LORENZ KRUGER

REDUCTION VERSUS
ELIMINATION OF THEORIES

Scientific knowledge, or at least an important part of it, is expressed in a

great number of various theories that have been developed in the course
of time. It is, therefore, understandable that there is a considerable
interest in the 'reduction' of one theory to another. In a methodological
sense of the term the procedure of 'reduction' has been applied to pieces
of knowledge since the days of Aristotle; and this idea has since grown
into the attempt to develop what has been called 'unitary science', which
ideally would be based on one fundamental theory that is often conceived
as a theory of the smallest parts of physical reality.
The formal conception associated with the idea of reduction has often
been the following: the theory to be reduced, T1, should be derivable
from the reducing theory, 7"2, at least for certain applications of interest in
actual scientific research. This conception had to be refined with respect
to realistic applications within physics: approximations have to be admit-
ted. They can either occur in the derivation itself; or instead of T1 another
theory ~ is derived such that the statements of T~ approximate those of
T1 (at least in the domain of the intended applications). In an abbreviated
notation the scheme of reduction then reads as follows:
(,)
r~ ~ r~ *~ ,

where the asterisks in brackets indicate that approximations may or may

not be involved.
Examples for derivations of this kind are provided by the following
pairs of theories: (a) point mechanics/mechanics of rigid bodies (Adams,
1959), where the scheme applies even without asterisks; (b) Newton's
celestial mechanics/Kepler's theory of planetary motion (Scheibe, 1973),
where the scheme is T2 ~- T~. Now, if in this sense a derivability relation

Erkenntnis 10 (1976) 295-309. All Rights Reserved

Copyright 9 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland
296 LORENZ KRUGER

between T1 and T2 is satisfied, one may say that 7"1 is eliminable (at least
in principle, if not in the actual practice of research), as soon as T2 is
available.
The interest in a unitary science as well as the formal simplicity of the
methodological scheme associated with it seems to have led to the
attempt to treat all relations between theories (inter-theoretic relations,
or: ITRs for short) under the heading of 'reduction'. It would, of course,
be futile to ct~!ibble about words, but it should be noted that there are
quite different kinds of ITRs. For the purposes of this paper I shall reserve
the term 'reduction' for a particular one among them: the relations
between a theory (often called 'phenomenological') of complex objects
and a theory of the behaviour of small parts of these objects. Examples
may be suggested by the following pairs of theories: physiology/physics-
plus-chemistry, chemistry/quantum theory. Obviously this type of ITR is
of particular importance for the attempt at a unitary science or a unitary
world picture.
A case of the reduction relation in this restricted sense' that has been
studied especially carefully by scientists as well as philosophers of science
is the reduction of classical thermodynamics to classical particle
mechanics. It may, therefore, be 'considered as a paradigm case of
reduction- at least in the following sense: If in this case one would have to
qualify or restrict the simple logical scheme given above, if especially the
reduction of T1 to 7"2 in this case should not be connected with an
elimination of T1 with respect to Tz, one would - so to speak: a f o r t i o r i -
have to be prepared for similar or even stronger restrictions and correc-
tions of the traditional scheme in other more complex cases.
Moreover, since the example of thermodynamics and mechanics has
been worked out more carefully than others, one may hope to obtain
some insight into the dependence of the actual development of research
upon the systematic dependence of theories as articulated in the ITRs.
The interest here is to correlate the history of a theoretically well
developed discipline (at least its gross structure) with the systematic net of
ITRs, in the hope to contribute thereby to a historically realistic 'rational
reconstruction' of scientific development, which includes or bridges also
the discontinuities called 'scientific revolutions' by Thomas Kuhn (1962).
Thus, the systematic analysis of the process of scientific research as well
as of its results motivate equally to select the so-called reduction of
 REDUCTION VS ELIMINATION OF THEORIES 297

thermodynamics to mechanics for a case study. The purpose of this paper

is to contribute to such a study by a brief analysis of the history of
statistical mechanics from ca. 1850 until 1905.1 Only in a few sketchy
remarks in part IV, I shall try to indicate the perspective suggested by the
subsequent work in this field up to the present. But even if this part would
be missing or mistaken, the earlier history in itself may present an
interesting piece of rational reconstruction of the history of research with
the help of the ITR reduction in the above defined sense.
I propose to study the historical material with the following questioos
in mind:
(1) Does the formal conception of reduction outlined above apply, i.e.
is it possible to derive thermodynamics from mechanics, at least if suitable
approximations are permitted?
(2) Does the reduction provide the possibility to eliminate the reduced
theory on the basis of the reducing theory, at least in principle, if not in
actual scientific practice?
(3) Is the actual historical development determined by the reduction
relation between the two theories?

II

Phenomena of heat on the one hand and phenomena of motion on the

other are experienced as entirely different things or aspects of things.
Therefore it is plausible on epistemological grounds to treat them in
separate and independent theories. Only under this condition the prob-
lem of reduction of heat phenomena to motion will appear as a problem
of ITRs. In actual history the condition is fulfilled: Robert Clausius has
intentionally developed thermodynamics independently of mechanical
models; and his reason was epistemological: he did not want to make use
of unwarranted and perhaps mistaken assumptions about the structure of
matter. 2
This consideration already allows to note an important argument
against the connection between reduction of TI to T2 with the elimination
of T1 on the basis of T> In actual reality the reduction requires a third
theory T3 (about the structure and internal motion of bodies whose
termal qualities are to be reduced), whose empirical.justification will, to a
large extent, if not entirely (which will be the case at least during an early
298 LORENZ KROGER

phase), rest on the fact that T3 is suited to achieve the reduction in

question. In other words: even if a reduction were carried out in the
strong sense that T1 had (with the help of T3) been derived from T2, it
would still be impossible to ]usnfy T1 on the grounds of T2, as long as the
means of derivation are justified by, possibly among other things, the very
fact that they permit to derive T1.
Besides this general and unspecific argument against eliminability one
might expect further arguments to the same effect, which would have to
follow from the specific form of the model assumptions made in T3'; this
will now be investigated in some detail, but under a decisive restriction. In
accordance with the actual historical development I shall only deal with
one among the possible types of model assumptions: heat is considered to
be nothing but the motion of minute parts of the hot body, where motion
is conceived in strict analogy to the motion of macroscopic bodies, i.e.
described exactly in the same way as these familiar motions. Now, since
the number of the small parts that, according to this model, carry the
thermal motion is very large, a statistical treatment is the only viable one.
In the period I wish to discuss here one finds three different approaches to
such a treatment, which have been viewed as alternatives to each other:
(1) the theory of collisions, (2) the theory of ensembles, (3) the probability
theory of phase space. I shall now describe briefly the development of
these three approaches.
The approach (1) has first been used by Maxwell in 1866. The basic
assumptions in this paper are the following:

(A) The Stosszahlansatz: the number of collisions of the parts of a

body is proportional to the product of the two one-particle-densities
of the colliding particles.

(B) Reciprocity: If a body is in equilibrium, the number of collisions

leading from the initial states al and az of the colliding particles to
the final states Zl and z2 is equal to the number of collisions leading
from Zx and z2 to al and a2.
From these two assumptions the Maxwell distribution follows, which
allows for instance to connect the temperature of the body with the
average kinetic energy of its molecules. Maxwell's deduction has been
repeated over the decades and was particularly favoured by Kirchhoff
 REDUCTION VS ELIMINATION OF THEORIES 299

and Planck, indeed, though reluctantly, finally adopted by Boltzmann

himself (1898, w92).
Yet, the assumptions are exposed to the following objections:
(a) The theory is restricted to gases (since the statistical indepen-
dence of collisions is only plausible for a sufficiently diluted gas).

(fl) The theory deals only with the stationary case of equilibrium,
hence will provide only a partial reduction of thermodynamics.

(a0 The Stosszahlansatz is unwarranted.

(a2) The Stosszahlansatz is wrong (even for diluted gases).

(bl) No proof has been given for assumption (B).

(b2) No proof has been given for the uniqueness of the stationary
state, hence the Maxwell distribution is not shown to be
universal.
The objections (a) and (fl) are pragmatical; they restrict the range of
the reduction that may be effected, whereas (aa), (a2), (b0 and (b2) are
genuine theoretical objections which have to be removed in the further
development of the theory independently of its POssible use (e.g. for
reduction).
Boltzmann directed his efforts mainly toward the removal of (fl), (bl)
and (b2); he tried to prove the uniqueness of the equilibrium state by
developing a mechanical theory of the process leading to it, i.e. a
mechanical explanation of the second law of thermodynamics. Maxwell
on the other hand was primarily concerned with removing the restrictions
of the mechanical theory of the equilibrium and rendering it as general as
possible; he therefore attempted to get rid of the complications of
collision theory, i.e. to avoid objection (a), (a 1) and (az) by circumvent-
ing (A).
This assumption was replaced (in Maxwell, 1878) by more general
ones, which had already been used, though not finally adopted, by
Boltzmann (1868, parts II, III; 1871b):
(C) The Ergodic hypothesis: "The system, if left to itself in its actual
state of motion, will, sooner or later, pass through every phase which
is consistent with the equation of energy. ''3
300 L O R E N Z KRUGER

(D) Description by ensembles: A single macroscopic system can be

represented in the theory by a statistical assembly of microscopically
different non-interacting systems.
The explicit adoption of these assumptions marks the beginning of the
approach (2), i.e. of statistical mechanics in the strict sense. Now, new
objections become possible:
(cl) The ergodic hypothesis (in Maxwell's version) is unproved and
dubious.
(c2) The ergodic hypothesis (in Maxwell's version) is false.
(dl) There is no justification for the notion of the ensemble.
Objection (Cl) was immediately raised by Boltzmann, as soon as he had
formulated (C) for the first time (1868), whereas (c2) was to await its proof
for some decades. Objection (dl) was not clearly seen for quite some time,
since the concept of the statistical ensemble was at first not well under-
stood. Maxwell had accompanied its introduction only by a brief remark
saying that he 'found it convenient', 4
Boltzmann had already in 1868 admitted that the ergodic hypothesis
led to a much simpler treatment of the kinetic theory of heat than collision
theory; but - at least as long as he had not yet recognized the problems
involved in the Stosszahlansatz - he preferred the more complex proce-
dure, in which he found a 'strict proof', which was 'free from all hypoth-
eses', s of the mechanical nature of thermal phenomena. 6 In this opinion
he felt strongly confirmed when he succeeded to prove his H-theorem in
1872, i.e. to remove objection (b) even in its stronger version (b2),
without any further assumption beyond (A), which he did not recognize
as an assumption at all (cp. note 5).
It was only Lohschmidt's objection that finally undermined the tenabil-
ity of approach (1) based on assumption (A):
(e0 The reversal of any motion of a system approaching equilibrium
leads to another mechanically permissible motion of that system
which goes away from equilibrium.
Something was wrong with Boltzmann's 'strict proof'; he had obviously
proved too much. Boltzmann found an answer by interpreting the one-
particle-density as a statistical magnitude, as a probability measure to be
taken over the set of all possible alternative microstates of the system in
question (Boltzmann, 1877). This is approach (3). Boltzmann did not
 REDUCTION VS ELIMINATION OF THEORIES 301

recognize it as a reformulation of approach (2); rather he believed that

instead of the ergodic hypothesis Liouville's theorem - that is: a purely
mechanical theorem - provided a sufficient justification of the microca-
nonical distribution. A circumstance which Boltzmann did not at first see,
yet which probably led him to a nearly complete neglection of approach
(3), was the fact that within this approach no dynamical reason could be
given for the tendency of a system to approach equilibrium. A mere
probabilistic plausibility consideration took its place, viz. that "the
system will move to more and more probable states, until it finally has
reached the most probable one, that of equilibrium". 7 In a sense,
Boltzmann has answered objection (el), but had exposed his case to a new
objection:
(e2) A physical (i.e. dynamical) description of irreversible processes
is missing.
In spite of this new deficiency of statistical theory, Jeans felt still in
1904 that approach (3) was the way out, because it allowed to avoid all
objections against the approaches (1) and (2), in particular the objections
(a) and (c). His position is interesting, because he saw that his predeces-
sors had not only proved too much when they had used (A), but also when
they had relied upon (C), from which latter assumption one could also
conclude that a uniquely determined equilibrium would be reached (and
maintained for an overwhelming fraction of time) by every macroscopic
system. Therefore, he emphasized the distinction between what he called
the 'statistical' treatment (Maxwell) and the 'probabilistic' treatment
(which he, following Boltzmann, 1877, favoured himself). Jeans also
added an interpretation (or - in his opinion - justification) of this
treatment: it is based on the fact that we select a system 'at random'
among the huge set of systems of a certain kind offered by nature. 8
This subjectivistic interpretation of probabilistic notions is - partly at
least - also adopted by Gibbs (1902). In particular he succeeds in proving
his H-theorem (in 1902, Chap. XII, the only informal, non-mathematical
chapter of the book) only because he takes an average over cells of a finite
size in phase space - an idea to be developed much more carefully by the
Ehrenfests some years later (1906). This process of averaging is justified
once again by epistemological considerations: neighbouring points in
phase space are indistinguishable for us. Gibbs knows, of course, that -
strictly speaking - a density in phase space which is inhomogeneous at
302 LORENZ KRUGER

some initial moment of the undisturbed motion of a system will remain

inhomogeneous, hence different from the one representing equilibrium,
for ever; but it will nevertheless look homogeneous to us after a suffi-
ciently long time. A similar consideration is then also used in the
derivation of irreversibility from otherwise purely mechanical principles.
Gibbs, recognizing that his derivation of the H-theorem is equally
applicable not only to the future but also to the past, claims that "we are
rarely justified in excluding the consideration of the antecedent probabil-
ity of the prior events", 9 i.e. our actual knowledge of the past. C. F. von
Weizs/icker has discussed this idea carefully and shown that its accep-
tance leads to the more general conclusion that in physics one cannot
always disregard the existence of the physicist himself, especially not of
his consciousness of time (v. Weizs/icker, 1939).
Against this position, which is no longer exposed to objection (dl), a
closely related objection can be advanced:
(d2) A physical interpretation and justification of the notion of a
statistical ensemble, i.e. of assumption (D), is lacking.
And objection (e2) still stands, too. Boltzmann (and later, along similar
lines, Reichenbach and Gr/inbaum) have therefore attempted to avoid
the subjectivistic turn by making suitable assumptions concerning the
boundary conditions given in our space-time-region of the universe. But
these assumptions, as attractive as they may be from an ontological point
of view, remain ad hoc in mechanical theory.
The situation was then as follows: no derivation (not even an approx-
imative one) of thermodynamics from classical particle mechanics had
been achieved. Rather such a derivation required either that a probability
theory with a subjectivistic interpretation was added, for which no
justification within physics could be given, or that additional physical
assumptions were made, which were ad hoc and did amount to a petitio
principii of the second law of thermodynamics. Yet it is possible to avoid a
'subjectivist' epistemology as well as an 'objectivist' ad-hoc-theory, if
one drops the requirement of derivability of 7"1from T2 for the reducibil-
ity of T1 to T2.
A move of this kind, which I propose in correction of familiar concep-
tions in the philosophy of science concerning reduction, can be found in
the actual historical development of our example. In Gibbs, 1902, as well
as in Einstein, 1902 and 1903, the canonical ensemble is introduced
 REDUCTION VS ELIMINATION OF THEORIES 303

instead of the microcanonical, which was so far the only one that had been
used and believed to be understood. The new form of (D) was at first
viewed by most physicists as being entirely unwarranted and physically
unjustifiable, the more so as Gibbs' introductory comments mentioned
only reasons of simplicity or convenience 1~ and Einstein stated simply
that the distribution is a permitted one.11 What those opposing physicists
(among them Planck, 1904, and Zermelo, 1906) did not see was that a
physical justification of the microcanonical ensemble had not been given
either. Now, the required justification turned out to be more naturally
suggested by the canonical than by the microcanonical ensemble: Gibbs
and Einstein proposed to consider a system with a well-defined tempera-
ture as being immersed in a heat bath. But under this condition - as had
long ago been shown by Maxwell and Boltzmann - the system had to
display a distribution in energy corresponding to the canonical ensemble.
Thus, if temperature (as Gibbs, 1902, p. 179/180, put it) is taken to be an
'independent variable', a realistic interpretation of the canonical ensem-
ble can be given. ~z Einstein has in addition connected this interpretation
with the definition of the thermometer and, moreover, shown the
ingenuity to detect those phenomena for which the usually unobservable
fluctuations predicted by the theory could actually be seen (Einstein,
1904, 1905).
This historical case study - given here only in roughest outline - was
meant to show that, at least for the period covered, it would be inade-
quate to describe the attempted reduction of a macrotheory to a mic-
rotheory as a derivation of the former from the latter. The reduction, if
achieved at all, consists rather in the development of a third theory T3,
which marks - metaphorically speaking - the corner of a triangle erected
over a basis whose corners are marked by T1 and T 2. In our example T 2 is
earliest, T1 is second in time. T3 is latest; it depends on both, 7"1 and T2,
not only for its empirical justification, but also in its conceptual structure
which had to be framed under theoretical boundary conditions, as I would
like to call them, furnished by 7"1 and Tz.

III

What lesson can be drawn from Section II with respect to the questions
raised at the end of Section I?
304 LORENZ KRUGER

Question (1) has already been explicitly answered in the negative: a

derivation of T1 from T2 has not been given, neither in the weak sense
that it was possible to justify T1 on the basis of T2 alone, nor in the strong
sense that the conceptual structure of T1 could be embedded in that of T2
which was one of the typical requirements on reduction in the traditional
sense. The conclusions of part II of this paper agree in this respect with
the views expressed by Moulines (1975) in this journal, who has taken
'temperature' as well as 'equilibrium' to be T-theoretical concepts in the
sense of Sneed, 1971, i.e. roughly as concepts that cannot be applied
except by presupposing a successful application of the very theory to
which they belong.
It is not equally easy to answer question (2). Here it will be necessary to
distinguish between an epistemological sense and an ontological sense of
the term 'elimination' resp. 'eliminability'. It should have become clear in
part II that an epistemological elimination of T1 has certainly not been
achieved in our example.13 But the question of ontological elimination is
still open; it is not clear whether anything forbids us to claim that heat is
nothing but motion or to make similar claims. Everything stated by all
these theories in question seems to be compatible with such claims. For a
grounded decision about their truth, on the other hand, one would need
some further argument; otherwise the ontological claim of eliminability
remains empty. But the argument required here would not impress me, if
it would be entirely independent from our theoretical knowledge
embodied in the natural sciences. I should be inclined to see this case in
analogy to the famous dispute about whether or not the earth moves
through space. One would hardly wish to answer this latter question
independently from the theories of physics; and it may then even turn out
to be inadequately formulated. In a similar way one would have to
postpone the claim of the ontological eliminability of thermal phenomena
until one has succeeded to treat them as mere epiphenomena of motion
within the frame of a physical theory. 14 And the attempt at such a
treatment, it seems to me, has so far failed.
Nevertheless, the ontological question remains open, whereas the
epistemological question has been decided in the negative (provided, of
course, the state of affairs described in section II is actually given and has
not been superseded since). The case study shows once more that the old
distinction between the order of things in nature and the order of things
 REDUCTION VS ELIMINATION OF THEORIES 305

for us remains important. Niels Bohr has occasionally remarked that the
thermodynamical consideration of a physical system is complementary to
the mechanical consideration of the same system (Bohr, 1930, 1957).
Neglecting the depths of Bohr's concept of complementarity one may
perhaps say that the alternative to complementarity of thermodynamical
and mechanical descriptions would consist in embedding the former in
the latter. Yet, this embedding seems to be impossible, if one cannot
simply transgress the order of things for us, as it has developed in
accordance with our abilities and interests in actual history.
In this sense thermodynamics has also been viewed by Einstein: not as
epitheorem of mechanics, but rather as its touchstone, after he had
recognized the insufficiency of classical mechanics in ca. 1900.15 Of
course, he was also ready to correct or limit classical thermodynamics in
the light of statistical mechanics, e.g. in the domain of fluctuation
phenomena. What, according to this view of the matter, actually happens
in the development of a theoretical science is not so much the construc-
tion of a (e.g. mechanical) world-picture, but rather of a net of interre-
lated theories which takes into account the systematic connections of
things as well as the conditions of investigating them.
By this remark I have come to question (3): It should have become
dear to what extent a problem of reduction can influence the develop-
ment of research. Indeed, everything said in section II contributes to a
positive answer to question (3); and the general remarks at the end of
section II give a rough outline of how this result may be accounted for.
Further analysis will, of course, be needed, more cases will have to be
studied, before a more rigorous conceptual formulation can be found or
can be examined as to its realistic character with respect to the object,
which is actual scientific practice. It may nevertheless be noted already
now that our example shows in which way even revolutionary changes in
scientific development, e.g. the step from a deterministic to a statistical
theory, can be integrated into a continuous chain of scientific argument.

IV

I wish to conclude with a few necessarily very sketchy and preliminary

remarks concerning the more recent history of statistical mechanics. To
what extent are the main conclusions of sections II and III possibly
superseded by it?
306 LORENZ r~ROGER

For some types of interaction (pair potentials with a hard core) the
ergodic hypothesis is reported to have been proved (of course not in
Maxwell's original version) by Sinai. 16 As far as this proof goes and is
correct, a justification of probability measures in phase space, hence of
statistical ensembles corresponding to them, has been given in a way that
is no longer exposed to objection (d2), provided the debatable assumption
is granted that our measurements furnish only the value of the mag-
nitudes averaged over long intervals of time.
Moreover, by a suitable type of forming mathematical limits the
existence of systems in thermal equilibrium has been shown on a purely
mechanical basis. Yet, exact results for irreversible processes are still
missing, and in this sense "our understanding is quite insufficient for
providing a solid foundation of the concept of equilibrium" (Ruelle,
1969, p. 2).
It seems fair to summarize this situation by saying that the foundations
for the claim of the mutual compatibility of thermodynamics and
mechanics have been reinforced rather than a derivation of the former
from the latter has been achieved. 17 Besides the quite general argument
that we shall always need thermodynamics as evidence for the claim of the
empirical adequacy of statistical mechanics, one has to admit that the
special conceptual structure of this theory (e.g. the choice of the kinds of
mathematical limits to be taken) continues to be determined by the basis
of the theory-triangle, i.e. mechanics on the one hand and ther-
modynamics on the other. Whether this stage of research will ever be
overcome, this question one may rather leave open. The aim of this paper
was only to show that the non-linear structure of the net of theories is a
real feature of some phases of scientific development.

Fakultdt fiir Piidagogik, Philosophie, und Psychologie,

Universitiit Bielefeld, Bielefeld

NOTES

1 This is a proper place to express m y deep gratitude to T h o m a s K u h n without whose

stimulating guidance into the history of science and of statistical mechanics in particular this
paper would never have been written.
2 "Before writing m y first m e m o i r on heat, which was published in 1850 and in which heat is
a s s u m e d to be a motion, I had already formed for myself a distinct conception of the nature
 REDUCTION VS E L I M I N A T I O N OF THEORIES 307

of this motion, and had even employed the same in several investigations and calculations.
In my former memoirs I intentionally avoided mentioning this conception, because I wished
to separate the conclusions which are deducible from certain general principles from those
which presuppose a particular kind of m o t i o n . . . " (Clausius, 1857, translation from Brush,
1965, p. 112; cp. also Daub, 1967, p. 294).
3 This is a verbal quotation from Maxwell, 1878, p. 714.
4 Maxwell, 1878, p. 715.
5 Boltzmann, 1871a, p. 255; Boltzmann, 1872, p. 345.
6 The restriction to gases did not bother him much, since he was primarily interested in
proving atomism and was justified to choose the case which was certainly most suitable for
this purpose.
7 Boltzmann, 1877, p. 165.
8 Jeans, 1904, w58.
9 Gibbs, 1902, p. 151.
lo Gibbs, 1902, p. 33.
11 Einstein, 1902, p. 421; 1903, p. 175.
12 It is then only a second step to prove that, for sufficiently large systems, other types of
ensembles including the microcanonical give the same results.
13 In principle an epistemological elimination would seem to be possible: there might be a
way of justifying 7"2 and 7"3 independently of T1 by relating them directly or via theories
other than 7"1 to experience.
14 What I have in mind here is roughly this: There might be a set of principles of 7"2 and 7"3
sufficient to derive (at least approximately) 7"1, b u t - i n contradistinction to principles
involving notions like 'equilibrium' or 'temperature'-conceptually independent of 7'1.
Ontological eliminability conceived in this or a similar fashion would be something less than
epistemological eliminability but implied by it. Conversely, epistemological elimination
would then presuppose ontological eliminability.
15 Cf. Einstein's autobiography in which he winds up a critique of classical mechanics by a
praise of thermodynamics (P. Schilpp: Einstein, Philosopher - Scientist, New York, 1949,
pp. 24-33).
16 Cf. the report given by Arnold/Avez, 1967.
17 For a detailed evaluation of recent results in statistical thermodynamics compare also
Grad 1967. His basic idea of interrelating different "levels of description" which are chosen
according to the problem at hand including the relevant conditions of observation (e.g. pp.
65, 66) seems to come close to the point of view suggested in this paper, though a number of
problems and disagreements- concerning physical theory as well as its philosophical
evaluation - are left for further study.

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308 LORENZ KRUGER

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