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On Jaynes's Unbelievably Short Proof of the Second Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Daniel Parker
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Abstract

This article investigates Jaynes's “unbelievably short proof” of the second law of thermodynamics. It assesses published criticisms of the proof and concludes that these criticisms miss the mark by demanding results that either import expectations of a proof not consistent with an information-theoretic approach or would require assumptions not employed in the proof itself, as it looks only to establish a weaker conclusion. Finally, a weakness in the proof is identified and illustrated. This weakness stems from the fact the Jaynes's assumption of unitary evolution is too strong given his perspective, rather than too weak to provide the desired results.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 5 , December 2011 , pp. 1058 - 1069
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

I would like to thank Wayne Myrvold for his comments on a draft of this article.

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