Overview

In The Physical Significance of Entropy Prof. J. F. Klein has attempted to present the general conclusions arising from the investigations of Boltzmann and Planck, the former dealing mainly with molecular systems, and the latter with radiation phenomena. Planck's treatise was reviewed some time ago in Nature. The particular aspect of the problem here dealt with is the connection of the second law with probability considerations. In separating the conclusions from their analytical proofs, Prof. Klein has given the unmathematical reader a statement of results which he must accept on the authority of Boltzmann and Planck unless he is prepared to study up the original difficult mathematical investigations. The trouble is that these books fall into the hands of readers with whom a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and who without troubling to study the matter thoroughly rush into print with theories of their own, in which the most conspicuous feature is the flagrant misuse of elementary physical terms. Although these statistical considerations have certainly been successfully applied to the interpretation of current physical events, it must not be forgotten that they possess one important difficulty. While the theory of probability shows that the entropy of a system tends to a maximum, the same arguments appear to indicate the extreme improbability that the entropy should ever deviate from this maximum, and we are thus required to postulate an initial state of the universe, the improbability of which becomes increasingly difficult to understand as we go further and further back in the scale of time. It should be stated that Prof. Klein makes no claims to originality, and his book is well suited to specialists in other branches of science who want to know the gist of what has been done in this particular subject. -Nature, Vol. 89 [1912]

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