“There are ancient cathedrals which, apart from their consecrated purpose, inspire solemnity and awe. Even the curious vi sitor speaks of serious things, with hushed voice, and as each whisper reverberates through the vaulted nave, the returning echo seems to bear a message of mystery. … Science has its cathedrals, built by the efforts of a few architects and of many workers. In these loftier monuments of scientific thought a tradition has arisen whereby the friendly usages of colloquial speech give way to a certain severity and formality.
Lewis and Randall, preface to “Thermodynamics”
“A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression that classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown, within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts”
Albert Einstein
“Thermodynamics has something to say about everything but does not tell us everything about anything.”
Martin Goldstein and Inge F. Goldstein, “The Refrigerator and the Universe”
“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold; it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?”
C.P. Snow, “The Two Cultures”
“According to this principle, the production of heat alone is not sufficient to give birth to the impelling power: it is necessary that there should also be cold; without it, the heat would be useless.”
Sadi Carnot, “Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire”
“There are at least three different arrows of time. First, there is the thermodynamic arrow of time, the direction of time in which disorder or entropy increases. Then, there is the psychological arrow of time. This is the direction in which we feel time passes, the direction in which we remember the past but not the future. Finally, there is the cosmological arrow of time. This is the direction in which the universe is expanding rather than contracting.”
Stephen Hawking, “A Brief History of Time”
“I look upon amity and enmity as affections of intelligent beings, and I have not yet found it explained by any, how those appetites can be placed in bodies inanimate and devoid of knowledge or of so much as sense.”
Robert Boyle, “The Sceptical Chymyst” (1661)
“One should not imagine that two gases in a 0.1 liter container, initially unmixed, will mix, then again after a few days separate, then mix again, and so forth. On the contrary, one finds … that not until a time enormously long compared to ten to the tenth to the tenth years will there be any noticeable unmixing of the gases. One may recognize that this is practically equivalent to never …”
Ludwig Boltzmann
“The laws of thermodynamics may easily be obtained from the principles of statistical mechanics, of which they are the incomplete expression.”
J. Willard Gibbs
“Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the same work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.
Perhaps it will be wise to approach the subject cautiously.”
David Goodstein, “States of Matter”
“…if belief in the reality of atoms is so crucial, then I renounce the physical way of thinking. I will not be a professional physicist, and I hand back my scientific reputation.”
Ernst Mach (1910)
“It all works because Avogadro’s number is closer to infinity than to 10.”
Ralph Baierlein
“I am conscious of being only an individual struggling weakly against the stream of time. But it still remains in my power to contribute in such a way that, when the theory of gases is again revived, not too much will have to be rediscovered.”
Ludwig Boltzmann
"...the chemist of the future who is interested in the structure of proteins, nucleic acids,
polysaccharides, and other complex substances with high molecular weight will come to rely upon a new structural chemistry, involving precise geometrical relationships among the atoms in the molecules and the rigorous application of the new structural principles..."
Linus Pauling
“In this house, we OBEY the laws of thermodynamics!”
Homer Simpson