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Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics and Cosmology

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Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics and Cosmology ENTROPIC CREATION Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945 Series Editors David M. Knight University of Durham and Trevor Levere University of Toronto Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945 focuses on the social, cultural, industrial and economic contexts of science and technology from the ‘scientific revolution’ up to the Second World War. it explores the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the eighteenth century, the coffee-house culture of the Enlightenment, the spread of museums, botanic gardens and expositions in the nineteenth century, to the Franco- Prussian War of 1870, seen as a victory for German science. it also addresses the dependence of society on science and technology in the twentieth century. Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945 addresses issues of the interaction of science, technology and culture in the period from 1700 to 1945, at the same time as including new research within the field of the history of science. Also in the series William Crookes (1832–1919) and the Commercialization of Science William H. Brock Science, Politics and Business in the Work of Sir John Lubbock A Man of Universal Mind Mark Patton Making Scientific Instruments in the Industrial Revolution A.D. Morrison-Low Entropic Creation Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics and Cosmology HELGE S. KRAGH University of Aarhus, Denmark © Helge S. Kragh 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Helge S. Kragh has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Gower House Suite 420 Croft Road 101 Cherry Street Aldershot Burlington, VT 05401-4405 Hampshire GU11 3HR USA England Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kragh, Helge, 1944– Entropic Creation: Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics and Cosmology. – (Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945) 1. Cosmology – History. 2. Cosmology – Philosophy – History. 3. Cosmology – History – 19th century. 4. Cosmology – History - 20th century. 5. Entropy. 6. Entropy – Philosophy. I. Title. 261.5’5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kragh, Helge, 1944– Entropic Creation: Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics and Cosmology / Helge S. Kragh. p. cm. – (Science, Technology and Culture, 1700–1945) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Cosmology – Religious aspects – History. 2.Cosmology – Philosophy – History. 3. Cosmology – History – 19th century. 4. Cosmology – History – 20th century. 5. Entropy – Religious aspects. 6. Entropy – Philosophy. 7. Second law of thermo- dynamics. 8. Creationism. 9. Religion and science. I. Title. QB981.K732 2007 261.7’65–dc22 2007038440 ISBN 978-0-7546-6414-7 This volume has been printed on acid-free paper Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall. Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 Some Early Ideas on Decay and Creation 9 3 Thermodynamics and the Heat Death 23 4 The Entropic Creation Argument 47 5 Concepts of the Universe 103 6 Post-1920 Developments 193 7 Shadows from the Past 221 Bibliography 235 Index 265 This page intentionally left blank Chapter 1 Introduction The present work is a contribution to two different but related areas of intellectual history. First, it belongs to the history of science in so far that it offers a novel perspective on the history of cosmological thought, focusing on the period 1850-1920 and with an emphasis on religious, philosophical and ideological aspects. Second, it belongs to the history of ideas in so far that it is a case study on the relationship between science and religion from the perspective of early physical cosmology. The work is essentially about the interactions between cosmology, physics, religion and ideology in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth century. The key concept under consideration is the entropy function introduced by Rudolf Clausius in 1865, the basis of one formulation (out of several) of the second law of thermodynamics. Much has been written on the history of this fundamental law – whether expressed in terms of entropy or not – but surprisingly few authors have dealt seriously with the cosmological, cultural and religious implications of the law as perceived by the historical actors. The best known of these implications is the so-called heat death, the gloomy prediction that the world will eventually and inevitably ‘melt away’, come to a final end where all energy is transformed into the form of mechanically useless heat.1 Although I deal in some detail with the infamous hypothesis of the thermal end of the world, and provide some new information on the subject, my study is mainly focused on what was held, in some quarters, to be a corollary of the heat death hypothesis, namely that the universe must have had a beginning in time. To put it briefly, given that we do not live in a high-entropic world, and assuming that the entropy law is valid for the universe at large, entropy can only have increased for a finite period of time. If this is the case, the universe must have had a beginning of a sort – and if it had a beginning it presumably originated in a creative act. This is the essence of the ‘entropic creation argument’, which is the central theme of my investigation. Thus, thermodynamics leads to predictions concerning not only the end of the world, but also its beginning, and for this reason it enters domains that traditionally belong to religion. No wonder, then, that the second law of thermodynamics became a major battlefield in the heated ideological discussions of the late nineteenth century. In the chapters that follow, I examine in detail this discussion and the views on the heat death and the entropic argument that were 1 The heat death and other cultural and ideological aspects of nineteenth-century thermodynamics is among the subjects of Stephen Brush’s fascinating The Temperature of History (Brush 1978) and is also covered in Brush 1967. Other works which deal with the topic include Hiebert 1966, Jaki 1974, Myers 1986, Clarke 2001 and Neswald 2006. Others again are mentioned in the notes to the text. 2 Entropic Creation discussed in the period under consideration. While it is understandable that the second law became involved in the cultural struggle in a general sense, it is much less obvious why it came to be considered a theoria non grata by some thinkers of a materialistic or socialist inclination. Given how large a role the entropic argument played in science, ideology and theology from about 1870 to 1910 it is surprising that the topic has never – with one exception – received serious attention from intellectual historians. From time to time it has been mentioned in the literature, but mostly en passant and as an appendix to the heat death. If it is mentioned, its significance is not always appreciated. Thus John Davis writes, quite erroneously, that ‘It was not widely recognised in the nineteenth century, but the Second Law implied a finite age for the universe: if the available energy was indeed running down, it could not have been running down forever’.2 As is amply documented by the present study, the entropic argument for a finite-age universe was in truth widely recognized. In Matter and Spirit in the Universe, a book published by Imperial College Press in 2004, I examined the subject in connection with a broader investigation of the relationship between cosmology and Christian religion.3 The present work relies to some extent on this book and also on other of my publications, but it goes much further and deeper. It was only when I had written the main part of my manuscript that I became aware of Elizabeth Neswald’s Thermodynamik als kultureller Kampfplatz, a comprehensive work on popular and ideological aspects of the ‘fascination history’ of entropy from 1850 to 1915.4 Neswald’s detailed account includes a chapter on ‘Der entropologische Gottesbeweis’ and in general covers much of the same ground as I do. There are, however, considerable differences between the two works, both in approach and coverage. Although I have made use of material presented in Thermodynamik als kultureller Kampfplatz, Neswald’s book has not influenced mine to any appreciable extent. The lack of scholarly interest in the debate concerning the cosmological implications of the entropy law is all the more surprising in light of the fact that it attracted a large number of scientists, intellectuals and social critics. Many of them had only a perfunctory knowledge of thermodynamics, and some not even that, but lack of knowledge did not always deter them from offering their view on the nature and consequences of the law of entropy increase, and doing so with amazing self-confidence. Some of the participants in the discussion over the cosmological significance of the theory of heat may best be described as crackpots or pseudo- scientists (or, as Pierre Duhem expressed it, ‘village scholars and café physicists’.) When I have nonetheless included these dubious figures, it is obviously not because of the intrinsic merit of their works. It is because of their pertinence within the 2 Davis 1999, p. 16. 3 Kragh 2004. I have also dealt with aspects of the entropic-cosmological argument in Kragh 2006b and Kragh 2007a. 4 Neswald 2006. Stanley Jaki is one of the very few historians of science who previously called attention to the entropic creation argument (Jaki 1966, pp. 441-6). The theoretical physicist Peter Landsberg reviewed the argument in 1991, but it took more than a decade until his work attracted any attention (Landsberg 1991).
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