Commentaries on Rudolph Clausius

It is worth noting that from the very first word (life, page 165), to the very last word (death, page 214), this chapter and this story is revolved around the idea of living, and the many battles that are faced within it. These battles consist of “right against wrong”, “good against bad”, “victory against defeat” and so forth, and interestingly enough the story of Rudolph Clausius is arguably the summary of each one of these matches. At first, it struck me how many times the words life and death and living and dying appear in this chapter, but it makes perfect sense to me now, because the life of Rudolph Clausius is pretty much the ultimate example of these topics and the whole idea of an irreversible linear spectrum (which in turn, life and death themselves are the supreme examples of; one cannot go from death, the age of 93 with pancreatic cancer, all the way to a fetus). The reason why his story compares well with the relationship between life and death is because of two things: Rudolph Clausius experienced a lot of life and death, and because he found thermodynamics (heat being considered at first to be an irreversible linear spectrum and the driving essence of life) insatiably interesting. The climax of this story comes when Clausius constructs the “Law of Entropy Nonconservation”, which basically explains some behaviors of heat, but in a less basic way explains the relationship between the ancient question of life and death themselves: everything has to die for the universe to live. This discovery then brings solace into Rudolph Clausius’ life, who now accepts why so many people close to him had to die.