Comment on Entropy and Temperature

Fri, 19 Dec 2014 04:12:54 GMT

Energy is a feature of the territory because it's a function of position and momenta and other territory-things.

"Capacity to transfer heat" can mean a few things, and I'm not sure which you want. There's already heat capacity, which is how much actual energy is stored per degree of temperature. To find the total internal heat energy you just have to integrate this up to the current temperature. The usual example here is an iceberg which stores much more heat energy than a cup of coffee, and yet heat flows from the coffee to the iceberg. If you mean something more like "quantity that determines which direction heat will flow between two systems," then that's just the definition I presented :p

I actually have trouble defending "probability is in the mind" in some physics contexts without invoking many-worlds. If it turns out that many-worlds is wrong and copenhagen, say, is right, then it will be useful to believe that for physical processes, probability is in the territory. I think. Not too sure about this.

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