The most ordinary things are to philosophy a source of insoluble puzzles. With infinite ingenuity it constructs a concept of space or time and then f… - Ludwig Boltzmann

O! immodest mortal! Your destiny is the joy of watching the evershifting battle!

If this be so—and hardly any physicist will contradict this—then neither the Theory of Gases nor any other physical theory can be quite a congruent account of facts, and I cannot hope with Mr. Burbury, that Mr. Bryan will be able to deduce all the phenomena of spectroscopy from the electromagnetic theory of light. Certainly, therefore, Hertz is right when he says: "The rigour of science requires, that we distinguish well the undraped figure of nature itself from the gay-coloured vesture with which we clothe it at our pleasure." But I think the predilection for nudity would be carried too far if we were to forego every hypothesis. Only we must not demand too much from hypotheses.

[I]t is our main purpose not to limit our discussion to thermal equilibrium, but to explore the relationship of this probabilistic formulation to the second theorem of the mechanical theory of heat.