Taking up statistical thermodynamics: Equilibrium fluctuations and irreversibility

Abstract

The microscopic explanation of the physical phenomena represented by a macroscopic theory is often cast in terms of the reduction of the latter to a more fundamental theory, which represents the same phenomena at the microscopic level, albeit in an idealized way. In particular, the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics is a much discussed case-study in philosophy of physics. Based on the Generalized Nagel–Schaffner model, the alleged reductive explanation would be accomplished if one finds a corrected version of classical thermodynamics that can be strictly derived from statistical mechanics. That is the sense in which, according to Callender (1999, 2001), one should not take thermodynamics too seriously. Arguably, the sought-after revision is given by statistical thermodynamics, intended as a macroscopic theory equipped with a probabilistic law of equilibrium fluctuations. The present paper aims to evaluate this proposal. The upshot is that, while statistical thermodynamics enables one to re-define equilibrium so as to agree with Boltzmann entropy, it does not provide a definitive solution to the problem of explaining macroscopic irreversibility from a microscopic point of view.