A Farewell To Entropy

by Arieh Ben-Naim (Author)

11 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-9812707079

ISBN-10: 9812707077

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The principal message of this book is that thermodynamics and statistical mechanics will benefit from replacing the unfortunate, misleading and mysterious term “entropy” with a more familiar, meaningful and appropriate term such as information, missing information or uncertainty. This replacement would facilitate the interpretation of the “driving force” of many processes in terms of informational changes and dispel the mystery that has always enshrouded entropy. It has been 140 years since Clausius coined the term “entropy” almost 50 years since Shannon developed the mathematical theory of “information” - subsequently renamed “entropy”. In this book, the author advocates replacing “entropy” by “information”, a term that has become widely used in many branches of science. The author also takes a new and bold approach to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Information is used not only as a tool for predicting distributions but as the fundamental cornerstone concept of thermodynamics, held until now by the term “entropy”. The topics covered include the fundamentals of probability and information theory; the general concept of information as well as the particular concept of information as applied in thermodynamics; the re-derivation of the Sackur-Tetrode equation for the entropy of an ideal gas from purely informational arguments; the fundamental formalism of statistical mechanics; and many examples of simple processes the “driving force” for which is analyzed in terms of information.

A Farewell To Entropy

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Paperback: 412 pages
Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company (January 18, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9812707077
ISBN-13: 978-9812707079
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 11 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,135,045 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #324 in Books > Science & Math > Chemistry > Physical & Theoretical > Physical Chemistry
- #479 in Books > Science & Math > Physics > Dynamics > Thermodynamics
- #802 in Books > Engineering & Transportation > Engineering > Bioengineering > Biotechnology

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I've been trying to understand the concept of entropy ever ...

ByF. J. Molzon March 6, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I've been trying to understand the concept of entropy ever since my first course in thermodynamics in the early 1960s. Tying it into the Shannon information concept and pointing out that temperature should have been defined to have the units of energy is a huge step in the right direction. I'm also now convinced that the Bayesian statistical concept that probability is a measure of the lack of subjective knowledge about the world is fundamental.

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Four Stars

Byneuronerdon July 29, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Such a fascinating topic. And the author has a real passion for explaining some challenging and deep topics.

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an insightful and clear book on a controversial subject

ByAlex Antonellion October 31, 2008

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

"A Farewell to Entropy: Statistical Thermodynamics Based on Information" by Arieh Ben-Naim is really a great book. One can consider it a more technical and detailed version of the wonderful little book by the same author, "Entropy Demystified". Although the concept of entropy has been around for almost 150 years, it still remains elusive and controversial. This can be easily seen by the large number of scientific articles, books, and scientific meetings that are currently dedicated to the foundations of the subject. The interpretation of entropy of a system as missing information about the system has been around for a long time, since the works by Brillouin and Jaynes in the 1950's. However, it has been dismissed by many scientists as a subjective interpretation, although, as it is wonderfully explained by Ben-Naim, these same scientists sponsored even more subjective interpretations, such as a measure of the disorder of the system. The book by Ben-Naim provides a solid and lucid explanation of missing information as a very precise and objective concept. The connection between missing information and thermodynamic entropy is also very clearly explained. The book also contains several examples that are very illuminating. I think the book should be read by anyone interested in statistical physics and physics of complex systems.

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beautiful book

ByRicardo Mansillaon August 21, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I read this book with great joy. I think an important contribution to the understanding of entropy as information loss. highly recommended

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Anyone trying to understand entropy should read this book.

ByBob Hanlonon February 12, 2013

Format: Paperback

I'm writing my own book on the foundations of chemical engineering in which the concept of entropy plays a significant role. In attempting to understand the inherent, fundamental meaning of entropy, I've read much of the relevant literature, starting back with Clausius himself and continuing into Boltzmann, Gibbs and Tolman. While the development of this historical context has been a fascinating experience for me, it wasn't until I started reading the works of Arieh Ben-Naim that I finally started to truly understand what both entropy and the 2nd law of thermodynamics are all about. Ben-Naim connects them together using the work and insight of Claude Shannon's Information Theory. This was a very readable book and addressed many of the questions I had for myself about the subject, which I appreciated. It has technical depth combined with a clarity of message. This book complemented well two of the other Ben-Naim books on entropy that I recently read as well, "Discover Entropy of the Second Law of Thermodynamics" and "Entropy and the Second Law." I strongly recommend this book to anyone seeking to understand entropy.

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A bridge between information theory and thermodynamics sure to inspire a new generation of developments in statistical mechanics

ByOtto Normalon January 4, 2009

Format: Paperback

Finally a book that brings information theory and thermodynamics together in a comprehensive way! Ben-Naim paves the way for a future generation of innovation in statistical thermodynamics using the tools of information theory.

The traditional understanding of entropy associates it with disorder. While this view is useful in many contexts, it fails to explain some properties of entropy. Ben-Naim leads us into identifying entropy with uncertainty, or the "missing information" of the system. Information possessed by whom? In this case, we are not talking about perception or communication. Wherever the number of states of a thermodynamic system resides, there resides the entropy.

Ben-Naim explains the so-called Gibbs-paradox in a most satisfying way (Appendix O). A related phenomenon occurs when we mix two chemical species and leave the volume and temperature unchanged. We originally have Na moles of gas A and Nb moles of gas B, each in its respective container of volume V. If we now mix both substances into a single container also of volume V, the entropy remains unchanged. If we insist in understanding entropy as disorder, the mixed container looks more disordered; but the entropy stayed constant. This is not a paradox. In this process, the volume available for substance A and substance B to explore never changed, so the counting of states is unaltered. The missing locational information about gas A and gas B is constant for this process. This treatment applies to ideal mixtures, where the particles don't interact among themselves.

For processes where the particles do interact, we will observe additional correlations which reduce the missing information, a.k.a. entropy. The physical coupling of intermolecular forces translates into statistical correlations. Ben-Naim's presentation (Chap. 5) creates a further bridge between the statistical, information theoretical understanding and thermodynamic entropy.

What I would call the jewel of the book is a rederivation of the Sackur-Tetrode equation for the entropy of an ideal gas (Sec. 5.4). We learn this equation from physical chemistry books as set in stone, but what does it mean? The author rederives it by stacking the missing information due to 4 terms: locational uncertainty, momenta uncertainty, quantum mechanical uncertainty principle and the indistinguishability of the particles.

For all the bridges that Ben-Naim constructs between information theory and thermodynamics, there remain some gaps. "There is no formal proof that [the counting of states and the quantity defined by Clausius in terms of heat transfer and temperature] are identical. The validity of the relationship between the two quantities ultimately rests on the agreement between the calculated values of [entropy] and experimental data based on Clausius' definition". This state of affairs is however not unique to entropy, as science rests on many empirical relationships.

The book is well-written and can be used by researchers and students of undergraduate and graduate levels.

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Most recent customer reviews

A bible for those who wish to TRULY understand 'entropy'.

`A Farewell To Entropy' is an excellent guide for those who want to understand in all truth what exactly `entropy' is and to discover what the causes were for our lack of proper...Read more

Published on June 5, 2012 by Yagnaseni Roy

Highly recommend for its clarity and timely publication

This text, while not intended as a textbook for lecturing in a university course, nevertheless has many aspects to it which would make the book a good teaching tool as well as...Read more

Published on August 19, 2011 by Frank Bierbrauer

As if there isn't enough confusion already...

In the Introduction, Ben-Naim greets us with a teaser: those of us who think that the (ideal) entropy of mixing is positive, have a problem.E.T. Jaynes: Papers on Probability, Statistics and Statistical Physics (Synthese Library).Read more

Published on August 23, 2009 by Themis Matsoukas

A modern approach to statistical thermodynamics

In the Preface, the author states that there are many good books on statistical thermodynamics, and that this is not a textbook on this subject.Entropy Demystified: The Second Law Reduced to Plain Common Sense Read more

Published on March 5, 2008 by Diego Casadei

The basics of Statistics, Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics in a nutshell

As all previous books of Arieh Bem-Naim have already shown, he is an excellent writer. This is a very clearly written book, wherein the explanations are sufficiently detailed for...Read more

Published on March 1, 2008 by J. P. Ferreira

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