The Perspective

Abstract

If there is one chapter in this book about which the reader is likely to feel uneasy, it is this one. Deep down, most scientists feel insecure about their background in thermodynamics. (And most of those who do not probably should!) But from where does this anxiety issue? Certainly, the fundamental laws of thermodynamics are not that difficult to comprehend.

“In the dialogue between experiment and theory there are these useful middlemen, the phenomenologists, who try to encapsulate experimental data in suggestive formulae, without being able to give a fundamental explanation for the form chosen.” John Polkinghorne The Way The World Is