It’s true that thermodynamics was historically invented before statistical mechanics, and if you find stat-mech-free presentations of thermodynamics to be pedagogically helpful, then cool, whatever works for you. But at the same time, I hope we can agree that the stat-mech level is the actual truth of what’s going on, and that the laws of thermodynamics are not axioms but rather derivable from the fundamental physical laws of the universe (particle physics etc.) via statistical mechanics. If you find the probabilistic definition of entropy and temperature etc. to be unintuitive in the context of steam engines, then I’m sorry but you’re not done learning thermodynamics yet, you still have work ahead of you. You can’t just call it a day because you have an intuitive feel for stat-mech and also separately have an intuitive feel for thermodynamics; you’re not done until those two bundles of intuitions are deeply unified and interlinking. [Or maybe you’re already there and I’m misreading this post? If so, sorry & congrats :) ]
It’s true that thermodynamics was historically invented before statistical mechanics, and if you find stat-mech-free presentations of thermodynamics to be pedagogically helpful, then cool, whatever works for you. But at the same time, I hope we can agree that the stat-mech level is the actual truth of what’s going on, and that the laws of thermodynamics are not axioms but rather derivable from the fundamental physical laws of the universe (particle physics etc.) via statistical mechanics. If you find the probabilistic definition of entropy and temperature etc. to be unintuitive in the context of steam engines, then I’m sorry but you’re not done learning thermodynamics yet, you still have work ahead of you. You can’t just call it a day because you have an intuitive feel for stat-mech and also separately have an intuitive feel for thermodynamics; you’re not done until those two bundles of intuitions are deeply unified and interlinking. [Or maybe you’re already there and I’m misreading this post? If so, sorry & congrats :) ]
I agree with what you said. I’m curious what I wrote made you think I don’t?
Cool! Oops, I probably just skimmed too fast and incorrectly pattern-matched you to other people I’ve talked to about this topic in the past. :-P