Abstract
Processes are introduced in this chapter. In the wake of a discussion of the notion of change and the recognition of the relational character of many processes, any idea of introducing occurrents on the basis of a distinction between intrinsic and Cambridge changes in continuants is abandoned. The understanding of occurrents as temporally extended processes—causings rather than relata of a dyadic causal relation—based on the analysis of processes implicit in the articulation of thermodynamics in the second half of the nineteenth century is conceptually more illuminating. The chapter continues with a development the mereological features of processes. Mereological properties include distinguishing temporal parts, parts arising from a consideration of the parts of bodies involved and parts of complex processes such as the elementary reactions underlying complex chemical reactions. The relational character of processes (arising from the several bodies typically involved in processes) and their modal character are taken up in the final sections. A distinction is made between accomplishments and activities, and an analogy with the constitution relation between individuals and their constitutive quantities is suggested by construing continuant events as constituted of processes.
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Notes
- 1.
Even friends of reduction feel bound to admit “the jury is still out concerning the reduction of thermodynamics to SM [statistical mechanics]” (Callender 1999, p. 352).
- 2.
To take the example Atkins (1994, pp. 111–4) uses to illustrate the way in which entropy drives chemical reactions in general.
- 3.
“… the empirical equations of state of … an electromagnetic cavity are the ‘Stefan-Boltzmann Law’ U = bV T 4 and P = U/3V where b is a particular constant …. It will be noted that these empirical equations of state are functions of U and V ,but not of N. This observation calls our attention to the fact that in the ‘empty’ cavity there exist no conserved particles to be counted by a parameter N” (Callen 1985, pp. 78–9). Cf. what Lieb and Yngvason (1999, pp. 20–1) say about the thermodynamic treatment of electromagnetic phenomena.
- 4.
On this basis, the distinction between liquid and gas phases is argued to be unclear, at least as a characterisation of the state of a body, and no finer description of state than “fluid” is really justified. Isothermal compression of a gas below its critical point leads to drops of liquid appearing as the gas condenses, and eventually the last trace of gas disappears. But the same highly compressed state may be reached via an alternative route (a different kind of process)—increasing the temperature to above the critical point at constant volume, then cooling at constant pressure, followed by cooling at constant volume—in which no condensation occurs (Castellan 1964, p. 36).
- 5.
The fact that (real) processes are not quasi-static, and so don’t trace a path in the space of equilibrium states, doesn’t redeem the failure of the attempt to define occurrents as changes. Changes still don’t determine processes. A non-equilibriium condition of a body may be the result of any number of irreversible processes, as may an equilibrium state, which may also result from any number of quasi-static processes.
- 6.
Differentiating the entropy, S(X0, X1, … ), expressed as a function of the extensive variables X0, X1, …, which vary with time, we have dS/dt = Σk ∂S/∂Xk dXk/dt, where the dXk/dt are the fluxes of Xk and the entropy-representation intensive magnitudes ∂S/∂Xk are the corresponding generalised forces or affinities. Omitting the volume from the list X0, X1, …, this gives the rate of change of the entropy density, s, in terms of the extensive magnitude densities, xk, as σ = ds/dt = Σk ∂s/∂xk dxk/dt.
- 7.
According to which, if the Ji and Xi in the expression for σ are independent, the linear coefficients satisfy Lij = Lji, for all i and j.
- 8.
The first predicate, “causing of a fire by a shortcircuit(e)”, would be better formulated as “causing of a fire by an appreciable potential difference across a path of low resistance(e)”, or “combusting caused by an appreciable potential difference across a path of low resistancee”.
- 9.
As when an ensemble of processes called Carnot cycles is itself taken to be a Carnot cycle; see. e.g., Duhem (1893a, pp. 300–1).
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Needham, P. (2017). Longish Processes. In: Macroscopic Metaphysics. Synthese Library, vol 390. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70999-4_8
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