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On Gases in Boxes: A Reply to Davey on the Justification of the Probability Measure in Boltzmannian Statistical Mechanics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Elay Shech
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Abstract

Kevin Davey claims that the justification of the second law of thermodynamics as it is conveyed by the “standard story” of statistical mechanics, roughly speaking, that low-entropy microstates tend to evolve to high-entropy microstates, is “unhelpful at best and wrong at worst.” In reply, I demonstrate that Davey’s argument for rejecting the standard story commits him to a form of skepticism that is more radical than the position he claims to be stating and that Davey places unreasonable demands on the notion of justification in the physical sciences.

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 80 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 593 - 605
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I wish to thank John D. Norton, John Earman, Bryan Roberts, Balázs Gyenis, and Kevin Davey for helpful discussions as well as invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References

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