Thermodynamics Quotes - Page 3

• Cost is always an object - the second law of thermodynamics sees to that

  Daniel Dennett

  Law, Cost, Economics

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• In the complex course of its evolution, life exhibits a remarkable contrast to the tendency expressed in the Second Law to Thermodynamics. Where the Second Law expressed an irreversible progression toward increased entropy and disorder, life evolves continually higher levels of order. The still more remarkable fact is that this evolutionary drive to greater and greater order also is irreversible. Evolution does not go backward.

  J. H. Rush

  Law, Order, Levels

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• Professor Eddington has recently remarked that 'The law that entropy always increases - the second law of thermodynamics - holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of nature'. It is not a little instructive that so similar a law [the fundamental theorem of natural selection] should hold the supreme position among the biological sciences.

  Ronald Fisher

  Thinking, Law, Fundamentals

  "The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection". Book by Ronald Fisher, 1930.

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• Tell me it's never been done. Because the only real laws in this world-the only things we really know-are the two postulates of relativity, the three laws of Newton, the four laws of thermodynamics, and Maxwell's equation-no, scratch that, the only things we really know are Maxwell's equations, the three laws of Newton, the two postulates of relativity, and the periodic table. That's all we know that's true. All the rest are man's laws

  Dean Kamen

  Real, Men, Law

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• Of all the statements that have been made with respect to theories on the origin of life, the statement that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses no problem for an evolutionary origin of life is the most absurd… The operation of natural processes on which the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based is alone sufficient, therefore, to preclude the spontaneous evolutionary origin of the immense biological order required for the origin of life.

  Duane Gish

  Origin Of Life, Order, Law

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• It is a remarkable fact that the second law of thermodynamics has played in the history of science a fundamental role far beyond its original scope. Suffice it to mention Boltzmann's work on kinetic theory, Planck's discovery of quantum theory or Einstein's theory of spontaneous emission, which were all based on the second law of thermodynamics.

  Ilya Prigogine

  Hard Work, Science, Discovery

  "Time, Structure and Fluctuations". Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1977.

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• It has never been in my power to study anything, mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic .

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Wine, Men, Psychology

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1958). “Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)”, p.408, Courier Corporation

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• Man's destiny is to know, if only because societies with knowledge culturally dominate societies that lack it. Luddites and anti-intellectuals do not master the differential equations of thermodynamics or the biochemical cures of illness. They stay in thatched huts and die young.

  E. O. Wilson

  Destiny, Men, Illness

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• Darwinism doesn't explain where gravity comes from. It doesn't explain where thermodynamics comes from. It doesn't explain where the laws of physics come from. It doesn't explain where matter comes from.

  Ben Stein

  Law, Matter, Physics

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• There were a number of particularly delightful incidents. There is, for example, the physicist who introduced me to one of my favorite laws, which he described as Murphys law or the fourth law of thermodynamics (actually there were only three last I heard) which states: If anything can go wrong it will.

  Anne Roe

  Law, Numbers, Example

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• Evolutionism as taught by Darwinism has nothing to say about how life originated. Has nothing to say about how the governing principles in the universe, gravity, thermodynamics, motion, how those originated. It's got some gigantic missing pieces.

  Ben Stein

  Missing, Principles, Pieces

  "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer and Jack Cafferty, transcripts.cnn.com. April 18, 2008.

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• If Thought is capable of being classed with Electricity, or Will with chemical affinity, as a mode of motion, it seems necessary to fall at once under the second law of thermodynamics as one of the energies which most easily degrades itself, and, if not carefully guarded, returns bodily to the cheaper form called Heat. Of all possible theories, this is likely to prove the most fatal to Professors of History.

  Henry Adams

  Fall, Law, Return

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• I find the big bang, really quite fascinating. I mean, here you have all these highfalutin scientists and they're saying it was this gigantic explosion and everything came into perfect order. Now these are the same scientists that go around touting the second law of thermodynamics, which is entropy, which says that things move toward a state of disorganization.

  Benjamin Carson

  Moving, Mean, Order

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• Entropy is one of the laws of thermodynamics. It's a physical law that says everything in nature is moving from order to disorder. In our lives this same principle is at work. As time moves on, things break down as we make mistakes. This is the 'letdown' every person experiences because of sin. For Christians this concept doesn't end there because we realize God's 'beautiful' mercy and grace restores the order in our lives.

  Jon Foreman

  Beautiful, Christian, Mistake

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• Willard Gibbs did for statistical mechanics and for thermodynamics what Laplace did for celestial mechanics and Maxwell did for electrodynamics, namely, made his field a well-nigh finished theoretical structure.

  Robert Andrews Millikan

  Fields, Mechanic, Structure

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• The production of motion in the steam engine always occurs in circumstances which it is necessary to recognize, namely when the equilibrium of caloric is restored, or (to express this differently) when caloric passes from the body at one temperature to another body at a lower temperature.

  Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot

  Temperature, Body, Heat

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• Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906 by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.

  David Goodstein

  Science, Hands, Carrying On

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• You only need a heart full of grace

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Heart, Greatness, Helping Others

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.222, Beacon Press

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• Pyramids, cathedrals, and rockets exist not because of geometry, theories of structures, or thermodynamics, but because they were first a picture- literally a vision-in the minds of those who built them. Society is where it is today because people had the perception; the images and the imagination; the creativity that the Arts provide, to make the world the place we live in today.

  Eugene S. Ferguson

  Art, Creativity, Carpe Diem

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• The elevator shaft was a kind of heat sink. Hot food was cold by the time it arrived. Cold food got colder. No one knew what would happen to ice cream, but it would probably involve some rewriting of the laws of thermodynamics.

  Terry Pratchett

  Ice Cream, Law, Hot

  Terry Pratchett (2008). “Lords And Ladies: (Discworld Novel 14)”, p.161, Random House

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