Thermodynamics: The Real Theory of Everything

Need a theory of everything?  Try thermodynamics.  Mark Haw reviewed a new book by Peter Atkins on the subject in Nature,¹ Four Laws that Drive the Universe (Oxford, 2007).  He had high praise for the achievements of the “19th century grandees” Joule, Maxwell and Kelvin:

Thermodynamics ought to be the cornerstone of any scientist’s understanding of nature.  Forget superstrings and grand unified theories: thermodynamics is the original ‘theory of everything’.  Or perhaps the ‘theory of what everything does and how it does it’.  Thermodynamics explains the transformation of energy, and nothing happens without that.

Though it is impossible to really know thermodynamic theory without mathematics, Haw appreciated the way Atkins conveyed a deep understanding of its concepts without a single equation.  How could any scientist omit learning about such fundamental concepts?

The development of thermodynamics in the nineteenth century was the most wide-reaching and fundamental advance since Newton’s mechanics.  It underpinned (albeit some time after the event) the Industrial Revolution, and led the way to statistical mechanics (and hence to statistical quantum mechanics) and to an understanding of phase behaviour, chemical reactions, the astrophysics of stars…to everything, in other words.

Or, almost everything.  Haw’s only complaint was that Atkins stopped at the end of the 19th century.  20th century discoveries at the microscopic and nanoscopic levels have been profound.  Now we know that understanding proteins is the key to progress:

Proteins do the same job for life that steam engines did for Victorian industry.  Unlike a railway engine, however, the cell is a profoundly non-equilibrium place.  And proteins are not isolated but inextricably bound to the world around them, inescapably prey to brownian motion.

Thermodynamics, therefore, is not a dead science.  Much work needs to be done.  There’s a revolution awaiting in the thermodynamics of the cell:

Understanding the microscopic, non-equilibrium, open-system thermodynamics of these ‘life engines’ could usher in fascinating discoveries: how life works as a physical process, how we might borrow life’s technology to make our own nanoengines, and how we might transform medicine by replacing broad-spectrum chemical cocktails with medical engineering of proteins.  All this requires twenty-first-century developments in thermodynamics that are no less revolutionary than the nineteenth-century theory.

Haw noted that 2007 is the centenary of the death of the great pioneer of thermodynamics, Lord Kelvin.

¹Mark Haw, “The real ‘theory of everything’,” Nature 449, 286 (20 September 2007) | doi:10.1038/449286a.

Sounds like an interesting book.  Good to see the three great Christian physicists of the 19th century still acknowledged as grandees, as indeed they were (read their stories in our online book).  Why do we need a theory of everything (T.O.E.) when we already have one?  Hawking, Susskind et al want to blend quantum mechanics, gravity and dark stuff into their Big T.O.E., but they cannot stub the T.O.E. we already have without pain (08/13/2002).
    Budding scientists should stand on the shoulders of giants and learn thermodynamics.  The 4 Laws of TD, especially the first two, show that mass-energy cannot be created or destroyed, and that energy becomes less available to do work over time (law of entropy).  These laws spell doom for theories of evolution (12/30/2005), because they show that the universe is aging and winding down, not progressing (06/08/2005).  Don’t expect Darwinists to find an escape clause in nanoscopic, non-equilibrium situations (07/05/2003).  The kind of order that they need will not come from mechanical laws (10/27/2005, 07/17/2002).  It’s not just order they need: it’s information (12/30/2003).
    If the future lies in understanding the thermodynamics of the cell, and if there are as many revolutionary inventions waiting to be discovered as Haw said by imitating cellular machines, then this may be a great field for a young physicist or medical researcher to enter.  Who will become the next Joule, Maxwell or Kelvin?