Abstract
This short paper was originally published in the Annalen der Physik, 36 (1939). I include it here because it is the first and most systematic discussion of an idea to which the other essays often allude: the idea of basing irreversibility on the structure of time. When I wrote the paper I was under the impression of having stated a fairly obvious matter, obvious especially to every empiricist or positivist, since I merely pose the question of in what manner temporal processes are given to us. I was somewhat astonished to find that the idea seemed rather foreign to most physicists. It plays a decisive role in the course of our further arguments (cf. II.5b).
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Notes
- 1.
Annalen der Physik, vol. 428 (5. Folge, vol. 36), (1939): 275–283. It was included in: Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker (1980). It is a translation of: Die Einheit der Natur (Munich: Hanser, 1971): II.2 by Francis J. Zucker (ed.MD).
- 2.
See Willard Gibbs (1902/1960).
- 3.
These reflections were stimulated by N. Bohr's interpretation of Gibbs's ideas, mentioned in discussions and hinted at in his Faraday Lecture (Journal of the Chemical Society, 1932: 376f). Analogous ideas were developed by M. Bronstein and L. Landau (1933) who drew incorrect conclusions from them, however.
- 4.
See Boltzmann (1964).
- 5.
From a somewhat different point of view, M. Bronstein and L. Landau (cf. footnote 3 above) throw light on this matter by noting that a fluctuation would give rise to an observer without a surrounding world much more frequently than it would give rise to the entire world known to us; so that no explanation is being offered for why we should be observing such an enormous fluctuation.
- 6.
See C. F. von Weizsäcker (1938).
References
Willard Gibbs, J., 1902/1960: Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons/Dover Publications): 150–151.
Boltzmann, L., 1964: Lectures on Gas Theory, Translated by S. G. Brush (Berkeley: University of California Press). (§90).
von Weizsäcker, C. F., 1938: in: Physikalische Zeitschrift, 39: 633.
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von Weizsäcker, C.F. (2014). The Second Law and the Difference Between Past and Future. In: Drieschner, M. (eds) Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker: Major Texts in Physics. SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice(), vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03668-7_5
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