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Re: Thermo/Sidebar

At 08:03 PM 11/25/99 -0700, Jim Green wrote:

in my attempt to be as general as possible (as is my want in
asking questions), I do include stat mech in classical physics and I even
extend this to thermo ...

Sounds sensible to me.

On the back-side of that coin, there are cases where it *does* make sense
to pretend not to know something. For instance, re-doing geometry without
the parallel postulate was quite fruitful.

Still, the main point is that AFAIK there is no self-consistent classical
theory, and we shouldn't apologize for making nonclassical arguments
whenever that's the shortest path to the right answer.

although my dear friend Sadi would not be all that happy.

Are you sure about that? Carnot was a pretty smart dude. There are some
prissy pedants who try to construct a purely classical thermodynamics, but
Carnot wasn't one of them.