Item 8 - Letter from James Swinburne to W. Craig Henderson

1 folded sheet, 1 envelope

41 Palace Court, W..—Clarifies further his ideas on entropy.

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Transcript

41 Palace Court
17/2/3

Dear Mr. Henderson, I dont think you need worry about the Feilden article {1}. It is much more to the purpose than any other article about the discussion. The truth is a discussion like this is rather bad as a means of getting at anything like a solution.

As to Preston, I only speak from memory and may be wrong. My notion as to dissipation is that increase of entropy, for instance when two gases interdiffuse does not there & then involve degradation of energy into heat. But you have let yourself in for the degradation, as you must degrade work into heat to get the gases into their original condition. Increase of entropy thus means eventual degradation of energy, but you cant take the degradation of energy as the criteri-on if you want to see if a change will take place.

Ofcourse† Perry & Lodge’s idea is, as far as I can make out, that the only case of increase of entropy is by transfer of heat; so that they think increase of entropy means that energy already degraded into heat is merely rendered less available by reduction of temperature.

Yours sincerely
J. Swinburne

[Direction on envelope:] W. Craig Henderson Esq | 1 Bride Court | Temple | E.C.

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The envelope, which was postmarked at London, S.W., at 3.15 p.m. on 17 Feb. 1903, is marked ‘Jas. Swinburne. re Entropy | Feb. 15 & 17. 1903’, and in a later hand, ‘Controversy | Swinburne v Perry’.

{1} Not identified.

† Sic.

This description was created by A. C. Green in May 2022.