Abstract
One of the obstacles in the path toward understanding irreversibility is the confusion that arises from failing to distinguish among the various meanings of the terms “reversible” and “irreversible.” In fact, it is possible that the paradoxes of the past and the near-mysticism of the present (Prigogine, 1980) may be due primarily to a lack of interest in distinctions among the various kinds of irreversibility at an elementary level. This is not to say that the arguments were weak or the issues irrelevant, but that the resolution of paradoxes and the reconciliation of Newtonian molecular behavior with the irreversibility of fluid behavior may become easier if we do bother to sort out the various kinds of irreversibility.
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© 1985 D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
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Hollinger, H.B., Zenzen, M.J. (1985). Various Kinds of Irreversibility. In: The Nature of Irreversibility. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 28. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5430-4_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5430-4_5
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8897-8
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-5430-4
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