200th Anniversary of Sadi Carnot's Book on Heat & the Introduction of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics

e e e hello there well we're going to do something a little bit different today uh we are here to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of me show you of this book in many ways this was the book that launched the science of thermodynamics a field that I've been interested in now for half a century and uh I wanted to tell you a little bit about about this book and the history around it and uh about the person who wrote this book named sadano that's a picture of him a little bit younger than the time when he wrote that book that's a picture of him a bit older than when he wrote that book and that's his rather ornate signature of the time um so we're going to be talking about this book was published in 1824 it was published uh on this date um in 1824 or at least within this week we know that from uh a digest of books published in France at that time and uh in many ways this book was the origin story or the second law of Thermodynamics it was in many ways also the origin story of the abstract science of thermodynamics the abstract science of of heat and its Dynamics um although in retrospect the book was based on scientific ideas that were completely wrong yet the conclusions of the book were completely valid and that's an interesting story in its own right that has all sorts of resonance with all kinds of things that are happening today so let me give you a little bit more context about about this book person who wrote it s Koo was 28 years old when when he wrote the book and he had this was the only thing he ever published in his whole whole life and um he was uh in many ways did not have a particularly distinguished story he was nominally a French military engineer he was sort of retired at the time when he wrote this book uh we'll explain why later um but um he uh had been well educated at the at Co poly technique and in Paris um but uh he was mostly just tooling around being a military engineer and um and then produced this book now as as we'll talk about later his father Lazar Caro was both a distinguished Poli politician and a distinguished scientist and much of what Lazar Cano had done was kind of a a setup that let one get to the point of being able to write this book sort of the the the key in a sense was to to take what was then the high-tech the I the high-tech of the time was steam engines steam engines were sort of the the technology that was taken the World by storm right at that time and the big question that s eono concerned himself with was just how efficient can a steam engine be and people have been building all kinds of different steam engines and the issue was if you use you know steam you use air as the working fluid you use this kind of piston you use that kind of piston what can you do to make the steam engine as efficient as possible now just to give some history of steam engines I mean the there had been steam engines kind of developed in the well there have been some even sort of precursors in Antiquity but by the by the 1710s there were already some kinds of steam engine kinds of things that were emerging but 1776 was The Big Year for steam engines as well as for the American Revolution and so on but uh 1776 was the year when James Watt introduced his his version of the steam engine vastly more efficient than previous ones and with a lot of clever ideas about uh uh kind of clever science related engineering ideas um including maybe some precursors of what con ended up doing although not presented in a kind of scientific formal way but um so con's effort was to figure out we got these steam engines they're made in practical ways how efficient can we make a steam engine be and what he ended up doing was developing what amounts to kind of a an almost logical argument almost philosophical argument people would describe it later as kind of a matter of philosophy what he had figured out about the possible efficiency of steam engines now he also was was laboring under uh a kind of a misimpression about the nature of heat because a steam engine is all about taking heat and making it do mechanical work in fact the the title of kono's book is Reflections on the Motive Power of heat and on machines uh intended to um uh to to make use of this power so he was interested the Motive Power of heat to what extent can you take heat and make it do mechanical work which is what a steam engine is all about and but the question was one of the questions was well what is heat well the theory that was dominant at that time was the so-called caloric theory of heat that was the the theory that pretty much everybody believed that heat was a fluid that heat was something that flowed from one material to another people had sort of the idea that maybe there were molecules nobody knew that that matter was made of of discrete particles that wasn't known but it had been kind of imagined a bit even since Antiquity and people thought that maybe there was a special kind of particle that was heat and that was the thing that was flowing from one material to another but in any case this caloric theory of heat was the dominant theory of what heat was it was a fluid that suffused substances and would flow from one to another and so for example when Fier Joseph Fier um in 1810s I think was developing kind of his theory of heat he was uh he had the idea that it was something that flowed like a fluid would have differential equations that it satisfied like the equations of fluid dynamics and that was kind of the the story of the motion of heat so to speak so in koo's time that that was kind of koo's view in in 1824 of the nature of heat was it was this fluidlike thing caloric fluid and so in a sense what Kano thought he was doing was to say well I don't really care if the caloric fluid is in steam or it's in air or it's in water where it is all I care about is that there's a certain amount of caloric fluid and so what he thought he was doing was developing a theory for essentially the Dynamics of caloric fluid and that's in a sense why he ended up coming up with this kind of abstract view of what was going on in the Dynamics of heat because he thought heat was this thing that was sort of abstracted away from matter and was just caloric fluid the big thing that cono established well he made some assumptions he made the assumption that uh mechanical motion tends to degrade into heat he also made the assumption that perpetual motion is impossible that it's not possible to have something which will just sort of keep going forever and will will keep generating mechanical work from from uh from from nothing so to speak he made those two assumptions and from those assumptions he then kind of derived the idea that the efficiency of a steam engine wouldn't depend on things like whether it was using steam or this or Pistons or that all it depended on in the end the ultimate efficiency of a steam engine would depend only on the temperature the hottest temperature and the coldest temperature that there was sort of heat in the steam engine and there was kind of a sink uh outside that was of lower temperature and although he didn't get the actual formula for this the the so-called carau efficiency say the the you know which is the the higher temperature minus the lower temperature divided by the lower temperature to get that formula you have to understand things about about absolute scales of temperature and so on but he was kind of edging towards that formula and the the um uh the the kind of this that was kind of his his achievement was to say when you do this when you you know it's however good you make your steam engine this will be the limit of its efficiency now now he had another point to make which we'll see has all sorts of interesting historical resonance for for him and so on which was he said the way you make your steam engine most efficient is to have it run really slowly to have it run so that it's the the actual operation of it is reversible so that you can just you're just making a little tiny change to where the Piston is and so on so you could also make a change back and he kind of used as an analogy the differential calculus where you're just making infinitesimal changes it's kind of like you make this infinitesimal movement of the piston and the steam engine and then you can always move it back and he argued that sort of the maximum efficiency was at the point where there wasn't kind of all sorts of irreversible stuff going on where everything was happening reversibly and and so that was that was what he what he set up now what happened to this book well carau paid for the printing of this book himself it was printed through a a book seller called bashier um and amusingly you can see on the book that it was what is it it's I think uh 55 um say here it's um uh kada I'm sorry my my French accent is absolutely terrible I apologize for that in advance but kada Augustine uh number 55 was uh uh on the book it says that's that's where its book seller was and that's a that's a location on the bank of the sen River and amusingly at least the last time I visited Paris there were still book sellers actually sort of hanging out including ones who were selling kind of old books uh right at that same spot on the banks of the sen so little changes in a couple hundred years but any case the book was published through this kind of high-end book seller paid for by cono 600 copies were printed it was priced at three Franks of the time which turns out to be about 20 bucks today was a fairly short book and when it came out nobody really cared there was um it was actually presented by Caro at the Academy of Sciences on July 26th 1824 um again no particular sign of of any uh kind of response to it um there was one kind of little review that was printed of the book that said it was a it was a kind of a a bold courageous intellectual book but basically vanished without Trace now uh as we'll talk about after Caro published this book he was 28 years old in 1824 um he uh he lived quite a few more years he died at the age of 36 um and uh he never published anymore he was kind of a a bit of a loner kind of person um he did write some notes that uh were found 50 years after he died um and uh which we'll talk about later uh the um he had the Mis Fortune of dying in a color epidemic um actually the same one that's sort of immortalized I suppose in um oh my gosh uh the U the the general who's talked about General Lamar in in laera that same color epidemic um was also the one in which um siko died and one of the issues of of dying from K at the time was K was a sufficiently infectious disease that the thing was burn everything that was involved so a whole bunch of his papers were probably burnt um at the time and so less survives than might have done but but a few notes that are quite interesting do survive um that indicate what Kano was was interested in in the in the last eight years of his life but any case the uh this book about um the Motive Power of heat um that Caro wrote in in 1824 would have vanished without Trace were it not for the fact that a certain Emil claperon who was uh a engineering professor and a steam engine maker um kind of knew about it and uh and really paid attention to it and then um in uh uh in see what was that that will have been in um uh in the 18 beginning of the 1830s um the uh um yeah 1834 um uh claperon published a paper that sort of built directly on on koo's ideas claperon you know says it he will present these original ideas etc etc etc actually it's basically just a recapitulation of what Koo did together with some diagrams which have become kind of standard diagrams in thermodynamics books we we'll look at those a bit later but again things didn't really take root yet waited until 1845 in 1845 an ambitious young Scotsman named William Thompson um was in Paris kind of working at a lab that was a kind of a lab studying the properties of steam and he heard about claperon paper and uh he tried to get a copy of koo's book and those 600 copies they hadn't sold through in in the book store but they were hard to get and it took um it took William Thompson a while to uh to find a copy of those books William Thompson was later Lord Kelvin um and uh uh but at the time he was still William Thompson but in 1845 uh William Thompson got interested in the question of inventing a thermodynamic scale of temperature people had said well you can measure the temperature of something by saying well how much does mercury expand how much does water expand when the temperature is this or that relative to this or that but uh William Thompson wanted an absolute scale of temperature a scale of temperature which would depend not at all on the particular substances that were involved but was just features of heat and for that he he imagined that what he was doing was having features of caloric and that he wanted to have like Koo he wanted to have something that would just be talking about the the features of heat alone not a particular substance that was getting hot and um in in doing this he started studying koo's work then in 1849 um William Thompson wrote a review of Kano we'll we'll look at that a little bit later um and uh and that was really what what got started with sort of the formalization of thermodynamics and uh pretty soon U for other reasons people had come to imagine that heat was a form of energy that wasn't something carau knew um although it was something that in a sense uh he he kind of intuited and in fact in the notes that he left later in his life it was clear that he was really homing in on this idea that heat was a form of energy and that there was an energy conservation and that you could sort of exchange energy for between heat and mechanical work but you would fix the the total amount of energy that became the first law of thermodynamics and um uh very soon thereafter um William Thompson Lord Kelvin was formulating the second law of Thermodynamics but but the second law he really rooted in Caro's work and he thought of Caro's work as being philosophical axiomatic inevitable and this is how 150-year confusion got started because from what Kelvin William Thompson said it looked like the second law was something that was inevitable something that was not really a law of physics it was more something that was rooted in kind of mathematical necessity U it really wasn't and in fact Koo had effectively assumed the second door he kind of just assumed that mechanical work degrades into heat which is sort of an essential point of the second or he assumed that perpetual motion was impossible another version of the second law he just took those for granted as matters of sort of intuitive physics and then built his kind of logical structure on that basis but when Kelvin picked it up he kind of referred back to cono and said look cono axiomatically proved these things and then con Kelvin was taking it as essentially a necessary feature of the world that the second law of Thermodynamics should be true and within a few years Kelvin was talking about the heat death of the universe and all sorts of other things which were felt to be kind of the inevitable consequences of this completely a atically grounded second law that was believed to be grounded in that way because it came from Koo who had derived it from intuitive thinking based on a wrong theory of heat namely the caloric theory of heat um and uh and so anyway 150e confusion got started as a result of this and um I mean it it certainly wasn't koo's fault that that confusion got started if anybody's fault it was kelvin's fault um but that that's um that's how it worked now subsequently people like boltzman tried to sort of nail that down and prove the second law of Thermodynamics from something lower level um and that didn't work out well and in fact the the sort of the mystery of the origins of the second law why is the second law true is the second law derivable uh what is its status is something well I got interested in back when I was a kid and uh have worked on for about 50 years and finally uh last year produced this book on um on the second law which I think finally I hope uh kind of as a result of thinking about things in kind of computational terms finally provide sort of a resolution of why the second law is true and essentially a derivation of the second law that depends in part only on abstract Concepts about computation and so on but in part has a very important dependence on the nature of us as observers of the world and the conclusion is if we were different from the way we are if we were sort of organisms that could trace the computations of all the collisions between molecules we wouldn't believe in the second law it's just a consequence of our character as kind of computationally bounded observers of molecular dynamics that we believe in the second law so in some sense the second law really is derivable it is forly derivable for observers like us but it depends on our nature as observers that it works that way but that's what that's the sort of 150 years later story here but what I wanted to talk about here today was uh was cono and the publication of this book 200 years ago uh today or at least this week um about uh um the Motive Power of heat so maybe a good way to start would be um actually to read a little bit of what Kano said um I'll give the the English version of it because neither I I can more or less read French but um uh uh I it's more useful to to give this in English um I'm going to read quite a bit of this because it's kind of interesting and uh it has it has quite a lot of sort of historical content so uh the the English translation is given here Reflections on the Motive Power of heat and on machines fitted to develop that power everyone knows says Koo that heat can produce motion that it possesses V Motive Power no one can doubt in these days when the steam engine is everywhere so well known steam engine in this translation from the late 1800s is hyphenated kind of charmingly to heat also adue the vast movements which take place on the earth it causes the agitations of the atmosphere the Ascension of clouds the fall of rain out of meteors I don't quite understand the metors part the currents of water which channel the the the surface of the glowe globe and of which man has thus far employed but a small portion even earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are the result says carau of heat not clear that's true for earthquakes from this immense Reservoir we may draw the moving Force necessary for our purposes nature in providing us with combustibles on all sides has given us the power to produce at all times and in all places Heat and the impelling power which is the result of it to develop this power to appropriate it to our uses is the object of heat engines the study of these engines is of the greatest interest their importance is enormous their use is continually increasing and they seem destined to produce a great revolution in the Civilized World we'll talk later about koo's interest in economics and in uh and in kind of engineering work already the steam engine works our minds impels our ships excavates our ports and our Rivers forges iron fashion Woods grinds grains spins and weaves our clothes transports the heaviest burdens Etc it appears that it must someday serve as a universal motor and be substituted for animal power waterfalls and air currents of course we we we only go backwards here with uh now we've got hydroelectric power and wind power and so on not not sure it's backwards um over the first of these motors it has the advantage of economy that is relative to animal power over the other two the inestimable advantage that it can be used at all times and places without interruption if someday the steam engine be shall be so perfected that it can be set up and supplied with fuel at small costs it will combine all desirable qualities and will afford to the industrial Arts a range the extent of which can scarcely be predicted it is not merely that a powerful and convenient motor that can be procured and carried anywhere is substituted for the motors already in use but that it causes rapid extension in the Arts in which it is applied and even create entirely new Arts the most signal service service that the steam engine has rendered to England is undoubtedly the Revival of the working of the coal mines which had declined and threatened to cease entirely in consequence of the continually increasing difficulty of drainage and raising the coal he has a footnote here it may be said that coal mining has increased tenfold in England since the invention of the steam engine it is almost equally true in regard to the mining of copper tin and iron the results produced in a half century by the steam engine the mines of England are today paralleled in the Gold and Silver Mines of the new world mines of which the working declined from day to day principally on account of the insufficiently the motors employed in the draining and extraction of minerals very very practical stuff we should rank he says second the benefit to iron manufacturer both by the Abundant supply of coal substituted for wood just when the latter had began to become begun to grow scarce because people had chopped down all the forests and by the powerful Machines of all kinds the use of which the introduction of the steam engine has permitted or facilitated and he goes on to talk about um uh the importance of iron um in the economy of England England is where James Watt had lived and developed the Ste engine and there was the usual uh kind of rivalry between France and England um at the time let's see he talks again about the the safe and Rapid navigation by steam ships may be regarded as an entirely new art due to the steam engine already this art has permitted the establishment of prompt and regular communication across the arms of the sea and on the Great Rivers of the old and new continents it uh has made it possible to Traverse Savage regions where before we could scarcely penetrate it has enabled us to carry the fruits of civilization over portions of the globe where they would else have been wanting for years steam navigation brings nearer together the most distant Nations it tends to unite the nations of the earth as inhabitants of one country in fact to lessen the time the fatigues the uncertainties and the dangers of travel is not is not this the same as greatly to shorten distances he says in any case it's sort of interesting to to read through these things because you know this is things have changed in the world in 200 years Lots has not changed um it's uh um let's see the um uh talks a bit about um um who discovered the steam engine that it's not really known um and then he goes on to talk about uh the question has often been raised whether the Motive Power of heat is unbounded whether the possible improvements in steam engines have an assignable limit a limit which the nature of things will not allow to be passed by any means whatever or whether on the contrary these improvements may be carried on indefinitely we have long sought and are seeking today to ascertain whether there an existence are in existence agents preferable to the vapor of water for developing the motor power of heat where the atmospheric air for example would not present in this respect great advantages we propose now to submit these questions to a deliberate examination and uh then he says the phenomenon of the production of motion by Heats has not been considered from a sufficiently general point of view we can considered it only in machines the nature and mode of action of which have not allowed us to take it in the whole extent of application of which it is susceptable in such machines the phenomenon is in a way incomplete it becomes difficult to recognize its principles and study its laws he says let's in order to consider in the most General way the principle of the production of motion by heat it must be considered independently of any mechanism or particular agent it is necessary to establish principles applicable not only to steam engines but to all imaginable heat engines whatever the working substance and whatever the method by which it is operated machines which do not receive their motion from heat those which have for a motor the force of men or animals a waterfall and air current Etc can be studied even to their smallest details by mechanical Theory all cases are foreseen all imaginable movements are referred to these general principles firmly established and under all circumstances this is the character of a complete Theory a similar theory is evidently needed for heat engines we shall have it only when the laws of physics shall be extended enough generalized enough to make known beforehand all the effects of heat acting in a determined manner on any body we will suppose in what follows at least a superficial knowledge of the different parts which compose an ordinary steam engine and we consider it unnecessary to explain what are the burus furnace the boiler the steam cylinder the Piston the condenser and so on I'm not sure that's so unnecessary to at least me today the production of motion in Steam Engines is always accompanied by a circumstance on which we should fix our attention this circumstance is the reestablishing of equilibrium in the caloric that is it's passage from a body in which the temperature is more or less elevated to another in which it is lower what happens in fact in a steam engine actually in motion the caloric developed in the furnace you can sort of read that as the Heat developed in the furnace by the effect of the combustion traverses the walls of the boiler produces Steam and in some way incorporates itself with it in other words the the sort of the heat get gets mixed into the steam in some way the latter steam carrying it away takes it first into the cylinder where it performs some function and from then into the condenser where it is liquefied by contact with cold water which it encounters there then as a final result the cold water of the condenser takes possession of the caloric developed by the combustion it is heated by the intervention of the steam as if it had been placed directly over the furnace the steam is here only a means of transporting the caloric it fills the same office as the heating of Bars by steam except that in this case its motion is rendered useful so what he's saying is all that really matters is the motion of the heat the thermodynamics the the motion of the raw heat the caloric fluid which as it turns out doesn't exist but at the time he was imagining there was a there was a thing that was pure heat that was being moved around and the steam was merely a carrier of that pure heat we easily recognize in the operations that we have just described the reestablishment of equilibrium in the caloric it's passage from a more or less heated body to a cooler one the first of these bodies in this case is the heated air of the Furnace the second is the condensing water the reestablishment of equilibrium of the caloric takes place between them if not completely at least partially Etc ET Etc um so again then he goes on to say and this is the very important point for him the production of Motive Power is then due in Steam Engines not to an actual consumption of caloric it's not that the the the heat fluid got converted to motion but instead he says to its transportation from a warm body to a cold body that is to its reestablishment of equilibrium an equilibrium considered as destroyed by any cause Whatever by chemical actions such as combustion or by any other we shall see shortly that this principle is applicable to any machine set in motion by heat so in other words again the sort of the key idea is there is the the pure heat caloric fluid as he thought and the pure heat is something which when operating in a cycle can lead to motion and again an idea that that he had which was important was that steam engine operating steam engines Opera in Cycles now you know you watch a steam engine running it's having its piston go up and down and so on it's kind of like yeah well obviously it's in a cycle you can see it mechanically in a cycle but the point that he was making was that this idea of the operation being a closed cycle where at some point the state of the machine returns to what it originally was was critical because if the caloric was being consumed to make U mechanical work then there wouldn't be a closed cycle the machine would you know you'd feed it in a certain amount of caloric and then the caloric would have been sort of burnt off and turned into mechanical work and then you're done but what he said is no actually the machine can operate in a closed cycle in which one is merely moving this caloric around and the result of that is to produce mechanical work well so if we take a look here let's see if I can bring this up um [Music] second okay so let's take a look at the actual book um in French just just scroll through it a bit uh so so it's it's mostly words a lot of words uh there's not much math in it um he intended this book to be kind of a a book that anybody could read I suppose it's the new kind of science tradition of new science books so to speak um and uh so he intended it to be kind of a a book that would be of interest to people who were concerned with the Tech of the time steam engines and anyway there's uh keeps going at the time the the gas laws were known PV equals RT boils Laurel that kind of thing they were known and he made some use of those in in talking about what was going on um and then here is um uh so this is um uh specific Heats of gases so he's listing for some reason I'm not quite sure um okay so this is this is various features of gas cuz he's he's interested in in sort of uh the the concrete realization of the steam engine in terms of this kind of cycle of activities where the gas is kept at constant temperature isothermal and then the gas is kept without any heat coming in or out adiabatic and this thing that became what is in the in the physics textbooks and the engineering textbooks is the cono cycle of uh of different things that that happen to the gas but so he's giving some details um uh you know here it's the the rise of temperature through the reduction of volume by one part in in 116 I don't know exactly why that's the that's the number he's picking um but uh uh so then he's here he's kind of describing um he's referring to some figures which which just show pictures of cylinders going up and down but he's describing this um uh this kind of operation from from one state to another and uh and going back again in this closed cycle um so I'm sure what this is or that that's probably adiabatic expansion um uh that depends on the specific heat of the the ratio of specific Heats um and uh keeps going okay we got some logarithms here and um uh then he's talking about um um I guess at that time well this is just more more of some pretty elementary mathematics of what was going on um let's see what else happens here uh it's not a terribly long book but it just gives you a sense of what kind of thing he's talking about here um let see okay uh okay fraction of the um all during the the rise of the cylinder I'm not quite sure what this is um that I guess that that's that's uh that's to do with his efforts to calculate the efficiency of a of steam engine I think there's a little bit more that comes up here uh okay there we go there are the end um okay here are our figures not particularly inspiring just pictures of uh um of uh uh of cylinders going up and down so uh so this is kind of the um it's 8 118 page book um and that's uh uh that's that's what it was and if we look kind of at the end of that um he's talking about um by by the time he reaches the end of the book see if we can find the English translation at the end of the book uh yeah so he's talking about some details of steam engines um and he he ends we should not expect to utilize in practice all the Motive Power of combustibles the attempts made to attain this result would be far more harmful hurtful than useful if they caused other important considerations to be neglected the economy of the combustible is only one of the conditions to be fulfilled in heat engines in many cases in other words to not use as more combustible than you need to in other in many cases is only secondary it should give it should often give precedence to safety to strength to the durability of the engine to the soul small space to which it must occupy to small cost of installation Etc to know how to appreciate in each case that their true value the considerations of convenience and economy which may present themselves to know how to discern the more important of those which are only accessories to balance them properly against each other in order to attain the best results by the simplest means such should be the leading characteristics of the man called to direct to coordinate among themselves the labors of his comrades to make them cooperate towards one useful end of what whatsoever sort it may be well so okay so that was the book and I said a little bit about kind of what happened later let's talk about how siko in in 1824 got to write this book well actually we have to start with his father Lazar cono and let's talk a little bit about Lazar Koo um and uh up for a second and so um let's see that's a picture of Lazaro that's another slightly more um uh energetic picture of Lazaro so what was the story of of Lazaro uh Lazaro was actually a pretty prominent person in France he was didn't come from a particular aristocratic background he was trained as an engineer and um he kind of gradually Rose through the ranks and um the uh uh eventually he was kind of a a practical guy who got stuff done and um see here uh he um um one of the things but he was he was as I say educated as an engineer and in those days and some extent today but particularly in France in those days being educated as an engineer meant you got to know the latest mathematics and so on engineering was was very connected as as it I think still is in in particularly in countries like France with kind of uh with mathematics even fairly high-end mathematics so Lazar Koo was well educated in the mathematics of his day calculus all those kinds of things and to sort of improve his lot as a working military engineer in the um uh later Decades of the 1700s Lazar Koo started s competing in these various essay competitions which were put up by the French Academy of Sciences and he started sending in essays about different kinds of things so one of the essays that he sent him was about the foundations of the infinitesimal calculus another one which actually was his first really successful one was about fortifications of a in the style of a particular uh kind of French general of the past and the geometry of fortifications but um in 1789 was that right um 17 uh uh no I'm sorry 17 1778 he competed in a in a in an essay competition about the science of machines and that became in 1783 Lazar koo's first book I I have a picture of that let me that um uh hold on uh here we go an essay on machines in general by um uh M Caro captain of the uh core of engineers and member of the Academy of Sciences arts and letters of djon uh etc etc etc correspondent of the Museum of Paris Etc this is actually a second edition but this is um the uh um the first edition was published in in 1783 so what is this well this is a book which attempts to mathematici the operation of of mechanical devices and it was at the time there were all these machines that have been built and they were doing their thing and they were clanking around around and they were being having various degrees of efficiency and so on Lazar Koo decided he would mathematize the operation of machines he would he would have an abstract way of describing machines now if that reminds you of of what sikon later did yes there is a strong Resonance of these things and we'll try and explain what the relationship seems to have been between them but Lazaro had the idea let's describe machines in this abstract way and if you if you flip through his book it's also very much a words book but it's it's a book that starts to kind of um uh talk about the the kind of how machines are sort of things whose abstract effect is to transfer force from one place to another you see a little bit calculus showing up here um the uh uh so so he kind of had this this notion of abstraction of abstracting the operation of machines now we also had various other things um by the way this is particular laws of equilibrium in machines notice that Koo Jr s Caro um also was talking about the notion of equilibrium though by that he meant equilibrium of the steam engine with respect to the motion of heat here Lazar Cano is meaning the equilibrium of uh of of of machines and and of forces and machines and so on so one of the things that um uh Lazar cono I guess he had an even shorter book than his son 107 Pages here um the uh one of the things that Kos Senor kind of um uh was um um uh established was this idea of what became known as koo's principle and this is again something deeply confusing in the history of this subject because even in the 1830s after the public ation of sard koo's book on principles of what became known later as thermodynamics what was at that time called koo's principle was actually a principle due to Lazar cono that had to do with General machines not with anything to do with heat so Lazar Cano's principle koo's Principle as it was called at the time was basically this if the machine is clanking it's not as efficient as it might be if there are accelerations or shocks in the operation of the machine it will have inefficiency and so the best way to operate a machine and this again resonates with the later work of siko is sort of reversibly just a tiny bit very you know keep it slow keep it um uh keep it so that everything is kind of moving moving smoothly as Lazar Cano would describe it there was no loss of moment of activity associated with smooth motions it was only these shocks and accelerations that would lead to that and also Lazar Koo made it as kind of an axom of what he believed was was going on with machines that perpetual motion is impossible okay so so Lazar cono was as I say an engineer um he was kind of rising in the ranks of the French army and so on and um uh eventually he was a pretty senior guy who was commanding large numbers of forces and so on and um he became friends with young Rob spear for example and um uh well in 1795 he did something which would turn out to be a good career move which is he appointed a chap called Napoleon to be the general-in-chief of the army of Italy and um well at that point Italy was a separate separate Place hadn't been unified but it was a separate it was separate from France um but uh after Lazar Koo appointed Napoleon general-in-chief of the Army of Italy the army of Italy went on the Rampage so to speak and invaded and the next year basically invaded Italy and that was Napoleon's sort of first that that had been Napoleon's first uh commission um in the first real position in the French army and that was his first big achievement was uh was the invasion of of Italy and Lazar Kano was the person who kind of put him up to that well uh meanwhile I should have explained that um the um in the um uh the time of the French Revolution Lazar Koo was was a big figure in that I think he was mostly a guy who made stuff actually work I don't think he was um part of the uh sort of activism front I think he was much more of a um uh a make stuff work kind of guy uh but nevertheless when you find sort of illustrations of the French Revolution you'll you'll find um uh did I show the right thing here let see um the uh you'll find pictures like this this says um uh intellectuals of the French Revolution and uh in that picture of five people there is down that one is supposed to be Lazar Koo so he was a major figure in the French Revolution but somehow managed to navigate it um without kind of running a foul of the various political winds now in fact that was a that was something that was an important trait throughout his life basically when things got too hot in France he High tailed out of there to Switzerland and Germany and kind of hung out in exile for a few years until the political winds changed in France one feature of those Exiles was he did lots of math during those Exiles but in any case back to um uh back to Lazar Koo so so he had um um he was uh um at that point he had he had um uh kind of um uh he put Napoleon in that position and then um uh as Napoleon kind of Rose he um uh uh he was in important positions he actually kind of quit the um um uh he he kind of um left the um um let's see I'm trying to remember how this all works the um um there was some coup in 1797 which was one of the times when Lazar Koo went into Exile um but uh uh then he was back and um the U then in 1796 uh sadano was born in in Paris actually confusingly enough and we'll we'll run into this again uh there was an earlier siko uh Lazar Kano had had a first child who died after a few months but was named siko when his second child came along he he also named that child the one we're talking about s Koo five years later a brother arrived hippolite Koo who again we'll talk about and later on hippolite Koo had a son who he named Sadi cono and that son became president of France um and again confusingly enough you'll find in in in physics textbooks there is a not small incidence of pictures of the siko who was president of France being attributed as the inventor of thermodynamics so lots of confusion here there are three sanos we're talking about the middle one the one who was born in in 1796 so for the first uh 16 years of his life he was kind of educated at home his father Lazar Cano was kind of in charge of things there by the way Lazar Koo at the time was kind of an inspector of devices for Napoleon he was uh kind of the person kind of almost the the patent office person for Napoleon Napoleon by the way had this interesting habit of insisting that if you were patenting an invention you had to actually send send a version of The Invention a physical version of The Invention which nap and then put in a museum somewhere but in any case Lazar Kano was sort of an inspector of devices and apparently there were all kinds of steam engineer like things which were being tested on the sen River and so on and the young siko will certainly have seen those those kinds of things maybe we'll talk a little bit later about more details of the young sadik IO there's one nice story that Madame bonapart was sort of a babysitter of um the uh the young Lazar Koo um at some point where he was like four years old or so and there were various interactions between Napoleon and the young siko that happened at that time but any case the um uh By the time um in uh in 1812 uh sodono entered the echo po technique and was sort of off being uh educated in was off in college basically Napoleon had been defeated in Moscow and was sort of on the retreat and uh by after a couple of years um uh when when um uh Harris was under siege and um uh at that point and siko kind of in 1814 left the AEL po technique and in those days the EOL po technique was it was in in in large part a um uh a military training operation and uh the the students there went off to to fight um and uh um and and siko was was one of those and um he then kind of joined equ the equivalent of the core of engineers um and uh uh was was a military engineer basically um having grad basically graduated from college now uh so for a while he was just doing the thing of being a military engineer there's not a lot that's known about his life at that time 1820 uh Napoleon's out the king is back uh Lazar Koo is out uh went off to place in Germany um uh during the time that siko had been kind of military engineer he was sort of a favored military engineer because people knew that his his dad was famous and all this kind of thing but um by the time the King was back he was out of favor he was sent to sort of random Garrison Duty and uh pretty soon he was retired to Paris at half pay that was 1820 so at that point he kind of he was living um in this uh apartment which had been owned by his father in Paris and he was hanging out at various colleges around Paris learning various kinds of things uh particularly interest in physics and economics and um he was uh visiting factories trying to learn about industry things like this um apparently uh the the biggest interaction that he had with Laz Lazar Kano at that time I mean since after he went off to college in 1812 Lazar Kano was sort of out of the picture as far as sadik Kano was concerned but in 1821 he spent a bunch of time with Laz Lazar Cano in magniberg I think um in uh in in Germany and um uh exactly what what was discussed at that time will be interesting in to know presumably Lazaro and and siko would discussed thermodynamics or discussed heat engines and so on because that will have been a topic of interest and it's also known that Lazar Koo kind of encouraged siko to study economics and made the statement that there would be a mathematics of Economics that would emerge and that might be a good thing to study well in 1823 Lazar Cano died hipolit who had been with Lazar Kano moved back to Paris moved in with sik Kano and uh and then sadik Kano started writing this book and apparently he he gave it to hippolite cono to read Because hippolite cono was not technically educated and uh he thought that he would check that it was sort of accessible to the general reader well and uh so as I say after that book I mean siko pretty much hang out on his own doing various kinds of research there's evidence that he was at least interested in doing a bunch of physical experiments um and and then he died uh um eight years later well let's talk about um the uh um what we know of so so that's kind of the interaction between Lazar Kano and siko Koo as a person brle was known about him eventually uh pretty much 50 years after he died U hipolit cono wrote a biographical sketch of um oiko and let me um let me tell you a little bit about what that said see if I this up um a moment here uh um [Music] um um it's rather a Charming biographical sketch and then um uh let's see here we go it's about the life of siko as the life of s sadono was says hippolite koono uh not marked by any notable event his biography would have occur occupied only a few lines but a scientific work by him after remaining long in obscurity brought again to light many years after his death has caused his name to be placed among those of the great inventors in regard to his person his mind his character nothing whatever has been known since there remains a witness of his private life life the sole witness that is hipolit Koo has he not a duty to F fulfill ought he not to satisfy the natural and legitimate interest which attaches to any man whose work has deserved a portion of Glory Nicholas Leonard Leonard Sadi cono was born on June 1st 1796 in the smaller Luxembourg uh this was that part of the palace pal to luxemborg where our father then dwelt as a member of the directory um this sort of executive committee I suppose of of of France our father had a predilection for the name of Sadi which recalled to his mind ideas of wisdom and poetry his first born had borne this name and despite the fate of this poor child who lived but a few months he called the second also Sai in memory of the celebrated Persian poet and moralist scarcely year had passed when the prescription which included the director obliged him to give up um his life or at least his Liberty to the conspirators of the frador a mother carried her son far from the palace in which violation of law had just triumphed uh so this was one of the coup stories she fled to St Omar with her family while her husband was exiled to Switzerland and then to Germany our mother often said to me thy brother was born in the midst of the cares and agitations of grandeur thou you hippolite in the calm of an obscure Retreat your constitutions show this difference of origin so hippolite Caro was born about five years after sadono my brother is's referring to sadono in fact was of delicate Constitution he increased his strength later by means of varied and judicious bodily exercises he was of medium size endowed with extreme sensibility and at the same time with extreme energy more than reserved almost rude but singularly courageous on occasion when he felt himself to be contending against Injustice nothing could restrain him the following is an anecdote and illustration the directory had given place to the consulate carau after two years of Exile that slosar cono uh returned to his country and was appointed minister of War bonapart at the same time was still in favor with the Republicans he remembered that carau had assisted him in the beginning of his military career and he resumed the intimate relation which had existed between them during the directory when the minister went to Malazan to work with the first console so that's when uh Lazaro had gone to work with uh Napoleon who themed himself as first conso he often took with him his son then about four years old to stay with Madame bonapart who is greatly attached to him she was one day with some other ladies in a small boat on a pond the ladies rowing the boat themselves when bonapart unexpectedly appearing amused himself by picking up stones and throwing them near the boat spattering water on the fresh tlets of the rowers the the ladies dared not manifest their displeasure but the little sadii having looked on the affair for some time suddenly placed himself boldly before the Conqueror of Morango Napoleon and threatening him with his fist he cried Beast of a first console will you stop tormenting those ladies bonapart at the unexpected attack stopped and looked in astonishment at the child then he was seized with a fit of laughter in which all the spectators of the scene joined kind of sounds like Napoleon was a bit of a jerk there anyway uh at another time when the minister that's Lazar Cano wishing to return to Paris sought his son who had been left with Madame bonapart it was discovered that he had run away they found him a long way off in a mill the mechanism of which he was trying to understand this desire had been in the child's mind for days for and the honest Miller not knowing who he was was kindly answering all his questions curiosity especially in regard to mechanics and physics was one of the essential traits of s's mind on account of this disposition so early manifested Koo did not hesitate that's laar cono did not hesitate to give a scientific direction to the studies of his son he was able to undertake the task himself when the mon monarchal Tendencies of the new government had determined him to retire for a few months only s followed the course of mus bordon at the shalaman leay to prepare himself for the poly technique um the pupil made rapid progress he was just 16 years old when he was admitted to the E po technique 24th on the list I think this is a tradition in France everybody takes exams and there are ranks of everything so I guess sik Ono was the 24th in that year I'm curious he was the first this was in 1812 the following year he left it first in artillery but he was considered too young for the school okay for the artillery School continued his his uh this is more details about his schooling um let's see uh the um uh this is various efforts of the Polytechnic School of the students of the poly Technic school to enter uh the the war effort um things have changed I suppose um let's see and then meanwhile his his father Lazar cono was was by that point themed as general Cano um and uh uh wow so I guess I guess General cono um in 1814 was was uh was pretty seriously in the military business um is it anvers apparently defending against the Confederate English prussians and swedes where the French flag yet floated when he wrote in 1814 uh this is Lazar Koo writing to Sadi Koo my dear study I have learned with extreme pleasure that the Battalion of the Polytechnic school has distinguished itself and you have performed your first military exploits With Honor when I am recalled I shall be very glad if the minister of War will give you permission to come to me you will become acquainted with a fine country in a beautiful city where I've had the satisfaction of remaining in peace while disaster has overwhelmed so many places so siko did indeed go to anvas and then back to to Paris um let's see uh there's a lot of stuff about the all the Winds of political change and how Lazar Kano and sadano kind of um uh um uh navigated that but um this is now about 1823 when Lazaro had died and hippolite Koo is writing when two years later death took from us this revered father and I returned alone to France I found s devoting himself to his scientific studies which he alternated with the culture of the Arts in this way also his tastes had marked out for him an original Direction but no one was more opposed than he to the traditional and the conventional on his music desk were seen only the compositions of Lully I have no idea who that was that he studied and the conery of viotti which he executed on his table was seen only Pascal molier or La Fontaine and he knew his favorite books almost by heart I call this direction original because it was anterior to the artistic and literary movement which preceded the revolution of 1830 as to the sympathy of s for the author of The provincials it was not due to only to the respect of the young mathematician for one of the Masters of Science but his devoutly religious mind regarded with horror hypocrisy and hypocrites appreciating the useful and the Beautiful s frequented the Museum of the lra and the Italian theater as well as the Jan de plant and the conservat desart mettier uh music was almost a passion for him he probably inherited this from our mother who was an excellent pianist um who and who learned from various distin people not content with being able to play well on the violin s carried to Great length his theoretical studies his insatiable intellect moreover would not allow him to remain a stranger to any branch of knowledge he diligently followed the course of the college to France and of the soan of the eamin of the museum and of the bibliotech he visited the workshops factories I guess with eager interest and made himself familiar with the processes of manufacturer mathematical Sciences natural history industrial art political economy all of these he cultivated with equal ardor I've seen him not only practice as an amusement but searched theoretically into gymnastics fencing swimming dancing and even skating in even these things s acquired a superiority which astonished Specialists when by chance he forgot himself enough to speak of them but the satisfaction of his own mind was the only aim that he sought he had such a repugnance to Bringing himself forward that in his intimate conversations with a few friends he kept them ignorant of the treasures of science which he had accumulated they never knew of more than a small part of them um how was it that he determined to formulate his ideas about the Motive Power of heat and especially to published them I shall ask myself this question I who lived with him in the little apartment where our father was coni confined in the rud Park Royale while the police of the first res restoration were threatening him anxious to be perfect clear Sade made me read some ancients that that his his writing would be perfectly clear s made me hippolite reads some passages of his manuscript in order to convince himself that it will be understood by persons occupied with other studies perhaps a solitary life in small garrisons in the work room and in the chemical laboratory had increased his natural reserve in small companies however he was not at all taciturn he took part voluntarily in the gayest plays abandoning himself to Li L chat the time passed in laughing is well spent he once wrote his language was at times full of wit Keen without malice original without eccentricity sometimes paradoxical but without other pretension than that of an innocent activity of intelligence he had a very warm heart under a cold Banner he was obliging and devoted sincere and true in his dealings towards the end of 1826 that's after the publication of of uh his book a new Royal ordinance had having obliged the staff lieutenants to return to the ranks s asked and obtained a return to the engineer Corps in which he received the following year as his rank of seniority the grade of Captain so he went back to being a working military engineer military service however weighed upon him jealous of his Liberty in 1828 a couple years later he laid aside his uniform that he might be free to come and go at will he took advantage of his leisure to make Journeys and to visit our principal centers of Industry he uh frequently visited clemon dor professor at uh uh the um uh conservat Des Art M um the school of of I guess that's engineering arts and Engineering right um arts and matters okay this is my my poor French um who had made great advances desor had made great advances and applied chemist istry person once's heard of even today M Des willingly took counsel with him he was a native of borgon a family country which circumstance I believe brought them together so okay it was before this period in 1824 that Sadi had published his reflexion pance mric the the reflections on the Motive Power of heat he had seen how little progress had been made in the theory of machines in which this power was employed he had ascertained that the improvements made in their Arrangement were affected tentatively and almost by chance he comprehended that comprehended that in order to raise the important art above empiricism and to give it the rank of a science it was necessary to study the phenomenon of the production of motion by heat from the most General point of view independently of any mechanism of any special agent and such had been the thought of his life did he foresee that this small brochure will become the foundation of a new science he must have attached much important much importance to it to publish it and bring himself out of his voluntary obscurity in fact as his working notes prove he perceived the existence existing relation between heat and mechanical work and after having established the principle to which sant's scientists I guess have given his name he devoted himself now this is again super confusing because he's hyppolit Koo is talking about having established the principle that sad Cano had established to which people have given the name of Koo but in fact the thing that was called koo's principle was something that Lazar Koo had invented to do with the operation of abstract machines it was not there wasn't really a koo's principle that was a different that was a different thing just one of these yet another one of these confusions any case the the as hyppolit cono says establish EST enable him to establish with certainty the second principle which that of equivalence which he already clearly divined thermodynamics was established from that time I think hippolite con I was a bit confused here but these researchers were rudely interrupted by a great event another piece of political turbulance the revolution of July 1830 it's hard for me to keep track of all these Revolutions in France at that time s welcomed it enthusiastically not however it is evident as a personal Advantage several old members of the convention convention directory there all sorts of names I I I'm sure I would know if I knew my French history better uh several old members of the convention were still living even of those who had become celebrated um no favor of the new government was accorded them to the uh let's see um various kinds of commentary about the politics of the time um let's see however it may be some of those about him vaguely question my brother that's siko as to his Desires in case one of us should be called to the Chamber of peers of which Koo had been a member Koo Lazar Koo so in other words there was you know would would um Would S Koo somehow help out his friends or his brother if they became members of parliament basically in 1815 um oh no which which members of parliament which Lazar cono had been a member of Parliament in 1815 we had on this occasion a brief conference brief meeting unknown to us both this distinction could be offered only to a title in some sort of in some sort hereditary we could not accept it without forsaking the principles of cono uh okay so so the point being made here was that Lazar cono in 1815 had be a member of Parliament and uh hippolite Koo wondered if that meant that he had a right to also be a member of parliament but apparently this could only be done if there was some kind of hereditary title which they couldn't accept without forsaking the principles of Kono another principle of cono not about abstract machines not about thermodynamics this is a principle that um was a principle of the um uh that was combating the heredity of the purage the paternal opinion therefore came to Second our distaste for the proposition and dictated our reply s frequented frequented the popular reunions at this period without forsaking his role of a simple Observer nevertheless he was when occasion demanded a man of prompt and energetic action one incident will suffice to prove this and to show the sanad which characterized him on the day of the funeral of General Lamar later a miserable of Fame Sadi was walking thoughtfully in the vicinity of the Insurrection Riot that had been going on a Horseman preceding a company and who was evidently intoxicated passed along the streak on the gallop brandishing his saber and striking down the passes by sounds rather terrible sard darted forward cleverly avoided the weapon of the soldier seized him by the leg threw him to the Earth and laid him in the gutter then continued on his way to escape from the cheers of the crowd amazed at this daring deed so before 1830 s had formed part of the reunion poly technique industry made up of old pupils of Co Pol technique with a plan to study in common after 1830 he was a member of a similar Association um and uh and I think um let's see so this this goes on to talk about the hopes of the Democracy meanwhile seeming to be in abeyance Sadi devoted himself a new to study and pursued his scientific labors with all the greater energy as he brought to bear upon them the political order now so completely repressed so he was according to hipolit cono who I'm not sure is completely to be trusted on this issue Soo kind of had very definite political views that uh you know were sometimes the ones that were in favor sometimes not so he says of sadono he undertook profound researches on the physical properties of gases and Vapors and especially on their elastic tensions unfortunately the tables which he prepared from his comparative exper ments were not completed but happily the excellent works of Victor Reno um so remarkable for their accuracy of Supply to science in this respect the blanks of which sard Koo was conscious now in the small world that it was Victor ragno um was the person in whose lab William Thompson ended up working in the 1840s that led him to the connection with cono that led him to start talking about thermodynamics so this then goes on to say hippolite cono goes on to say about s cono his successive application affected his health towards the end of June 1832 feeling temporarily better he wrote gay to one of his friends who had written several letters to him my delay this time is not without excuse I have been sick for a long time in a very wearisome way I've had an inflammation of the lungs followed by scarlet fever perhaps you know what this horrible disease is I had to remain 12 days in bed without sleep or food without any occupation amusing myself with leeches that was at that time a a uh sort of a that was one of one of the medical um uh medical interventions of the time was put leeches on yourself and have them suck your blood and that was thought to be a a good thing he says anyway without any occupation amusing myself with leeches with drinks with bars and other toys out of the same shop this little diversion is not yet ended for I am still very feeble this letter was written at the end of July as it say 19 32 there was a relapse then brain fever presumably in sephtis I suppose um then finally hardly recovering from so many violent Ines which had weakened him morally and physically s s was carried off in a few hours on August 24th 1832 by an attack of chera towards the last as if from a dark presentiment he had given much attention to the prevailing EP epidemic following its course with the attention and penetration that he gave to everything so in early epidemiologist I suppose Sadi Kano died in the Vigor of life in the brightness of a career that he bade fair to run with Glory leaving memory of profound esteem and affection in the hearts of many friends sir his copy books filled with memoranda attest the activity of his mind the variety of his knowledge his love of humanity his clear Sentiments of justice and of Liberty now again let me let me comment that hipolit Koo by this time 50 years after after the after sadik Koo died um by this point hippolite Koo was a serious politician himself and had become minister of Education in France so there's a certain uh sort of license of back projection I suppose of uh you know the the importance of justice and Liberty and so on attributed to his brother so it's it's a little unclear to what extent that was that was something that could really be said to to to be there in siko who who as as I say was was seems to have been a pretty uh keep to himself kind of person anyway we can follow there in in these notes the traces of all his various studies but the only work that he actually completed is that which is published it will suffice to preserve his name from Ain his uh moral character has other claims on our recognition our only ambition here hippolite cono says is to present a sketch of it but much better than through the perusal of these few pages siko can be appreciated by reading the thoughts scattered through his memoranda which are to be carefully collected there are many practical rules of conduct which he records for himself many observations that he desires to fix in his memory sometimes an impression that has just come to him grave or gay sometimes though too rarely a trace of ill humor directed against men or Society he never thought that these notes the outpouring of his mind will be read by ey other eyes than his own or that they would some day be used to judge him I find in them for my part touching analogies with the thoughts of my father hites father lozaro although the father and son had unfortunately lived almost always apart by the force of circumstances okay so that was hippolite Koo writing about siko now I suppose the last thing maybe I'll I'll talk about is um is sano's unpublished notes that were left over that were not burnt when he died of chera I I should comment that um uh hippolite cono as I mentioned had a son who he named siko who became president of France at the end of the 1800s um that sadono was uh um had The Misfortune of Being assassinated um in 1894 by an Italian Anarchist um and uh at the time uh that siko one of the things he done in France was to try to Outlaw the French anarchists but he was then killed by an Italian Anarchist um and the anarchists ironically enough were were organizing themselves so to speak so uh let's just uh kind of a little bit to finish off here and I'm happy to try and have some discussion after this but let's to finish off let's let's have a look at some of um sano's unpublished notes which as his brother hippolite points out didn't really intend anybody ever to uh to read see if I can find these here so there are number of pages of notes and they make kind of interesting reading um here we go that they're cataloged into various different sections so starts off by talking about daily occupations so here are some sort of aphorisms of son cono plan in the morning the the work of the day and reflect in the evening on what has been done it's kind of a early personal analytics Enthusiast it seems carry when walking a book and a notebook to preserve the ideas and a piece of bread in order to prolong the walk if need be so he walking Enthusiast like like some of the rest of us I I just have a little piece of paper in my pocket he was uh went further and had a whole notebook siko says vary the mental and bodily exercises with dancing horsemanship swimming fencing with sword and with saber shooting with gun and Pistol skating the slings stilts tennis bowls hop on one foot cross the arms jump high and far turn on one foot popped against the wall exercise and shirt in the evening to get up at perspiration before going to bed turning joinery gardening reading while walking de really that's interesting it's uh must have been an early person who is uh doing what one sometimes does today reading one's phone while one walks reading while walking declamation singing violin versification it's writing writing verse musical composition 8 hours of sleep a walk on awakening before and after eating a uh uh a great um sobriety eat slowly little and often avoid idleness and useless meditation quite a quite a health note actually he goes on other aphorisms adopt good habits when I change my method of life never turn to the Past unless to Enlighten the future regrets are useless form resolutions in advance in order not to reflect during action then obey thyself blindly the promptitude of resolutions must most frequently Accords with their Justice not quite sure what that means um yield frequently to the first inspiration too much meditation on the same subject Ends by suggesting the worst part or at least causes loss of precious time suffer slight disagreeables without seeming to perceive them but repulse decisively anyone who evidently intends to injure or humiliate you one should never feain a character that he has not or affect a character that he cannot sustain let's see make intimate acquaintances only with much circumspection perfect confidence in those who have been thoroughly tested nothing to do with others interesting principle question thyself to learn what will please others I guess that's empathy for the possibly slightly spectum type person no useless discourse all conversations which do not serve to Enlighten others or ourselves or others to interest the heart or amuse the mind is hurtful seems not to have been into small talk it seems ah yes this is a good one speak a little of what you know and not at all of what you do not why not say more frequently I do not know speak to everyone of that which he knows best this will put him at ease and be profitable to you boy I believe in some of these principles abstain from all Pleasant pleasantry which could wound employ only expressions of the most perfect propriety listen attentively to your interlocutor and so prepare him to listen in the same way to your reply and predispose him in favor of your arguments show neither passion nor weariness in discussion never direct an argument against anyone if you know some particulars against your adversary you have a right to make him aware of it uh to keep him under control but proceed with discretion and do not wound him before others when discussion degenerates into dispute be silent this is not this is not to declare yourself beaten how much modesty adds to Merit a man of talents who conceals his knowledge is like a branch bending on the weight of fruit interesting analogy why try to be witty I would rather be thought stupid and modest than witty and pretentious these are these are interesting comments on a on a on a personality men desire nothing so much as to make themselves envied egotism is the most common and most hated of all vices properly speaking it is the only one which should be hated the pleasures of self-love are the only ones that can really be turned into ridicule I do not know why these two expressions good sense and Common Sense are confounded there is nothing less common than Good Sense talks about the strain of suffering causes the mind to Decay it's um this is another interesting one um it must be that all honest people are in the galleys only naves are to be met with elsewhere I suppose he's he's saying only the the people working in the in the kitchen are the only people who are honest all the people who are off in High Society are are are not anyway he he goes on and um uh um it's uh he has a comment here which I suppose sadly turned out not to be true life is a short enough passage I am half the journey I will complete the remainder as I can but he didn't live so many more years hope being the greatest of all blessings it is NE necessary in order to be happy to sacrifice the present to the Future let us not be exacting Perfection is so rare the more an object approaches Perfection the more we notice its slightest defects to neglect the opportunity of an innocent pleasure is a loss to ourselves it is to act like a spendthrift by the way I should say that that uh sadik I know uh so far as we know was was always a bachelor and um and and lived lived alone his his whole adult life um he says here do nothing that all the world may not know it's an interesting principle I kind of tend to agree with the the truly wise man is he who loves virtue for its own sake um let's see um various other comments here from sadik ano the laws of war do they say as if War were not the destruction of all laws War has been represented as necessary to prevent the too rapid increase of the population that's an interesting claim but War mows down the flow of the young men while it spares the men disgraced by Nature hence it tends to the degeneration of the species interesting argument uh he also talks about medicine here in some respects medicine is directly opposed to the will of nature which tends to perpetuate the strongest and best of the species and to abandon the delicate to a thousand forms of Destruction this is what occurs among animals and Savage men only the most robust attain the adult age and these only reproduce the species this is kind of a remember this is before uh Darwin's Origin of Species long before um sort of interesting that he's talking about the um uh only the most robust to turn attain adult age I mean this was obviously known but but not emphasized from a science point of view medicine and the AIDS of social State prolong the lives of feeble creatures whose posterity is usually equally feeble among the Spartans barbarous regulations put an end to the existence of malformed infants that the strength and beauty of the race might be preserved such regulations are anti antipathetic it says to our customs nevertheless it might be desirable that we should devote ourselves to the preservation of the human race from the causes of weakness and degeneracy it's an early Eugenics pitch I suppose uh that we don't we don't like very much today the uh the decadence of the Greeks and Romans without change of race proves the influence of Institutions upon customs let's see oh boy this is this is interesting okay so this is a comment about economics according to the system of modern economists it will be desirable that the government should interfere as little as possible in the Commerce and Industry of the country and that's a oh I won't give my own commentary on that um nevertheless we cannot deny that in certain circumstances this intervention of the government in the in Commerce and Industry is very useful taxes says siko are reced by economists as an evil but are necessary evil since they provide for public expenses consequently economists think that if the government possess sufficient revenues in domains for example this in domains for example I'm not sure what that means um uh anyway if the government possessed sufficient revenues the suppression of all taxes will be desirable measure taxes are a means of influencing production and commerce to give them a direction which they would not naturally have taken yes so people say such an influence May undoubtedly have disagreeable consequences if the taxes are imposed without discrimination or exclusively for a fiscal purpose but is entirely otherwise if wisdom and fact preside at their institution definitely a a a definite political point of view by mure Koo um in the uh probably around around 1830 a tax on the rent of a farm will be much better than a tax on the land itself Proprietors then could only avoid taxes by themselves improving their property as it is they merely collect the rents and usually employ their Surplus in unproductive expenditure while the proprietary Farmers voluntarily devote Theirs to the Improvement of the land this is definitely a nudge people with taxes kind of theory attacks on the farms would then result in the Proprietors themselves working the lands and this would mean better cultivation and improvements which would yield returns indeed but at too remote a period for the tenant it would tend to a division of landed property men of small fortune uniting in the purchase with capitalists who seek only the rent or payment for the land so clearly he was thinking about these kind of dynamics of uh of of of economics and their effect on on policies and so on great capitalists could not themselves cultivate vast extens of land and not wanting to diminish their revenues by renting them would being induced to sell portions suitable for cultivation by their new owners and would then carry their money into new Industrial and Commercial Enterprises so I guess this is a farm your own land kind of theory this is a a uh you know have the founders run the company don't uh don't sell it to private equity and have somebody else run it kind of thing um interesting uh point of view from 1830 the competition of the sellers would cause a momentary fall in the price of the lands and would enable small farmers to become land owners the number of vast states often badly managed would then be diminished and considerable fortunes Changing Hands more easily would naturally pass into those which would be most likely to increase their value Proprietors becoming cultivators to escape the taxes would settle in the country where their presence would disseminate intelligence and comfort their revenues per or spent unprofitably would then pay expenses and improvements on their property boy I don't know what the what the uh the KL Marx version of some of these kinds of thoughts would have been in in later years well anyway the establishment of such tax would certainly find many opponents among Proprietors landed non- cultivators who form in fact the influential personel in the state for it is they who usually make the laws um yeah well so so he goes on this is this is definitely a um uh a certain political point of view um it's um uh a lot of detail about his scheme for for taxes on farms and so on um and and some terms I don't actually understand here uh let's see Proprietors of lands then after all have to bear the mutation taxes I'm not sure what that means um some piece of Taxation that maybe has survived under a different name all increase of these taxes are loss for them and these taxes are heavier on the small Proprietors than on the large because their changes are more frequent oh I see that must be um uh mutation taxes must be um uh my gosh the the taxes one pays one when Real Estate is transferred it has different names in different countries the tax on the farms on the country would bear more heavily on larg States etc etc etc anyway it it kind of goes on uh these These are again the unpublished notes of sadik anos he didn't expect anybody to read them but it gives some some uh impression of what his um uh what his point of view was so there are a few thoughts here about religion men attribute to chance those events of the causes of which they are ignorant if they succeed in divining these causes chance disappears to say that a thing has happened by chance is to say that we have not been able to foresee it I do not myself believe that any other acceptation can be given to this word what to an ignorant man is Chance cannot be chaned to one better instructed if human reason is incapable of discovering the mysteries of divinity why has not Divinity Divinity God basically made human reason more clear cited ask sadik Ono God cannot punish man for not believing when he could so easily have enlightened him and convinced him if God is absolutely good why should he punish The Sinner for all eternity since he does not lead him to good or give him an example according to the doctrine of the church God resembles a sphinx posing posing proposing enigmas and devouring those who cannot guess them the church attributes to God all human passions anger desire for vengeance curiosity tyranny partiality idleness if Christianity were pruned of all which is not Christ this religion would be the simplest in the world he says what motives have influenced the writers who have rejected all religious systems is it the conviction that the ideas that which they oppose are all injurious to society have they not rather included in in the same prescription religion and the abuse of it the belief in an all powerful being who loves us and watches over us gives to the Mind great strength to endure Misfortune a religion suited to the soul and preached by men worthy of respect would exercise the most salutary influence upon society and Customs well then there are a bunch of unpublished notes about mathematics physics and so on um there's uh something about Collision of bodies um let's see and the fact that he knows that when there's a collision of bodies there is expenditure of Motive Power uh and this is um so as I recall one of the things that comes out in these notes in these notes about physics that were written uh probably several years after his book from 1824 soikano is beginning to doubt the caloric theory of heat um even though his his his great work had been been based on the caloric theory of heat uh the is um uh is kind of was was there so he comments um he says when a hypothesis no longer suffices to explain phenomena it should be abandoned this is the case with a hypothesis which regards caloric as matter as a subtle fluid the experimental facts tending to destroy this Theory are as follows the development of heat by percussion or the friction of bodies experimen by Rumford friction of wheels on their spindles on the axles experiments to be made oh I see he perhaps he's imagining doing those experiments here the elevation of temperature takes place at the same time in the body rubbing and the body rubbed moreover they do not change perceptibly in form or nature and he says to be proved thus heat is produced by motion if it is matter it must be admitted that the matter is created by motion so he's beginning to realize that this idea that heat is a form of matter a caloric fluid doesn't make sense he says when an air pump is worked and at the same time air is emitted into the receiver the temperature remains constant and the receiver remains constant on the outside consequently the air compressed by the pumps must rise in temperature above the air outside etc etc etc um thus again he says heat has been created by motion this is all his evidence for the inadequacy of the caloric theory of of of heat uh he talks again about experiments he can make um and uh uh let's see we may be allowed to express here a hypothesis in regard to the nature of heat present light is generally regarded as the result of a vibratory movement of the Ethereal fluid light produces heat or at least accompanies the radiating heat and moves with the same velocity as heat so that he's talking about infrared radiant heat radiating heat is then a vibratory movement it would be ridiculous to suppose that it is an emission of matter while the light which accompanies it could be only a movement in other words he said says radiant heat seems to be something just like light as he's describing it a vibratory motion of the Ethereal fluid that was at a time when when people imagined that electromagnetic waves would be would be something that were um uh that um I mean that that wasn't understood until much later but the concept was that that light was kind of a a a uh a vibration in the in The Ether that that pervades all of space or was imagined at the time to all of space much as sound as a vibration in something like air so anyway so he says so it seems silly to think that basically radiating heat that if ordinary heat is a form of matter that radiating heat is more like light that it seems like those two forms of heat should be sort of more the same kind of thing okay so then he says could a motion that of radiating heat produce matter per en caloric no undoubtedly it can only produce a motion heat is then the result of a motion then it is plain that it could be produced by the consumption of Motive Power and that it could produce this power all the other phenomena composition and decomposition of bodies passage to the gaseous State specific heat equilibrium heat it's more or less easy transmission its constancy in experiments with the calorimeter could be explained by this hypothesis would it be difficult to explain why in the development of Motive Power by heat a cold body is necessary why in consuming the heat of a warm body motion cannot be produced it appears very difficult to penetrate into the real essence of bodies to avoid erroneous reasoning it will be necessary to investigate carefully the source of our knowledge in regard to the nature of bodies their form their forces to see what the Primitive motions Notions are to see what form of Impressions they are derived to see how is raised successively to different degrees of abstraction so he's basically saying what is matter made of that wasn't known at the time people had imagined things like atoms from Antiquity but at the time 1830 or so it wasn't known what matter was made of and he says to understand so the relationship between radiant heat heat light and so on one needs to know more about what matter is made of which is a very very uh perceptive comment if heat the result of a vibratory motion is heat the result of a vibratory motion of molecules the ding you got it so if this is so quantity of heat is simply quantity of Motive Power very good in other words he's saying he's asking the question this caloric fluid thing maybe that's all nonsense maybe there is no matter is heat really the result of a vibratory motion of molecules if this is so he says quantity of heat is simply quantity of Motive Power so that by the way is already not a trivial kind of thing to connect because as I say at the time when he was writing this people didn't know that heat was a form of energy so but he's saying if so the the quantity of heat is simply a quantity of Motive Power as long as Motive Power is employed to produce vibratory movements the quantity of heat must be unchangeable which seems to follow from experiments with the calorimeter but when it passes into movements of sensible extent the quantity of heat can no longer remain constant in other words when the I mean really this this this note he's got it I mean that's the correct theory of what heat is that heat is these vibratory movements of the molecules and and when it it is only at times that it passes into the into movements of sensible extent that is movements you can sense that is kind of systematic motion mechanical work so that that paragraph is really really quite uh you know kind of nailed what's really going on with with heat and ultimately with thermodynamics but of course this was in unpublished notes which weren't found for 50 years after the after koo's death by which point other people had come in and and and thought about these kinds of things can examples be found with the production of motor power with the actual consumption of heat it seems we may find production of heat with consumption of motor power re-entrance of air into vacuum so he's thinking about how would you get evidence of this idea that heat is really uh the the Motive Power associated with the vibratory motion of molecules um he's talking about what is the production of Heat and the combinations of substances chemical reactions and so on what is radiant caloric uh liquefaction of bodies um yeah he's talking about liquefaction of bodies solidification of liquids crystallization are they not forms of combination of integrant molecules yep that's true supposing heat due to a vibratory movement how can the passage from the solid or the liquid to the gaseous State be explained that's cool well yeah that that got figured out when Motive Power is produced by the passage of heat from a body from body a to body B is the quantity of this heat which arrives at B if it is not the same as that which has been taken from a if a portion of it has been consumed to produce Motive Power the same whatever may be the substance employed to realize the Motive Power in other words when all these if if heat is this form of vibrations why is it that sort of it works the same in all different materials is there any way of using more heat in the production of Motive Power and of causing less to reach body B could we even utilize it entirely allowing none to go to body B in other words could we take all the heat energy that's in one body and and make it go to to Mechanical Work If This Were possible Motive Power could be created without consumption of combustible and by mere destruction of the heat of bodies so there he's kind of denying the second law of Thermodynamics he's saying if this was possible if we could take all the heat in a body and turn it to Mechanical work could that be could that be something that would happen if that could happen then the second of thermodynamics doesn't doesn't work is it absolutely certain that steam after having operated an engine and produced Motive Power can raise the temperature of the water of condensation as if it had been conducted directly into it so that's sort of thinking about the experiments here reasoning shows us that there cannot be loss of living force or which is the same thing of Motive Power so living force was the visva was the term that um I think liet had given to kinetic energy bit of a confusing term um if the bodies act upon each other without directly touching each other without actual Collision now everything leads us to believe that the molecules of bodies are always separated from each other by some space that they are never actually in contact if they touched each other they would remain United and consequently change form so he saying molecules are he's imagining that the molecules and substances are never actually stuck together as they kind of a little bit are in solids um but he's imagining they're always just have space between them and are bouncing around if the molecule the bodies are never in close contact with each other whatever may be the forces which separate or attract them there can never be either production or loss of Motive Power in nature so in other words he's saying if the things can stick together if there's binding energy what we know call bounding binding energy that can take away from the kinetic energy but if if what's happening is the molecules are always just bouncing elastically then that then they must keep the same uh energy living Force this via this power must be as in unchangeable in quantity as matter that's an interesting statement because he's basically saying this thing that is essentially energy must be as unchangeable in quantity as matter which is kind of speaking to the conservation of energy which was a principle that was understood only years after this well at least a decade after this then the direct reestablishment of equilibrium of the caloric and its reestablishment with the production of Motive Power will be essentially different from each other he he says is simply Motive Power rather motion which has changed form that's a good thing to say it is a movement among the particles of bodies wherever there is destruction of Motive Power there is at the same time production of heat in quantity exactly proportional to the quantity of Motive Power destroyed boy that's pretty good that's that's energy conservation reciprocally wherever there is destruction of heat there is production of Motive Power he says very cool we can then establish the general propos I that Motive Power is in quantity invariable in nature that it is correctly speaking neither produced or destroyed it is true that it changes form that is it produces sometimes one sort of motion sometimes another but it is never annihilated so that's that's that's pretty good that's that's really conservation of energy uh before um people like juel and so on started started talking about that so he has some some calculations here According to some ideas I formed on theory of heat the production of a unit of Motive Power necessitates the destruction of 2.7 units of heat well that of course depends a lot on on um on the units that you're using and he's talking about unit of Motive Power the Dame which I've never heard of representing the weight of one cubic meter of water raised to the height of one meter so that's a that's a quantity that a system of units we don't have anymore well anyway so then he talked about various experiments he might do experiments to be made on surface tension etc etc etc but I'm I'm pretty impressed with the fact that he really seems to have figured out kind of the molecular theory of heat there um but sadly didn't tell anybody about it at the time and it it died with him so uh let's see there's some uh so that's that's kind of the um uh the story of what Kano said I'll just show you a couple more things and then I want to comment on sort of the uh the history of science uh resonance with all of this um so just to give a sense let me see here um just to give a sense of sort of the other uh things happening in thermodynamics at this time so these are sort of some big figures of thermodynamics there Sano at the beginning here uh and um uh sort of after Sano there was clausius Kelvin who we mentioned before and then Maxwell boltzman Gibbs um all coming in later these are sort of the people who established thermodynamics and the second law of Thermodynamics um by the 1860s or so and um so just to give a sense of of what happened from koo's work um let me just show you a few other items here so uh this was pages from Caro's books that I showed earlier um this was I mentioned in 18 the 18 uh 34 um Emil clap um had sort of written his version of what Koo said and then included this diagram which is kind of the first sort of diagrammatic presentation of the cono cycle sort of the idealized cycle for a steam engine and by the way in karon's work um he's starting to use notation like DQ and so on for the change of of uh uh the absolute quantity of heat as he calls it Q um and which is the same symbol that we use today to represent uh quantity of heat so that was all established um as claperon tried to sort of more mathematically present what Koo had done so this this is now Kelvin um this is I mentioned that Kelvin had uh had really been introduced to Koo by the by his desire to make a thermodynamic scale of temperature a scale of temperature which didn't depend on the details of sort of the expansion of U of one material or another this is on an absolute thermometric scale founded on koo's theory of the Motive Power of heat um and uh that's that's um an early work um uh um yeah so he says here published in 1824 in a work entitled Reflection by um M es carau having never met with the original work says William Thompson later Lord Kelvin at the time it is only through a paper by m claperon on the same subject published in the journal deol po technique um and translated into the first volume of Taylor's scientific Memoirs that the author has become acquainted with koo's Theory in those days uh typically papers in French significant papers in French there were uh journals in in English which uh translated those those papers fairly rapidly into into English so then 1849 I mentioned this before this is uh Kelvin basically giving an account of koo's theory of Motive Power of heat so this is kind of the recapitulation by Kelvin of what Cano wrote what Cano had written written in in 1824 this is now uh Kelvin um you know um uh a quarter of a century later kind of recapitulating that and and uh and beginning the kind of clear formulation of the laws of Theron namics uh he says Kelvin says thus it is that thus it is that cono in accordance with the strictest principles of philosophy enters upon the investigation of the theory of the Motive Power of heat so Kelvin is kind of imagining that Koo has kind of based his that that it's all based on Bedrock that there's no kind of intuition involved that it's all based on the strictest principles of philosophy the um uh let's see and then he says um so generally is koo's principle again total confusion about the term koo's principle tacitly admitted as an axiom that its application in this case has never so far as I am aware been questioned by practical Engineers so in other words he's saying um that uh you know it's very circular kind of thing he says carau is based on on on sort of philosophical principles but actually it's really an axiom that we choose arbitrarily but no engineer has ever disputed it but this is the second law of theramic which we're taking as a law of physics even though we're assigning we're saying that the engineers never dis dispute it and then later we imagine that it's a law of physics that necessarily is that way and we argue it so so vehemently that we believe that it explains that the things about kind of the uh the end of the universe and so on and um um uh and and and pretty soon you know Kelvin has convinced himself that um uh that sort of the the second law kind of just has to be that way and and so it so it it stays for for for many years to come with with great confusion over the course of um a century and a half so let's just reflect a little bit on on what cono did and and um kind of the nature of it one of the things that's interesting I think about what Koo did was um sort of wrong Theory right answer the he managed now to be fair to cono as we see from his unpublished notes late in life he gred it he figured out the caloric theory of heat probably wasn't right and that heat really was motion molecules but at the time when the his knowing work that sort of had a historical place was based on the caloric theory of heat that heat was a fluid heat was a form of matter which is not the case but nevertheless the sort of strength of his logical argument was great enough that even though its kind of intuitive Foundation was wrong The Logical argument was correct now I have to say that I find it very interesting that there are things in today's world where and today physics where one sees very close analogies I think one is dark matter dark matter by its name is thought to be a form of matter just as caloric was thought to be a form of matter but caloric heat turned out not to be a form of matter it turned out to be a feature of the microscopic structure of all matter it turned out to be a feature of the the microscopic motion of molecules and so on so it's my own suspicion that dark matter will go the same way we've known that there were anomalies and the way that gravity Works in galaxies and now in lots of other things we've known that for for basically 100 years since the 1930s it's been known that the rotation curves of galaxies aren't accounted for by the Luminous matter and galaxies and so on but yet knowing only about matter particles being the the sort of the the things that we talk about in in fundamental physics people say it must be matter it must be a form of matter it must be dark matter that is causing these essentially gravitational anomalies my guess is that's not true my guess is that in fact History of Science will sort of recapitulate itself and that just as caloric fluid turned out not to be a kind of matter it turned out to be a feature of the microscopic structure of all matter so similarly that dark matter will turn out not to be matter at all but will turn out to be a feature of the microscopic structure of space and in fact in our models of physics space is discrete it's made of actual sort of networks of atoms of space and one can imagine a kind of space-time form of heat in which there are sort of microscopic aspects it's not quite motion because motion is a thing that gets only defined at a much larger scale but essentially microscopic features of the structure of space that lead to the anomalies of gravity that we now call dark matter and it is interesting that thinking of cold dark matter as the thing that produces that gravity has been a correct way or or seems to Accord with experiment in terms of studying cosmology and so on just as the caloric theory of heat seemed to Accord with experiment as a description of how heat worked but in fact the kind of intuitive basis of it is wrong the the the nature of it is wrong so I think it will be with dark matter and my guess is that that what will happen is is really a very close recapitulation that the matter won't matter at all it'll be a feature of sort of the micro structure of the medium now another thing sort of a resonance with today's today's world is this question of just how efficient can things be when when we're looking at um what Koo was interested in was you know how efficient can you make a steam engine what is the the fundamental limits on steam engine efficiency well in today's world we've got other issues of that kind you might be looking at you know machine learning and and uh efficiency there and and the laws for that but I think more physics oriented one's looking at things like Quantum Computing and one's asking questions about sort of what is the ultimate uh ability of a quantum computer what you know can one make a cono like argument for what sort of the ultimate effectiveness of a quantum computer can be there is kind of an idealization it's kind of a Lazaro type stage of study of the quantum mechanics where one has these kind of idealizations of quantum mechanics in which there is sort of a mathematical theory of quantum mechanics and then this process of measurement is something which is kind of a bolt on to that just as in the time of Lazar Cano one knew about kind of the the mechanics of Machinery but when it came to the role of heat in the operation of Machinery that was kind of a bolt-on thing that wasn't really accounted for and so I think that there is a there's sort of this question and we see in quantum computers and so on we see the sort of mystery of the fact that there is a limit there seems to be in practice limits to the efficiency and effect of quantum computers as a result of noise decoherence times things like this when people actually try and build quantum computers and sort of a question of of where do those what are those fundamental limits canone have a theory of those fundamental limits my own guess right now is that perhaps the most interesting thing about Quantum Computing today is what we have leared about fundamental limits on on Quantum measurement I mean the analogy I've been using is imagine you want to make a telescope that's going to look at sand dunes on Mars well you know you could say it's just an engineering problem but we don't have enough resolution to be able to see those sand dunes but in fact as we know from a time around actually the time when Kono was working as we know from uh from defraction we know that in fact there is an ultimate limit on the effectiveness of a telescope that has to do with the angular resolution being proportional to the W length divided by wavelength of the light that's being used in the telescope divided by the diameter of the telescope that there is a a piece of physics which is that ultimate limitation we don't know that piece of physics for Quantum measurement but I think it's a it's a conol like study that has to be done to try and understand that that uh that that thing my own guess is that it will reveal some sort of fundamental physics my my hope is that it will reveal the thing that shows up in our Theory just as there's a speed of light in physical space so there is a a maximum entanglement speed in what we call branchial space the space of quantum branches and it is my hope that that maximum entanglement speed will show up as sort of a constant of nature which is uh uh contributing to this sort of ultimate limit on on Quantum measurement and if we can find the the maximum entanglement speed then that will tell us the elementary time and the elementary length the actual sort of scale of granularity of space and of time in in the universe all right well so to to wrap up here it's um as I say it's the today or at least this week we don't know absolutely to the day is the uh is the 200th anniversary of uh of the publication of sano's uh book on the Motive Power of of of heat and um it's uh and really the launching point for what became the science of thermodynamics also a a certain kind of almost philosophical approach to the derivation of of of results in physics something which had existed before kind of the mathematization of these things in the late 1600s and something which came back again in the work of boltzman and following from that the work of Einstein in 1905 and so on when gives Arguments for for special relativity and so on those are arguments couched in somewhat the same kind of almost philosophical terms that Koo was using and I kind of wonder what the what the line is between Koo and boltzman and there's a clear line from boltzman to Einstein even though they never met um and uh and although Einstein was the was the you know boltzman had long pushed the molecular theory of matter and towards the end of his life had sort of given up and said you know this is uh it's I think his famous quote is something like it you know one man cannot turn back the tide of History and by which he meant the that that um the tide of History was against the molecular theory of matter and Einstein kind of turned that around with his analysis of brownan motion in 1905 all right well I should wrap up there um let's see I'm happy to try and answer questions and things if I can let me just uh take a look at what we have um there's a comment here um from uh from RBS so Caro was the original new kind of Science Guy of his time perhaps so um one can certainly speculate on what would have happened if Koo had uh uh lived longer and what kinds of things he would have invented let's see um Harry comments if you think about it we still mostly live in the steam age most energy we get is steam at some point yeah I suppose the the except for the electrical motors except for um uh I mean that's the that's kind of the transition from fluids to from from physical fluid of molecules bouncing around in in gases to just the motion of electrons and what we might think of as electron gases um Harry is asking why was Caro's book printed with such wasteful borders uh only a few lines per page it it had Fairly generous borders I think that was pretty typical of the time I think books were usually I think still by that time certainly earlier printed books when you bought a book you bought a block of paper and it was up to you to bind that paper and so there was space being left over for The Binding that you would do as the as the purchaser of the book I'm not sure if that was still happening by the time of by 1824 certainly happened earlier than that um Castle comments what does it mean to discuss the heat death of the universe if entropy only pertains to closed systems the heat death of the universe is simply saying that as time goes on what is orderly structure will degrade into kind of just the random motions of molecules I I've sort of pointed this out a bunch of times but with my interpretation of the second law of Thermodynamics as sort of this this thing that is only perceived by computationally bounded observers what one's saying is yes the things that exist today will have been uh sort of ground down into the detailed motions of molecules but the those detailed motions of molecules if we were more sophisticated observers we would say look in that detailed motion of molecules is the whole sort of uh uh is the whole trace of that great civilization that existed you know a billion years earlier so to speak so in other words the fact that we think oh everything has been lost it's just random heat is a consequence of being observers of the kind we are looking only in the aggregate at those molecules and not being able to untangle the sort of computational details of their motion so I think the heat death of the universe which was very strongly believed and talked about by Kelvin and and talked about it kind of theological significance and so on and Kelvin had a lot of sort of uh issues with that because he was kind of a presbyterian who had definite beliefs about the role of God and and so on and so it was a a complicated kind of tangle of of what this meant but it was still it became kind of a a uh for a 100 years more than 100 years it was just one of these things that people just assumed the universe is doomed it's going to eventually just be a bunch of of uh of heat with no structure in it and it's just not really right because it's only no structure to observers like us but by the time we're sort of part of that that heat so to speak and we might be observers different from the way we are observers with for example more computational capability then it's no longer sort of this seemingly structuralist thing let's see uh OBS also there ways to measure the efficiency of stochastic systems using principles derived from koo's work on heat engines I'm not sure I I have to say that that the efficiency of heat engines arguments strangely tangle up the what will later become the kind of notion of entropy and this idea of kind of the states of a system consistent with certain constraints with the particular details of the number of com degrees of freedom in the system carrying a certain amount of energy it kind of Tangles up as as much later thermodynamics does kind of the Notions the informational Notions of entropy which is really an informational concept with the energetic Notions of of heat and so on because we're sort of attaching to every degree of Freedom that's being described by the entropy we're attaching some energy that that attachment of energy to this sort of informational counting of states in entropy is quite unnecessary it's but it's been very confusing to people that the second law has to do with things like temperature and so on it does not the second law is a much more General computational principle that is true of any computationally irreducible system observed by a computationally bounded Observer it has nothing to do with actual molecules the conservation of energy the existence of temperature things like this Harry comments he engines were the AI of their times absolutely they were the they were the thing that were sort of launching new Industries and uh and and making um uh sort of changing the way one thought about things um uh oh people are commenting koo's quotes will be good as tweets yeah P he didn't have Twitter in the 18 in 1830 um let's see uh well gosh um couple more comments here and then probably wrap up here but but um left is commenting how did scientists deem Dark Matter to be a real thing well I mean I think Fritz Vicki was the person who first started talking about it in the 1930s from observation of galaxies and for a while it was like oh I don't really know whether it works that way and it must just be dead stars and so on and so on and so on and then it kind of I would say in the 1980s probably it started to be more of a a thing where you know it's always suspicious when when any area of science says 90% of of what's there we don't we can't account for I mean that's true of when people say 90% of the brain is unused 90% of the genome is unused 90% of the of the content of the universe is unseen these kinds of things it's always a bit suspicious um and uh but I think you know there have been a succession of pieces of evidence about how dark matter behaves I mean the what became the Lambda CDM model the the uh cosmological constant together with cold Dark Matter became sort of the standard model of cosmology by certainly around the year 2000 and sort of there have been there's sort of more detailed measurements there's this particular pair of galaxies that pass through each other and they kind of left behind something which seems like it has gravitational effect seems like it's dark matter or you know it's something something different it's that seems like it must be matter um and there are uh there are discussion from features of the cosmic microwave background particularly the so-called barion acoustic oscillations which are again sort of a thing that behaves like well like cold matter cold matter that has low temperature so that it's not it doesn't have a pressure it's pressureless matter but that doesn't mean it has to be matter but it's just that people have attempted to change the laws of gravity to essentially make deviations from Einstein's uh Einstein's equations which in turn give you things like the inverse Square law of gravity they've attempted to modify those things and the obvious modifications that people have done haven't worked they produce other effects that are not seen now people have not looked at the thing that comes out in our models which is dimension fluctuations the the fluctuations of the dimension of space away from from three and my guess is that one can reformulate general ativity not in terms of curvature change but in terms of Dimension change and that may reveal some kinds of effects that would be only visible on the scale of galaxies and things like this not visible and and and which could account for these sort of anomalies and gravity but we don't really know how that works yet uh let's see Memes asks has anyone ever done further investigation into paper that I wrote long ago with my friend Yan ambon on the thermodynamics of the vacuum yeah well so so that was in oh 1981 I think it was uh when I was still a card carrying particle physicist sort of uh wrote a couple of papers called properties of the vacuum and um uh there was one called mechanical one called electrodynamic and we promised a part three which was the gravitational which was about gravitational properties of the vacuum we never wrote part three um we got many many requests over the years for part three and I think I finally figured out a year or two ago what part three should talk about but at the time back in the beginning of the 1980s was a time when when properties gravitational properties of the vacuum were definitely things that were sort of emerging through studies of Hawking radiation black holes other kinds of things like this but um we didn't sort of know how that worked I think we now more do know how that works and I keep on telling uh Yan ambor that we should uh uh I keep on saying let's spend a weekend and try and write part three and I don't think he takes me seriously because uh uh you know he's an academic and academics don't write papers you know substantial papers on a weekend it's only it's only crazy people like me who uh well who've spent decades building tools and so on that uh it becomes even conceivable to actually do significant scientific work in a in a weekend but any case the um uh if you ask what H what became of those papers you know the most interesting thing that became of them they were studying kind of what happens to a little piece of vacuum that's put in a box and actually a chap called Robert forward pointed out a few years quite a few years after we' written those papers said you know what the way that you set this up there's been a the um as you as you change the shape of this box by the way the big effect is the thing called the Casmir effect which is that if you have two metal plates two big metal plates um and they're very close together and it's all in the vacuum there's a small force of attraction between those metal plates the origin of that is that in Quantum field Theory there are always vacuum fluctuations there are always zero point fluctuations of the of the field of the for example the electromagnetic field there's always little electron positron pairs that are that are coming up and and and disappearing in short amounts of time there is there are always these fluctuations in electromagnetic field but it turns out between the plates you're kind of the presence of those plates is cutting out certain low frequency long wavelength uh fluctuations of the field so there are fewer fluctuations of the field between the plates than there are outside the plates and that's sort of why there's a force of attraction as even in the vacuum between those plates cuz sort of the vacuum isn't quite the same between the plates CU you've cut out these low frequency modes by the fact that the plates are there well that argument about you know that sort of intuitive argument doesn't quite work because if you have a a metal box so to speak that's a whole threedimensional box actually the force the chasmier effect goes to PR a pressure outwards rather than a pressure inwards people for a little while thought that maybe the kmar effect could could account for kind of a mechanical model of the electron where the electron will be sort of held together by kmir forces even though electromatic forces would tend to make it fall apart but doesn't work because the intuitive argument I gave isn't quite right when you analyze the three-dimensional modes of the electromagnetic field which is what Yan and I did back in 1981 and um we kind of analyzed it for arbitrary shapes of boxes and what Robert Ford then pointed out was if you take our results on these shapes of boxes you kind of squid them around you will discover that there's a closed cycle very much like Caro's cycle a closed cycle of of Act of action to this machine in the vacuum so to speak if you change the shape of this box um in in the vacuum you can go through a closed cycle and extract energy from the vacuum and so he wrote some papers he was also a science fiction writer and I think he put this in his science fiction books as well but he wrote papers about kind of extracting energy from Zero Point Energy of the vacuum and it even became there was some studies of kind of spacecraft propulsion based on Zero Point Energy I think the main sort of Main Place where that's landed is in dialogue in various science fiction movies about sort of Zero Point Energy as a source of uh of uh of of sort of um action of various kinds but in any case that was um so it seemed you know at first when when uh when this came up it was like did I get the calculations wrong well no I didn't um but the thing that happens so does this work can you extract energy from the vacuum can you make a perpetual motion machine basically by using this closed cycle uh in this in this um uh in of these Casmir forces and so on well the answer I think is no because basically what happens is in that when you make these sort of borders and you're trying to sort of prevent vacuum you're trying to constrain the vacuum turns out you can only do that to some extent it turns out that the there it's only opaque to some modes but but but in order to make this work it has to be the case that this material is sort of perfectly opaque and by the time you it it starts to be affected by the fact that you have to make the material out of atoms and so on and you can't make something which sort of has that perfect opacity now you you might wonder could you make a configuration of a field just like when you do plasma confinement in a uh to get to get Fusion you're not trying to constrain that 10 million degree uh Plasma in a you know no no material substance can have its atoms hang together at 10 million degrees but a magnetic field doesn't care about temperature in that sense and so you can have a magnetic field that uh that can withstand that and it makes me wonder as I'm thinking about this now whether you can imagine kind of a a field that is uh constructed to make sort of this box that will constrain the vacuum that's worth looking at actually I'm worth looking at it's it's kind of a that would be the ultimate irony if on the 200th anniversary of of koo's uh argument that there can where he used the argument that there can be no perpetual motion machine if in fact one figures out how to construct a perpetual motion machine that continually extracts energy from the vacuum it's it's not an impossible thing because the vacuum if one extracted energy from the vacuum if one was able to kind of what one would be doing is is essentially exactly what Koo was talking about namely going from the heat not really heat but the randomness of the zero point fluctuations of quantum fields and cons taking that Randomness and turning into into mechanical work actually it's an interesting idea to see to what extent one can make kind of uh inequalities of the same kind that Koo did to uh um to to to see you know to what extent you can extract energy from the structure of the vacuum now I mean there are things that one can do with event Horizons and black holes where one can make arguments that are sort of conol like arguments that end up being about the thermodynamics of black holes they don't really have thermodynamics in the same sense but there are kind of conol like arguments that could be made there so this makes one wonder whether if one thinks about sort of this uh you know changing the shape of the of the VAC of the box in the vacuum to what extent a closed cycle there is able to extract energy from the vacuum if it did extract energy from the vacuum what that will be saying is essentially one is trading off some features of for example cosmological expansion of the Universe from things that are happening locally ex sort of we'd be you know in terms of the is it a um uh is it a renewable energy source well ultimately no you know if we took all the all the energy of expansion of the universe and uh and con and and provided it to run our cars or whatever no it wouldn't be you know we'd have to have an awful lot of cause to have a make any dent on the cosmological expansion of the universe but in principle it would uh it would do that now one thing that's also tricky in thinking about what what's going on there is that the idea of energy conservation is only a local idea when you look at the whole structure of the universe at a cosmological level energy conservation is a much more complicated issue and it's much less clear what it means to say quotes energy is conserved that's something that's absolutely true locally but when you look at the energy associated with the expansion of the universe and how that has effects at cosmological Scales is not so clear let's see last couple of things here um links between Caro's findings uh let's see um uh P asks is there any link between caros finding a modern information Theory not really that was a pretty Securus route I mean that really went from Koo and the sort of original intuition about the Second Law to Kelvin and Talus kind of sort of nailing down the second LW and Maxwell was involved in that as well to really boltzman talking about uh sort of the second L as interpreted in terms of molecules and that led to um the actually clausius invented the term entropy but invented it as kind of a bulk property of matter boltzman kind of understood the microscopic character of entropy which is why he had on his tombstone s equal K log Omega um K log W I think um which was uh kind of the representation of entropy is the log of the number of states of the system but um that was and and then only much later you know when Shannon uh started talking about kind of the the number of configurations in a Communications channel that became kind of uh well I think who was it I think it was um was it Bon nyman who who no I forget who who told um Shannon that if he if he calls the thing he's talking about you know if he relates it to entropy everybody's confused about entropy so nobody will kind of question what Shannon is doing but eventually Shannon kind of makes this connection to to entropy as was described and in the uh by boltzman as a configuration of molecules Shannon is talking about it as a sort of a configuration of bits in the end the Second Law is not what's talked about in terms of information Theory there hasn't been a second law an analogue of the thermodynamic Second Law in information Theory people have sort of assumed that the second law is a thing that involves molecules and temperature and energy and so on which is just not true there is as I've as I've kind of I think shown sort of a computational analog of the second law that's all wound up with computational irreducibility so in a sense there could have been a merger of kind of information Theory with the with thermodynamics um with entropy and so on but it didn't really happen I suppose it's you know my my little efforts as captured in the as to show the the book thing um uh you know is is my attempt to do that and I think that's we finally have that but it's it's sort of long after the fact through a very circuitous route um the uh all right well thanks thanks for joining me and um uh it's um I I wanted to to celebrate this particular anniversary I've been mean to do this for a few years so I'm glad we had a chance um uh to uh be here today to talk about the 200th anniversary of sano's uh publication of sano's book so thanks very much and uh bye for now for

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Published: Wed Jun 12 2024