Generation of Concepts in Statistical Mechanics and What Underly:

Commentaries on Hajime Inaba’s The Making of Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

    This paper aims at understanding Hajime Inaba's The Making of Statistical Mechanics, which treats the history of statistical mechanics from Helmholtz to von Neumann. While this book uses some physical concepts and symbols variously according to historical contexts, this paper gives its interpretation from the point of view of modern physics, supported by some contemporary manuals of thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED). This contemporary interpretation may be helpful for understanding of Inabaʼs historical book. This paper also gives useful materials for philosophical reflections on the relation between thermodynamics, i.e. macrophysics, and statistical mechanics, i.e. microphysics, and also on the function of CQED as opening a way to mesophysics.