Chapter 2
ENTROPY STRIVES TOWARD A MAXIMUM
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riting about Brownian motion in 1889, LouisGeorges Gouy expressed some perplexity that “this phenomenon seems to have barely attracted the attention of physicists.” Among those who had failed to grasp its significance, he claimed, was the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, arguably the most eminent theorist of the nineteenth century, who had apparently believed that if “submitted to a more powerful microscope . . . the [Brownian particles] will demonstrate only more perfect repose.” Better optics, in other words, would make this nuisance go away. Unfortunately Gouy, as was often the case in those days, gave no source for Maxwell’s alleged statement, and it remains unclear even now whether his accusation is just. Certainly, though, nothing in Maxwell’s published works hints that he saw in
