Triadic relations in thermodynamics

Abstract

• Energy as capacity for work was the pre-industialization understanding of energy. • The energy premise perpetuated the single, monolithic view of energy. • In the industrialization age, the monolithic view of energy is replaced by two questions. • One finds in Clausius’ thermodynamics a glimpse of the two questions. • Answering the two questions, EGP is the driver and work comes from heat in a heat-reservoir. Before the advent of steam engines, physics had discovered that mechanical energy is the capacity of a system for doing work. Then, Joule discovered the equivalence theorem, the equivalence of heat and work, that heat was also a form of energy capable of producing work. This was the discovery that moved the mechanical world into an industrialized one. In the ensuing development of a new physics, however, the pre-industrialization, pre-entropic understanding of the mechanical world was carried over by William Thomson in the formulation of energy physics, circa 1850-55, and in its later update, orthodox thermodynamics. The result is the almost universally accepted premise that “energy form” is the driving force of nature as energy is standardly defined to be “The capacity for doing work.” This paper rejects the premise and makes the case for entropy growth potential (EGP) to be the driving force of nature; furthermore, that the true meaning of the equivalence theorem, instead, is the requirement of a heat reservoir for the production of work in a triadic framework of EGP, heat reservoir, and work reservoir.