Does Temperature have a Metric Structure?
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Is there anything more to temperature than the ordering of things from colder
to hotter? Are there also facts, for example, about how much hotter (twice as
hot, three times as hot...) one thing is than another? There certainly are—but
the only strong justification for this claim comes from statistical mechanics.
What we knew about temperature before the advent of statistical mechanics
(what we knew about it from thermodynamics) provided only weak reasons
to believe it.
Date issued
2011-07Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and PhilosophyJournal
Philosophy of Science
Publisher
Philosophy of Science Association
Citation
Skow, Bradford. "Does Temperature have a Metric Structure?." forthcoming in Philosophy of Science, 78 (July 2011) pp. 472–489.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISSN
0031-8248