Zoomposium with Prof. Dr. Arieh Ben-Naim: “Demystifying entropy”

Information about the person and his scientific work

In another installment of our “Zoomposium series” on the topic of “Physics and its limits”, my colleague Axel Stöcker from the “Blog of Big Questions” and I had the opportunity to conduct an interview with the renowned Israeli physical chemist Prof. Dr. Arieh Ben-Naim on the exciting topic of “Demystifying entropy”.

Arieh, who was born on July 11, 1934, held a chair in physical chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for over 40 years, with his main field of research being the theory of the structure of water, aqueous solutions and hydrophobic-hydrophilic interactions. He has been mainly concerned with theoretical and experimental aspects of the general theory of liquids and solutions. In recent years, he has advocated the use of information theory to better understand and advance statistical mechanics and #thermodynamics.

In this context, he has also worked intensively on the question of the nature and underlying principle of the phenomenon of “#entropy”, which he has published in numerous popular science books that are often quoted but also controversially discussed.

The basic tenor of all his publications and lectures is that we need a new basic understanding of the phenomenon of entropy. In Arieh’s view, entropy, which originally stems from the laws of thermodynamics and in particular the second law of thermodynamics, has been misused and incorrectly applied as a concept to other areas of physics, biology and everyday life.

In this respect, it was finally “time” (bon mot;-) to ask the author himself about his ground-breaking theses, which cast a different light on the phenomenon of entropy or, perhaps better said, bring entropy back to its place of origin.

The interview we conducted with him is in English.

Find out more at: https://philosophies.de/index.php/2024/02/22/entzauberung-der-entropie/

Full interview: