pation of available energy, or the Gibbs-Helmholtz form of decrease of free energy, is assumed by recent physiologists to be characteristic of all spontaneous or metabolic processes, but both Helmholtz[1] and Kelvin[2] have doubted whether it is either necessary or sufficient for their production, while Maxwell[3] and Boltzmann[4] have asserted, what Gibbs's statistical researches seem to prove, that it is sometimes possible for entropy to decrease, that is for small isolated temporary violations of the second law to occur in any real body. Has animal or vegetable protoplasm ever the power ascribed to Maxwell's demon of reversing the thermodynamic order of nature, and directing physicochemical forces? Such a demon, according to Lord Kelvin, might, through his superior intelligence or motor activity, render one half of a bar of metal glowing hot, while the other half remained icy cold. We have something analogous to this in certain diseases, as gangrene, aphasia, various forms of paralysis, the curious vasomotor and trophic disorders of the nervous system. Are these phenomena then of a thermodynamic nature? The animal body, Lord Kelvin thought, does not act like a thermodynamic engine, but "in a manner more nearly analogous to that of an electric motor working in virtue of energy supplied to it by a voltaic battery." Here, as Gibbs has shown in his theory of the chemical cells, the electromotive force would be identical with the free energy upon which the surface energies of the body must ultimately depend. Beyond these speculations we know nothing. Gibbs himself avowed his express disinclination to "explain the mysteries of nature," while Lord Kelvin, although affirming that physicists are bound "by the everlasting law of honor," to explain everything material upon physical principles, mystified friends and opponents alike by falling back upon a "vital principle" with "creative power" behind it as the causa causans of biological happenings. But the business of physics is with the material facts of the universe, and the invocation of creative power explains nothing and is subversive of determinism, or the relation of cause and effect in science. It may be that "man was born too late to ascertain final causes": he can only interpret the physical facts of his experience as he finds them and with the means at his disposal. An interesting attempt to explain the relation of life and mind to matter is found in the energetische Weltanschauung
- ↑ Helmholtz, J. f. Math., v. 100, 137. Auerback, "Kanon der Physik.," 414.
- ↑ Kelvin, "Pop. Lect.," II., 190, 463, 404. See, also, the discussion in Science, 1903, N. S., XVIII., 138-146.
- ↑ Maxwell, Nature, 1877-8, XVII., 280.
- ↑ Der grosse Meister, dem auch diese Zeilen huldigen möchten, hat einst den Gedanken ausgesprochen, dass es in der Welt vielleicht Stellen giebt, wo die Entropie nicht wächst, sondern zunimmt," O. Chwolson. Boltzmann, Festschr.," 1904, 33.
