Talk:Principles of energetics

Pseudoscience

I took the bold step of moving this to Category:Pseudoscience because of the blatent crackpottery in this article. Point by point:

Zeroth principle "'When two systems are at the same temperature as a third system, they are the same temperature as each other'" (S.W.Angrist and L.G.Helper 1973, p. 34)

Lets get real, this has been known for centuries. And someone figured this out in 1973 ??

First principle or the 'fundamental law' "'Evergy Free system persists in its state of rest or of unifom motion in a straightest path'" "Systema omne liberum perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directissimam." (H.Hertz 1956, p. 144, § 309)

Newton was not the first to state this, but perhaps he said this more loudly. This wasn't discovered in 1956.

Corollaries "The law of the conservation of energy is a necessary consequence of the fundamental law." (H.Hertz 1956, p. 154, § 342)

I think this also was clearly understood for several centuries before 1956.

Second principle or 'Entropy' "Spontaneous Dispersal" (H.T.Odum 2000, p. 246).

Oh please. Odum did not discover entropy in 2000.

Third principle "No complexity of heat at absolute zero" (H.T.Odum 2000, p. 246).

Odum did not discover absolute zero in 2000.

Googling Odum and his work seems to indicate that his ideas have caught on with at least some academics. However, writing articles about it as if it was some mentally deranged crackpot theory does it no justice. This article needs a major cleanup or outright deletion. Please clean this up. 23:33, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

• a bold step indeed.

• I believe that the Hertz text may have been published first before 1956, but that was the edition that I was referencing. If you know of references to foundational definitions please provide them, it would be appreciated.
• I do not claim that Odum discovered entropy or obsolute zero in 2000 . Odum's phrases "Spontaneous Dispersal" "No complexity of heat at absolute zero" are short descriptions of the second & third principles and were given in the 2000 reference. They are a nice short summary of the principles. If you have others you would like to contribute please feel free.
• "mentally deranged crackpot theory does it no justice" does no one justice.
• I appreciate that I may have overemphasised Odum's work, and that the article looks shabby that way. However Odum's work does extend the first 4 "laws" of thermodynamics. So I was trying to convey the continuity of the "principles of energetics" which apparently, according to Odum, extend beyond the first 4 "laws" of thermodynamics.
• there does seem to be a need for an entry on this if we are going to include any of Odum's work on systems ecology, emergy, and maximum power. If not then we should delete the entry.
• I'm not sure how else to give a statement of the principles of energetics which extend out more broadly than thermodynamics alone. Any ideas?
• I've removed any category label for now because pseudo science doesn't to it justice.
• If you convince me the task is not worth while we can remove all reference to Odum and the maximum power principle and all my other entries. I'm ok with that. But there was a small entry on embodied energy before I started on Wiki, which gave a link to my CSIRO article, so I thought it best to try extend and clarify the entry as much as I am able to. And because odum refers to 7 principles of energetics in his work on embodied energy, well I thought there needed to be a statement of them.
• Cheers. Sholto Maud 01:01, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Based on your replies above, I am concluding that you are attempting to publish your own personal original research on Wikipedia. WP has stringent rules against this. linas 01:56, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

How is Odum's work Sholto Maud's "original research"? I don't see how NOR applies here at all. Guettarda 02:12, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Odum appears to be an ecologist with some interesting ideas. However, this article appears to be about physics, and not about Odum's ideas. As a physics essay, it would receive a failing grade if submitted for a college freshman physics class. If this article was about Odum, and described his actual research into ecology, that would be OK. But its not. linas 04:48, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup/rewrite

This article really needs to be cleaned up or re-written.

The title of the article, "Principles of energetics" means that it should refer to those principles, explain what each one is and maybe who came up with each one. As it is currently written it is confusing and misleading.

The intro needs reworked. Please see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Introduction for help.

The article focuses too much on Odum. From what I can tell, he proposed a few more principles and maybe coined the phrase "principles of energetics" for his additional terms? It's really confusing what it is that is going on here. This needs to be made more clear.

Remember that this is an encyclopedia and should look like it. Phrases like "This article is a tribute to Odum" do not belong here at all; nor should any article be a tribute to anyone. The article should define and describe the subject matter, which in this case happens to be the Principles of energetics.

Hope this helps. I tried to do some cleanup myself, but I don't know enough about this subject to do it justice. Peyna 04:59, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Articles for Deletion debate

This article survived an Articles for Deletion debate. The discussion can be found here. -Splash^talk 02:17, 7 December 2005 (UTC)