--- On Sun, 6/22/08, BALIAN Roger <roger.balian@cea.fr> wrote:

From: BALIAN Roger <roger.balian@cea.fr>
Subject: RE : VRAIMENT AUCUN ESPRIT CRITIQUE EN FRANCE
To: pvalev@yahoo.com, chemla@paris7.jussieu.fr, michel.paty@paris7.jussieu.fr
Cc: Jean.Eisenstaedt@obspm.fr, damour@ihes.fr, alain.aspect@iota.u-psud.fr, Claude.Cohen-Tannoudji@lkb.ens.fr, darrigol@paris7.jussieu.fr, angele.marietti@chello.fr, gicotan@club-internet.fr, "KLEIN Etienne" <etienne.klein@cea.fr>, Michel.BITBOL@wanadoo.fr
Date: Sunday, June 22, 2008, 11:55 AM
Tout ceci pourrait constituer un nouveau chapitre de
l'intéressant livre d'Alexandre Moatti, Einstein,
un siècle contre lui, Odile Jacob, que je recommande à
tous....

Arthur Eddington était un flagorneur universel:

http://web.mit.edu/keenansymposium/overview/background/index.html
"The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme
position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that
your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's
equations—then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is
found to be contradicted by observation—well, these experimentalists
do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against
the second law of thermodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is
nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation." Sir Arthur
Eddington (The Nature of the Physical World, 1915)

Cette "loi suprême de la Nature" est déjà abandonnée mais en France on
n'en sait rien et n'en discutera jamais:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00000313/
JOS UFFINK: "This summary leads to the question whether it is fruitful
to see irreversibility or time-asymmetry as the essence of the second
law. Is it not more straightforward, in view of the unargued
statements of Kelvin, the bold claims of Clausius and the strained
attempts of Planck, to give up this idea? I believe that Ehrenfest-
Afanassjewa was right in her verdict that the discussion about the
arrow of time as expressed in the second law of the thermodynamics is
actually a RED HERRING."

http://www.beilstein-institut.de/bozen2004/proceedings/CornishBowden/CornishBowden.htm
ATHEL CORNISH-BOWDEN: "The concept of entropy was introduced to
thermodynamics by Clausius, who deliberately chose an obscure term for
it, wanting a word based on Greek roots that would sound similar to
"energy". In this way he hoped to have a word that would mean the same
to everyone regardless of their language, and, as Cooper [2] remarked,
he succeeded in this way in finding a word that meant the same to
everyone: NOTHING. From the beginning it proved a very difficult
concept for other thermodynamicists, even including such accomplished
mathematicians as Kelvin and Maxwell; Kelvin, indeed, despite his own
major contributions to the subject, never appreciated the idea of
entropy [3]. The difficulties that Clausius created have continued to
the present day, with the result that a fundamental idea that is
absolutely necessary for understanding the theory of chemical
equilibria continues to give trouble, not only to students but also to
scientists who need the concept for their work."

http://www.worldscibooks.com/chemistry/6469.html
A FAREWELL TO ENTROPY by Arieh Ben-Naim (The Hebrew University,
Israel)
"The principal message of this book is that thermodynamics and
statistical mechanics will benefit from replacing the unfortunate,
misleading and mysterious term "entropy" with a more familiar,
meaningful and appropriate term such as information, missing
information or uncertainty. This replacement would facilitate the
interpretation of the “driving force” of many processes in terms of
informational changes and dispel the mystery that has always
enshrouded entropy."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com