Symposium On: the Second Law of Thermodynamics: Status and Challenges the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (aaas)

Sadi Carnot’s ingenious reasoning of reversible cycles (1824) laid foundations for The Second Law before The First Law of energy conservation was even known (Joule 1843) and long before Thermodynamic concepts were established in 1850s. A century later, Bridgman (1941) ‘complained’ that “there are almost as many formulations of The Second Law as there have been discussions of it.” Even today, The Second Law remains so obscure, due to the lack of its comprehension, that it continues to attract new efforts at clarification, including this one. The Laws of Thermodynamics have much wider, including philosophical significance and implication, than their simple expressions based on the experimental observations – they are The Fundamental Laws of Nature: The Zeroth (equilibrium existentialism), The First (conservational transformationalism), The Second (directional transformationalism), and The Third (unattainability of emptiness). They are defining and unifying our comprehension of all existence and transformations in the universe. The forces, due to non-equilibrium of mass-energy in space (non-uniform ‘concentrations’), causing the mass-energy displacement, thus defining the process direction, are manifested by tendency of mass-energy transfer in time towards common equilibrium -cause-andeffect forced tendency of equi-partition of mass-energy. It should not be confused with local creation of non-equilibrium and/or ‘organized structures’ on expense of ‘over-all’ non-equilibrium, by spontaneous and irreversible conversion (dissipation) of other energy forms into the thermal energy, always and everywhere accompanied with entropy generation (randomized equi-partition of energy per absolute temperature level). The fundamental laws of nature are considered to be axiomatic and many believe they could not be explained, proven or questioned. However, everything may and should be questioned, reasoned, explained and possibly proven. The miracles are until they are comprehended and understood.