Abstract
Questions about the nature and origins of irreversibility seemed to have been laid to rest temporarily by the Ehrenfests’ encyclopedia article of 1911. The discussion essentially disappeared for twenty years. This may have been due to a general feeling that the Ehrenfests1 argument resolved the irreversibility paradoxes. Indeed that opinion is expressed in recent times. For example, Farquhar (1964, p.19) says,
Moreover, as has been emphasized especially by the Ehrenfests, it is specifically by way of coarse-graining that the reversible and irreversible aspects of the behavior of a macroscopic system are reconciled - irreversibility is associated with that lack of detailed knowledge which may be obtained about the dynamical state of the system… .
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© 1985 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Hollinger, H.B., Zenzen, M.J. (1985). The Applications. In: The Nature of Irreversibility. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5430-4_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5430-4_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8897-8
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