Philosophical problems of thermal and statistical physics

Tomaž Urbič, Ph.D. Professor
Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Statistical mechanics is one of the crucial fundamental theories of physics. The philosophy of thermal and statistical physics is dealing with classical thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and related theories. The philosophy of statistical mechanics is a very chaotic discipline – much more so than, for instance, philosophy of quantum mechanics. Among the topics mentioned in the talk are probability and statistical explanation, the basic issues in both equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, the role of cosmology, the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics, and the alleged foundation of the very notion of time asymmetry in the entropic asymmetry of systems in time. Does either thermodynamics or statistical mechanics contain an element of time-irreversibility?