1.21.1: Thermodynamics and Mathematics
Thermodynamics provides a basis for the mathematical description of important phenomena such as chemical equilibria, solubilities, densities, and heats of reaction. Chemists have confidence in this approach to chemistry. However for many chemists it is somewhat of a shock to discover that at the heart of mathematics there is serious flaw. In 1931 K. Godel showed that there is a fundamental inconsistency in mathematics [1]. In other words mathematics is incomplete [2]. Nevertheless chemists do not ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’. Atkins [2] notes that it would be foolish to discard mathematics even though there are treacherous regions deep inside its structure.
Footnotes
[1] An interesting account is given by D. R. Hofstadter in Godel, Esher and Bach;An Extended Golden Braid, Vintage, New York, 1980.
[2] P. W. Atkins, Galileo’s Finger, Oxford, 2003, chapter 10.