation, and thermal conduction leads to the fact that part of the energy is dissipated, i.e. is distributed among bodies in such a way that it becomes less capable of further transformations” (p. 414).

Prof. N. V. Kashin neither here nor in other places in his book speaks of any conditions limiting this conclusion made by him. He considers “energy degradation” to be the most characteristic feature of all natural processes in general. He states this directly: “In real processes, transformations of energy are always accompanied by the dissipation (degradation) of part of the energy, which we understand as a lowering of the capacity of this part of the energy for further transformations” (p. 414). In accordance with all this, Prof. N. V. Kashin presents the whole problem of establishing the second principle of thermodynamics as the problem of finding some numerical measure of the dissipation of energy, “of this diminution of the quality of energy” (p. 415).

Carrying out the computations usual in textbooks when deriving the expression for entropy, he leads the reader to the final conclusion—that the change in entropy is a measure of the degradation of energy: “The increase of entropy,” writes Prof. N. V. Kashin, “is a measure of the dissipa-

of energy. Thus, a function has been found that can quantitatively characterize the attenuation or dissipation of energy..., by following during the process the increase of entropy, we follow the dissipation, or impoverishment, of energy” (p. 421).

We have cited these numerous statements by Prof. Kashin in order to show that in the textbook under consideration we are dealing not with some unfortunate expression, but with a perfectly clearly drawn line in the treatment of the second law of thermodynamics.

Thus, the textbook teaches that allegedly all processes in nature, without exception, lead with fatal inevitability to the impoverishment, degradation of energy, to the loss of its capacity for further transformations. Nowhere and in no way does the author of the textbook see any limitations to this assertion. Even in the short concluding paragraph “Entropy and probability of state” he finds no arguments against the proposition of the “degradation of energy.” And although here he lets fall the phrase: “the growth of entropy is the most probable event” (p. 429), it in no way shakes what Prof. N. V. Kashin has led his reader to.

It is not difficult to see in what irreconcilable contradiction with Engels’ views stand the views developed by Prof. N. V. Kashin.

It is not difficult to see that Prof. N. V. Kashin’s “conception” is a simple rehash of the “theory” of the heat death of the universe. The matter is little changed by the fact that he does not speak out to the end and does not call things by their proper names—does not call the “degradation of energy” the “heat death of the universe.” Their essence is exactly one and the same.

Engels boldly posed the unresolved questions of science and raised for solution by natural science the question of how, concretely and physically, the reverse transformation of “dissipated” heat into other forms of energy takes place. Since that time physics has made a great step forward along the path indicated by Engels, along the path of resolving this problem.

The essence of the results achieved by physics may be briefly characterized as follows. The utter scientific untenability was exposed of attempts to present assertions about an allegedly existing tendency in nature toward the “impoverishment” or “degradation” of energy as the essence of the second law of thermodynamics. It has been established that these assertions do not at all express the true content of the second law.*) The second law of thermodynamics is a law characterizing the irreversibility of processes of nature and determining the predominant (on the average) direction of their course in the case of systems of ordinary macroscopic scale, containing a sufficiently large number of molecules. At the same time, the second law of thermodynamics, which asserts the impossibility of a spontaneous decrease of entropy in adiabatically closed systems, proves inapplicable in the region of small

*) See on this, for example, M. Planck, Thermodynamics, 1925; by the same author, Introduction to Theoretical Physics, part 5, Theory of Heat, 1935.

aggregates of microparticles. A number of the most important experimental facts—Brownian motion, density fluctuations—bear direct witness to this. The very fact of the constant presence of a Brownian particle in a suspended state contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, since this fact means that the change of entropy corresponding to the raising of a Brownian particle from the bottom of a vessel with liquid is negative. The same uncompensated decreases of entropy in systems with a relatively small number of particles also occur in spontaneous fluctuations of the density of a liquid and a gas under the influence of the thermal oscillations of the particles composing them.

A blow was dealt to the metaphysical notion that there must allegedly exist certain “final states” of systems with some “greatest” value of entropy, determining the states of their “absolute equilibrium.” Taking account of the motion of thermodynamic systems, taking account of the influence upon them of strong gravitational fields, leads to the conclusion that the entropy of such systems can grow greatly, without being bounded by some nonexistent maximum value and never, by virtue of this, leading to a nonexistent “absolute equilibrium.” Under conditions of high velocities and strong gravitational fields, processes prove possible which proceed with finite (and not infinitely small) velocity, yet are nevertheless reversible. The possibility of the existence of such processes, previously denied, poses in an entirely new way the problem of the transformation of various forms of energy into one another and removes difficulties that had previously seemed insurmountable. The peculiarities of the behavior of matter at superlow temperatures lead to the conclusion that under these conditions as well it is necessary to alter a number of the most important concepts of thermodynamics.

All this undoubtedly speaks of the inadmissibility of unconditionally extending the second law of thermodynamics from the limited thermodynamic systems existing under our ordinary terrestrial conditions to the whole infinite universe, with all the infinite variety of conditions of existence of material bodies.

Meanwhile, no limitations exist on the operation of the law of conservation and transformation of energy. The data of contemporary physics have not only confirmed its validity both in the infinitely small and in the infinitely large, but have also provided new evidence of energy’s never-failing capacity for ever new and ever new transformations.

We now know processes of transformation of field particles into particles of ordinary matter. These processes have for the first time slightly opened to us the picture of how precisely the “dissipated” energy of thermal radiation can be transformed into other forms of energy—into the energy of electric charges, the energy of excitation of atoms, and so forth. And there is no reason to think that already in the coming years we shall not learn considerably more about this.

The Soviet astrophysicist V. Ambartsumian showed that in certain parts of the Galaxy there exist special stellar systems whose age cannot be greater than several tens of millions of years, and that such stars and stellar associations not only formed comparatively recently, but that their formation must be continuing even now. It has been established that concentrated macroscopic bodies can form from diffuse interstellar matter. All this testifies to the fact that matter’s capacity to give birth to the new, to undergo eternal transformations from one form into another, is inexhaustible; that the “heat death of the universe” is an antiscientific fabrication of idealists.

In what, then, did Prof. N. V. Kashin discern grounds for reviving the priestly “theory” of the heat death of the universe?!

Prof. N. V. Kashin did not wish to take account of the basic propositions of dialectical materialism concerning the indestructibility of motion. He turned away from the objective data of contemporary physics and found himself captive to a decrepit bourgeois ideology that turns its impotence into slander against nature.

Prof. N. V. Kashin’s textbook suffers from a number of other very serious shortcomings. Many philosophical questions of physics are illuminated in it at an extremely low theoretical level, and the very approach to their exposition is often defective. For every materialist it is true that between physical phenomena there objectively exists a lawful interconnection. This interconnection is not introduced by us into phenomena, but is disclosed, discovered in the process of scientific investigation. Meanwhile the author of the textbook asserts, in a subjectivist-Machist spirit, as though “physical investigation introduces (spacing ours.—I. K.) quantitative connections between the quantities characterizing phenomena” (p. 6). The author insistently proposes that Newton’s laws (“principles”) of mechanics be “regarded as postulates” (p. 45), without properly explaining what this means. However, on the following page he specifically emphasizes that “by means of direct experience we can neither confirm nor refute the first principle” (i.e., the law of inertia (p. 46)). He interprets the physical meaning of these very laws as follows: the first law contains a complete definition of force (p. 45), while the second establishes a method for the measurement of force (p. 47). Such an interpretation of the laws of mechanics emasculates their objective content precisely as laws of nature.

The author regards mechanics as a whole as a science of an exclusively deductive character, whose development allegedly proceeds by a purely mathematical path (p. 10). The role of practice and experience in the development of mechanics is plainly underestimated.

Prof. N. V. Kashin’s arguments concerning the substantiation of the molecular-atomic theory are erroneous and confused. In trying to prove the importance of taking account of the atomic-molecular structure of matter for a deeper understanding of physical phenomena, he in essence

overthrows scientific knowledge based on the disclosure of lawful connections between macroscopic quantities, directly or, through instruments, accessible to the perception of our sense organs. This scientific knowledge Prof. N. V. Kashin, on some unknown basis, declares to be purely formal knowledge (p. 268). But Prof. Kashin was unable correctly to characterize the essence and significance of molecular-kinetic conceptions. He considers these conceptions to have been achieved not by way of strictly scientific substantiation and proof, not by the precise experimental and theoretical work of scientists, but as the result of imagination and fantasy, as though “seeking” beyond the bounds of human senses—and hence, in the objective world—some “ideas”! This shows how far Prof. Kashin is from the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge.

The textbook contains a large number of purely factual errors and inaccuracies. Without dwelling on an analysis of all these errors, we have the right to ask: how could this textbook have appeared, and moreover under the imprimatur of the Minister of Education of the RSFSR?!