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The Arrow of Time

Abstract

IT is widely believed that all irreversible mechanical processes involve an increase of entropy, and that ‘classical’ (that is, non-statistical) mechanics, of continuous media as well as of particles, can describe physical processes only in so far as they are reversible in time1. This means that a film taken of a classical process should be reversible, in the sense that, if put into a projector with the last picture first, it should again yield a possible classical process.

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References

  1. See, for example, Max Born, “Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance”, especially pp. 25f. (1949).

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POPPER, K. The Arrow of Time. Nature 177, 538 (1956). https://doi.org/10.1038/177538a0

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