Abstract
From 1859 the kinetic theory gained considerable support from experiment, yielding a range of known phenomena such as the gas laws and predicting new phenomena such as the independence of the viscosity of a gas from its density. Alongside these developments was the rise of thermodynamics, which explained a range of phenomena without any assumptions about the underlying structure of matter and which also received considerable experimental support. Thermodynamics yielded two results, an account of thermal dissociation and a measure of chemical affinities, in areas that had troubled atomists. Two basic problems faced the kinetic theory, its clash with measurements of the specific heats of gases and the problem posed by irreversible processes implied by the second law of thermodynamics. The latter problem was solved by appeal to statistical fluctuations, so that the inverse of apparently irreversible processes became unlikely rather than impossible. There was no independent evidence in support of this move in the nineteenth century.
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Chalmers, A. (2009). Thermodynamics and the Kinetic Theory. In: The Scientist’s Atom and the Philosopher’s Stone. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 279. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2362-9_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2362-9_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-2361-2
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-2362-9
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