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Hi Pentcho,
Rather than haggle about the details of Carnot's argumentation, I'll give you a
better example of how science, proceeding in fits and starts, often stumbles
upon the "truth" through paths which are later recognized as insecure. I refer
to our discovery and development of the conservation of momentum. It was first
derived (and still is in textbooks) from Newton's laws of motion, a crucial
premise being the third law. With the discovery of the magnetic force between
moving charges, it was realized that there were forces that did not obey
Newton's third law. Surprisingly, this did not invalidate our conservation of
momentum conclusion - we merely raised it to the level of an a-priori
hypothesis, assigned the missing momentum to the electromagnetic field, and
produced a consistent and testable model of particle interactions.
Nature's pedagogy may at times lead us to useful conclusions through imperfect
premises. After we find the imperfections, we do the polishing; but we don't
through out a useful baby with the used bath water.