Noun
The science which treats of the mechanical action or relations of heat.
Source: Webster's dictionaryThe 2nd law of thermodynamics has the same degree of truth as the statement that if you throw a tumblerful of water into the sea, you cannot get the same tumblerful of water out again. James Clerk Maxwell
There's no evidence whatsoever that Darwin had anything useful to say or anything to say period about how life began or how the universe began or how gravity began or how physics began or fluid motion or how thermodynamics began. He had nothing to say about that whatsoever. Ben Stein
Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. Seth Lloyd
The problem of time in physics and chemistry is closely related to the formulation of the second law of thermodynamics. Therefore another possible title of this lecture could have been: "the macroscopic and microscopic aspects of the second law of thermodynamics”. Ilya Prigogine
The functional order maintained within living systems seems to defy the Second Law; nonequilibrium thermodynamics describes how such systems come to terms with entropy. Ilya Prigogine
Equilibrium thermodynamics was an achievement of the nineteenth century, nonequilibrium thermodynamics was developed in the twentieth century, and Onsager's relations mark a crucial point in the shift of interest away from equilibrium to non-equilibrium. Ilya Prigogine