the ħive

Unfortunately, once something is found that is true or useful, it tends to be presented in books as though it were obvious or very straightforward, when in fact it may be neither, and may have taken years, and chance, to discover.

From “Entropy, Scientific Explanations, Pseudo-Scientific Explanations, and Teaching Science” by Rick Garlikov. It goes on with a good example:

“The most common, I think, form of pseudo-explanation is to give a name to a phenomena, consider that name to name some sort of trait,  and then explain the occurrence of the phenomena in terms of the “existence” of the trait.

For example, imagine that a student gets mostly B’s in school.  Parents and teachers, and even the student himself, may come to think of him as a “B student”.  Notice that at this point, that just means that the student gets B’s generally.  It is synonymous with saying that he gets mostly B’s.  If someone asks you how you kid does in school, you can answer either “He gets mostly B’s” or you can answer “He’s pretty much a B student.” Both of these statements in this context mean the same exact thing.  Now there is no problem with this terminology unless people, including the student, begin to think that he gets B’s because he is a B student.  “Why didn’t you get an A on this exam, son?” “Dad, I couldn’t; I am just a B student.”  The reason this is not an explanation is because it just says essentially that the student gets B’s because he gets B’s.  For “being a B student just meant that one received B’s for the most part.”  It is not that getting B’s necessarily means a child has some sort of trait that causes him to get B’s.”

And further down:

“So although there may be some precise definition or notion of “entropy” that is useful, it cannot be just “measure of disorder” with the claim that disorder is always increasing only because you already know which “direction” phenomena occur and then call that direction the direction of increased entropy.  That is like saying objects fall because they are heavier than air, and rise because they are lighter, where what tells you which objects are which is that you know they rise or fall when released under normal conditions. Yet, that is what some physics texts seem to do.”