Phys. perspect.

10 (2008) 379395
1422-6944/07/04037917
DOI 10.1007/s00016-007-0365-z

Pierre Duhem, Entropy, and Christian Faith

Helge Kragh*
The French physicist and polymath Pierre Duhem was strongly devoted to Catholicism but insisted
that science and religion were wholly independent. In an article of 1905 he reflected at length on
the relationship between physics and Christian faith, using as an example the cosmological significance of the laws of thermodynamics. He held that it was unjustified to draw cosmological consequences from thermodynamics or any other science, and even more unjustified to draw consequences of a religious nature. I place Duhems thoughts on the physics of a believer in their proper
contexts by relating them to the late-nineteenth-century discussion concerning the meaning and
domain of the law of entropy increase. I also consider Duhems position with respect to Catholic
science and culture in the anticlerical Third Republic.

Key words: Pierre Duhem; Ernst Mach; Georges Lematre; Catholicism; neo-Thomism;
religion; cosmology; thermodynamics; entropy; heat death.

Life and Work of a Classical Physicist

Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem (18611916, figure 1) was a scientist and scholar of
unusual breadth whose contributions ranged from the history of medieval natural philosophy to mathematical physics. He began his academic career in the 1880s with works
in chemical thermodynamics and continued over the years to develop this branch of
science, intermediary between physics and chemistry, into still more general formulations. Together with Wilhelm Ostwald (18531932), Jacobus Henricus vant Hoff
(18521911), Svante Arrhenius (18591927), and Walther Nernst (18641941), Duhem
counts as one of the pioneers of physical chemistry. In spite of his important contributions to thermodynamics, electromagnetism, hydrodynamics, and the theory of elasticity, however, he never obtained a university chair in Paris, the absolute center of French
intellectual life. Partly as a result of his disagreements with the scientific and political
establishment, and not least with the powerful chemist and politician Marcelin Berthelot (18271907), Duhem had to spend his professional life in the provinces, serving as
lecturer and professor at the universities in Lille, Rennes, and Bordeaux where he
became full professor in 1894. He engaged actively in physics teaching and established
himself as an innovative teacher of physics.1 Apart from his scientific and intellectual
work, and the controversies in which he was occasionally involved, Duhems life was
uneventful. He married in 1890, but his wife died two years later, leaving him with their
* Helge Kragh is Professor at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. His main field of research is
the history of physical science after 1850.

379

380

Helge Kragh

Phys. perspect.

Fig. 1. Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem (18611916). Credit: Acadmie des Sciences de lInstitut de
France.

daughter, Hlne (who published a biography of her father in 1936). Duhem died of a
heart attack in 1916, at the age of fifty-five.2
Duhem was politically conservative, strongly anti-Republican, and an orthodox
Catholic. His conservatism extended to the realm of science, at least in the sense that
he resisted the new trends in physics that appeared in the 1890s, beginning with the
discoveries of X rays, radioactivity, and the electron. Having the mind of a classical
physicist in the French mathematical tradition, and subscribing to the ideals of positivism (of a kind), he denied the existence of atoms and subatomic particles as real entities. When quantum theory and the theory of relativity arrived on the scene in the first
decade of the twentieth century, he chose to ignore these new theories. He spelled out
his antiatomism in several works, first in 1892 in the Catholic journal Revue des questions scientifique and ten years later more elaborately in Le mixte et la combinaison
chimique.3 As late as 1913 the year that saw the atomic model of Niels Bohr

Vol. 10 (2008)

Pierre Duhem, Entropy, and Christian Faith

381

(18851962) Duhem defended his nonatomistic and nonelectronic view of physics

and chemistry:
The school of the neo-atomists, the doctrines of which center on the concept of the
electron, have again taken up with supreme confidence the method we refuse to follow. This school thinks its hypotheses at last attain the inner structure of matter, that
they allow us to see the elements, as if some extraordinary ultra-microscope were to
enlarge them until they became perceptible to us. We do not share this confidence.
We are not able to recognize in these hypotheses a clairvoyant vision of what there
is beyond sensible things; we regard them only as models.4
In 1915 Duhem gave a series of four lectures on German science at Bordeaux that
severely criticized la science allemande and its roots in what he saw as the deplorable
mindset of the German race.5 In this work of chauvinistic propaganda he described
German physicists as good mathematicians who unfortunately were unable to think
intuitively and therefore produced abstract theories with no connection to the real
world: The German, then, quite skillful in the use of the deductive method, but weakly endowed with intuitive knowledge, will multiply the occasions on which the former
may be applied, and restrict as much as possible the circumstances which call for the
latter. 6 Duhem had nothing to say about quantum theory, but he mentioned the theory of relativity (meaning the special theory) as a typical example of abstract and sterile German theorizing. Rejecting the principle of relativity as contrary to common
sense, he wrote that it is so plainly a creation of the mathematical mind that one does
not know how to articulate it correctly in ordinary language and without recourse to
algebraic formulas. 7 But it, and its abandonment of the classical concepts of space,
time, and motion, does not excite the distrust of German physicists, among whom he
mentioned Albert Einstein (18791955), Hermann Minkowski (18641909), and Max
von Laue (18791960).
Today Duhem is probably best known as a philosopher of science, a reputation primarily based upon his classic book, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, first
published in 1906.8 Given Duhems lack of appreciation of Einsteinian relativity, it is
ironic that his book influenced Einsteins way of thinking to a considerable degree. It
appeared in German in 1908 as Ziel und Struktur der physikalischen Theorie, translated by Einsteins close friend Friedrich Adler (18791960) and with a sympathetic foreword by the famous Austrian physicist and philosopher Ernst Mach (18381916). Einstein read Duhems book, probably in 1909, and it exerted a long and lasting influence
on his epistemological views. What particularly impressed Einstein was the theoretical
holism and the underdetermination of theory choice (often called the Duhem-Quine
thesis) that were central theses in Duhems philosophy of physics. In a letter of 1918,
Einstein referred approvingly to the clear book by Duhem. 9
Duhems legacy is not restricted to either his scientific contributions or his work in
philosophy of science. He is recognized as one of the pioneers of the modern history of
science and a founding figure of the scholarly study of medieval natural philosophy. By
a careful study of the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (14521519), Duhem was led to
recognize important schools of mathematics and natural philosophy in the late thirteenth century and the following two centuries, and he was the first to investigate in

382

Helge Kragh

Phys. perspect.

detail the works of scholastic philosophers such as Jean Buridan (ca. 1300), Albert of
Saxony (ca. 12001280), and Nicole Oresme (ca. 13201382). Duhems pathbreaking
work in the history of science resulted in numerous publications, culminating in his
three-volume tudes sur Lonard de Vinci (19061913) and his ten-volume Systme du
monde (19131959) of which half were published posthumously. When the chair in history of science at the Collge de France had to be filled in 1904, he was asked to put
himself forward as a candidate but refused to have his name placed on the list of candidates; if he was to go to Paris, it would be as a physicist. He always insisted that he
was a physicist, not a philosopher or historian of the physical sciences. (The chair was
filled by Grgoire Wyrouboff (18431913), a crystallographer of modest distinction in
the history of science.10)
Like Mach, Duhem used the history of science in support of his philosophical ideas,
for example, in arguing that metaphysics and hidden causes were detrimental to scientific progress. He defended a continuity thesis, that progress was (and is) obtained by
the accumulation of empirical knowledge and the gradual refinement of concepts.
According to his understanding of the history of science, the works of the Christian
thinkers in the Middle Ages constituted a break with orthodox Aristotelianism and
thereby paved the way for the later change in natural philosophy that came with
Galileo Galilei (15641642) and his generation. Although Duhems radical continuity
thesis no longer enjoys support among historians of science, in a more moderate version it continues to inspire medievalist historians.

Thermodynamics as the Basic Science

Before accounting for Duhems view of the cosmological aspects of thermodynamics, I
must emphasize that he was one of the periods great experts of this science, second
perhaps only to Max Planck (18581947) and J. Willard Gibbs (18391903). But in contrast to these physicists, the antiatomist Duhem never accepted the statistical-mechanical view of thermodynamics initiated by James Clerk Maxwell (18311879) and Ludwig Boltzmann (18441906). As Louis de Broglie (18921987) later commented:
inspired by a genuine horror of all mechanical or pictorial models, he never became
interested in the interpretation of the abstract concepts of classical thermodynamics,
though it was so instructive and fruitful, which statistical mechanics furnished in his
own lifetime. 11
Inspired by the thermodynamical works of Gibbs and Hermann von Helmholtz
(18211894), Duhem developed the theory of chemical potentials (such as the freeenergy functions) in his first book, Le potentiel thermodynamique et ses applications
la mcanique chimique et la thorie des phnomnes lectriques of 1886. His general
method, based upon Gibbss work, was to base thermodynamics on the condition that
at equilibrium the potential must be a minimum. Among other things, he considered
systems in which phase changes or chemical reactions take place and wrote the change
in chemical energy as n11 + n22 + + nkk, where the ns refer to the amounts of the
components and the s are chemical potentials. According to what is known as the
Gibbs-Duhem equation, n1d1 + n2d2 + + nkdk = 0 for a process taking place at
constant temperature and pressure.12

Vol. 10 (2008)

Pierre Duhem, Entropy, and Christian Faith

383

Duhem also launched an attack on Berthelots thermochemistry, which was based

upon the assumption that the quantity of heat evolved in a chemical reaction was a
measure of chemical affinity. According to Berthelots principle of maximum work,
first stated in 1864, all chemical reactions are accompanied by heat production, and the
process that actually occurs out of all possible ones is the one in which the most heat
is produced. However, as Duhem argued, this principle was based only upon the law of
energy conservation and failed to take into account the entropy changes given by the
second law of thermodynamics. What Berthelot had stated as a fundamental principle
of science was, according to Duhem, nothing but a ridiculous tautology. 13 Berthelot
was not the only chemist who failed to understand the nature and role of entropy; as
late as 1894 he characterized this concept, by then nearly thirty years old, as an
obscure notion and an unknown quantity. 14 Duhem emphatically disagreed. He gave
full accounts of the generalized chemical thermodynamics in two monographs published about the turn of the century, in his two-volume Trait de mcanique chimiques
(18971899) and in his Thermodynamique et chimie (1902).
Duhems vision of a generalized thermodynamics (or energetics, as he called it) was
a sort of nonmechanical, phenomenological theory of everything with distinct Aristotelian features. It was, he said, not a branch of physics, but the trunk from which several subjects branched off. These laws govern all the changes that it is possible to
produce in the inorganic world. 15 He deliberately contrasted the new thermodynamics with the old paradigm of rational mechanics:
Thirty years ago, rational Mechanics still seemed the queen of science of which all
other physical doctrines must be an expression. It was required that Thermodynamics reduce all its laws to mere theorems of Mechanics. Today, rational Mechanics is
no more than the application to a particular problem of locomotion of this general
Thermodynamics, of this Energetics whose principles encompass all the transformations of the inorganic world or, according to the peripatetic description, all physical
movements.16

Entropy, Heat Death, and Catholic Thought

Shortly after the formulation of the second law of thermodynamics, independently by
William Thomson (18241907) and Rudolf Clausius (18221888) in the early 1850s, it
was applied to the universe at large, first by Helmholtz in an address delivered in
Knigsberg in 1854.17 The essence of the second law, as understood at that time, was
that the energy in a closed system will spontaneously and irreversibly be degraded,
be transformed into a lower-temperature form of heat unable to produce mechanical
work. As Helmholtz pointed out, the consequence would be a state of equilibrium
scarcely distinguishable from death: Then all possibility of a further change would be
at an end, and the complete cessation of all natural processes must set in. In short,
the universe from that time onward would be condemned to a state of eternal rest.
This scenario of the so-called heat death (Wrmetod) immediately became the subject
of much discussion among both scientists and nonscientists. Thomson formulated the
prediction in terms of dissipation of energy and Clausius framed it in terms of entropy,

384

Helge Kragh

Phys. perspect.

a concept he introduced in 1865. The entropy of the universe tends towards a maximum, he emphasized in a paper of 1868.19 When the state of maximum entropy had
been attained, the universe would be dead, never to wake up.
The second law of thermodynamics not only predicted a heat death in the far
future, it also seemed to imply that the world is of finite age and thus had a beginning
in time, since if the universe had existed an eternity ago, the entropy would already
have reached its maximum value, which was clearly not the case. This entropic argument for a beginning of the universe was introduced in the late 1860s and adopted as
a reasonable hypothesis by leading physicists such as Thomson, Maxwell, and Peter
Guthrie Tait (18311901) who were impressed by its apparent agreement with the
Christian message of a created world. A substantial part of the debate in the late nineteenth century was concerned with the apologetic use of thermodynamics and the significance of the second law in the ideological and cultural battle that raged through
much of Europe at the time. By and large, those in favour of political conservatism,
idealism, and Christian values looked with sympathy to the cosmological claims of
thermodynamics, whereas socialists, materialists, and atheists denied these claims, in
part because they suspected them to be Christian religion masquerading as science.20
The standard argument of the latter group was that the second law was valid only for
a finite collection of bodies and not for the supposedly infinite universe, in which case
their favored worldview of an eternal and cyclical universe did not conflict with the
laws of physics.
The heat death could be avoided even without presupposing an infinite material
universe, namely, by arguing that the inference was methodologically invalid. That was
the position of Mach, who opposed extrapolations of the laws of nature to the entire
universe. His opposition to the heat death was undoubtedly related to his hostility
toward Christian faith.21 In 1871, while professor of physics at Prague, Mach gave a lecture on the history of the principle of energy conservation in which he criticized the
concept of the heat death and its corollary, the origin of the universe, by arguing that
they were scientifically meaningless. It is completely illusory, he wrote, to apply the
second law to the entire universe. This was not because of any problem with Clausiuss
law in particular but because no meaningful statements could be attached to the universe. Mach argued that, for the statement to be meaningful, we must consider the
object separate from another part of the universe, which acts a clock. But this is impossible for the universe itself, since there is nothing left that can serve as a clock. The
world is like a machine in which the motion of certain parts is determined by the
motion of other parts, only nothing is determined about the motion of the machine as
a whole. For the universe there is no [measure of] time. 22
During the second half of the nineteenth century the Catholic church was seriously
disturbed by what came to be known as the modernist crisis, a confrontation between
traditional church dogmas and modern ideas coming from the humanities and natural
sciences. In Bismarcks new, unified Germany the confrontation culminated in a campaign to keep Catholics out of public life and culture, an important element in what is
known as the Kulturkampf. In France, the situation was marked not only by the successful trend of Comtean positivism but also by the Third Republics sustained antiCatholicism and anticlericalism. In 1880 Jesuits and other unauthorized congregations

Vol. 10 (2008)

Pierre Duhem, Entropy, and Christian Faith

385

were disbanded by law, and this measure was followed by a general offensive against
faith and church. This campaign reached its climax shortly after the turn of the century when Catholic schools were closed and thousands of monks and nuns expelled.
Finally, in 1905 the Republic broke totally with the church and ceased to recognize any
form of religion. Priests and Catholic thinkers responded in a variety of ways, one being
more active participation in scientific, social, and philosophical debates. Part of the
Catholic intellectual counteroffensive was directed against the attempts to use science
as a weapon against religion.23
The Catholic counteroffensive agreed with, and to a large extent was inspired by the
more modernist and reconciliatory strategy of Leo XIII (18101904), pontiff from 1879
to 1904. The Pope actively encouraged scholars to engage in the world of science and
to demonstrate that Catholic thought and modern science were not irreconcilable. In
his widely read History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, the chemist John
William Draper (18111882) had concluded that Roman Christianity and Science are
absolutely incompatible; they cannot exist together; one must yield to the other;
mankind must make a choice it cannot have both. 24 The new generation of Catholic
scholars was eager to refute Drapers diatribe and to show that science was not a born
enemy of faith; on the contrary, if supplied with the right metaphysical foundation in
the form of neoscholasticism, science would be a valuable ally of faith.
Neoscholasticism or neo-Thomism, a revised version of the philosophical system of
Thomas Aquinas (12251274), became the foundation of the new Catholic philosophy,
natural philosophy included. Although many Catholic scientists fell for the temptation
to use science apologetically, this was not the aim of neoscholasticism. The Belgian Cardinal Desir Joseph Mercier (18511926, figure 2), a leading neo-Thomist and the
organizer of the Institut Suprieur de Philosophie associated with the Catholic University in Louvain, emphasized that the purpose of the new institute was to form, in
greater numbers, men who will devote themselves to science for itself, without any aim
that is professional or directly apologetic. 25 Among the professors at the Louvain
institute was Dsir Nys (18591927), who in his youth had studied chemistry under
Ostwald in Leipzig and in Louvain taught courses on cosmology and chemistry. In one
of the volumes of his Cours de philosophie, Nys examined in detail the claim that the
second law of thermodynamics implied a beginning and an end of the world. He concluded that the law could not be assigned absolute certainty, and for this and other reasons he dismissed its apologetic use and retreated to the safe haven of faith. Did the
world have a beginning? Only faith permits us to respond to this question with complete certainty. 26 According to Nys, human reason was unable to provide a definite
proof against the possibility of an eternal world.
Nyss view was in complete agreement with neoscholastic philosophy as expounded in the authoritative Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy, written by Cardinal
Mercier and several of the professors at the Louvain institute. According to Mercier,
cosmology comprised three parts, namely, (i) the origin of the inorganic world, meaning its first efficient cause; (ii) its intrinsic constitution or ultimate constitutive causes;
and (iii) its destiny or final cause.27 Cosmology in the neoscholastic philosophical tradition thus constituted a much broader subject than the current meaning of the term
with its emphasis on physics and astronomy. It was natural philosophy rather than

386

Helge Kragh

Phys. perspect.

Fig. 2. Cardinal Desir Joseph Mercier (18511926). Source: Mercier, Manual of Modern Scholastic
Philosophy. Vol. I (ref. 27), frontispiece.

the science of the universe. Mercier and his coauthors were careful not to accept the
thermodynamic argument of the origin of the world as a proof of Gods existence:
But even if science could demonstrate that the actual state of this world as we find
it had a commencement; if the law of entropy could establish as a fact that the
forces of the world have had an origin in far-off ages, reason alone could never be
sure that this state was not endlessly preceded by some other state of which science
is entirely ignorant. In any case it is imprudent to identify the question of the
existence of God with that of the commencement of the world.28
The cautious attitude of leading Catholic philosophers and theologians was not followed by all Catholics. In fact, the period from about 1880 to 1910 saw a flood of publications in which Jesuits and other writers of Catholic faith argued from the second
law of thermodynamics that the world must have had an origin in time and eventually
must come to a standstill. Several of these writers concluded that thermodynamics had
vindicated a divinely created world and thus proved the existence of God.

Vol. 10 (2008)

Pierre Duhem, Entropy, and Christian Faith

387

Physics of a Believer
As a devout and outspoken Catholic scientist, Duhem could not avoid being drawn into
the discussion concerning the relationship among science, philosophy, and theology. While
a professor in Bordeaux, he reflected forcefully on this topic in an important article of 1905
entitled Physics of a believer in the Annales de philosophie Chrtienne, a Catholic journal founded in the 1830s. His article received much wider attention when it was included
as an appendix in the second edition of his Aim and Structure of Physical Theory.29
Duhems article was a lengthy response to a detailed and critical essay by the young
philosopher Abel Rey (18731940), who had concluded that Duhems scientific philosophy is that of a believer (note that Rey referred to Duhems philosophy of science,
not his science).30 Although Duhem was indeed a believer, a sincere and fervent
Catholic, he was eager to point out that his works in physics and chemistry should be
considered on their own merits, independent of his religion. They were not examples of
Catholic science, nor even colored by his Catholic faith. It followed from his positivistic, antimetaphysical methodology of science that there could be no influence of
religion on science, nor of science on religion (whereas he accepted an influence of science on metaphysics). He rejected the idea that arguments from physics, or science in
general, could serve as valid objections against religion, and conversely, that such arguments could support the cause of religion:
Whatever I have said of the method by which physics proceeds, or of the nature and
scope that we must attribute to the theories it constructs, does not in any way prejudice either the metaphysical doctrines or the religious beliefs of anyone who
accepts my words. The believer and the nonbeliever may both work in common
accord for the progress of physical science such as I have tried to define it.
In itself and by its essence, any principle of theoretical physics has no part to play
in metaphysical or theological discussions.31
In short, Duhem was an ardent advocate of the independence thesis, the view that science and religion deal with different realms of reality and therefore can be neither in
conflict nor in harmony.32 Although he firmly believed that the order of nature was
ultimately the work of the Creator, he denied any direct connections between science
and religion based upon natural theology. According to his friend, the Abb Bernies (d.
1929), Duhem held the view that science properly spoken was neither Christian nor
anti-Christian, once it kept itself within its limits. It was simply science. Science and
Revelation have one domain, but absolutely different methods. 33
To illustrate his view on the relationship among science, philosophy, and theology,
Duhem referred to the case of thermodynamics, his favorite branch of physics. He first
commented on the cosmological significance of the laws of thermodynamics in a textbook of 1897 in which he expressed his disapproval of Clausiuss formulations of the
two laws, which he found to be foreign to physics. According to Duhem, Clausius had
illegitimately applied the laws of thermodynamics to the universe,* which he assimi* Duhems reference to Clausiuss view of the universe is puzzling, as Clausius never mentioned
this or any other cosmological model.

388

Helge Kragh

Phys. perspect.

lates to a system of bodies of limited extension and isolated in an absolutely void

space. 34 He repeated his criticism in a later textbook in which he argued that energy
and entropy cannot be uniquely defined for the universe as a whole, irrespective of
whether it is spatially infinite or finite. He therefore concluded that there was no logical justification for Clausiuss cosmological formulation. More generally: All the philosophical consequences that one believes to be able to derive from an extension of the
principle of energy conservation and the principle of entropy increase to the universe
prove to be an idea that is completely erroneous with respect to the nature and range
of thermodynamics and, in general, the science of physics. 35 This methodologically
founded criticism agreed with that of Mach and other scientists of a positivist orientation.
In his article of 1905, Duhem referred to the entropic argument for creation and
decay, knowing well that this was a controversial subject. He was aware that the laws
of thermodynamics had been used to strengthen the cause of religion, but he considered this to be based upon a misunderstanding of both physics and Christian religion.
Concerning Clausiuss cosmological version of the second law, he wrote:
From this theorem many a philosopher maintained the conclusion of the impossibility of a world in which physical and chemical changes would go on being produced forever; it pleased them to think that these changes had had a beginning and
would have an end; creation in time, if not of matter, at least of its aptitude for
change, and the establishment in a more or less remote future of a state of absolute
rest and universal death were for these thinkers inevitable consequences of the principles of thermodynamics.36
Duhem, however, did not accept these conclusions, which were marred in more than
one place by fallacies. It followed from his conception of physics that the cosmological use of the law of entropy increase was invalid, and also that the law could have no
religious implications. For one thing, the entropic argument implicitly assumes the
assimilation of the universe to a finite collection of bodies isolated in a space absolutely void of matter, he wrote, repeating what he had said in 1897. He saw no reason to
accept this assumption. Moreover, he argued that the entropy law merely says that the
entropy of the universe increases endlessly, not that it has any lower or upper limit:
It is true that the entropy of the universe has to increase endlessly, but it does not
impose any lower or upper limit on this entropy; nothing then would stop this magnitude from varying from to + while the time itself varied from to + ; then
the allegedly demonstrated impossibilities regarding an eternal life for the universe
would vanish.37
Duhems assertion that the second law does not imply that a system will end in a state
of maximum entropy, even if an infinity of time is available, was not original. A similar argument had been made by Arthur Joachim von Oettingen (18361920), a physicist from the University of Dorpat (now Tartu in Estonia), who in 1876 concluded
that Clausiuss version of the second law was wrong.38 The idea of an asymptotic
increase of entropy was sometimes put forward as an argument against the heat
death, but as pointed out by the Catholic philosopher and theologian Constantin

Vol. 10 (2008)

Pierre Duhem, Entropy, and Christian Faith

389

Gutberlet (18371928), it did not allow life processes to go on eternally.39 If the universe was in a state of very high entropy, if not in the maximal state, it would still be
dead for all practical purposes.
Duhems aim was certainly not to argue against a universe of finite age, but to warn
that physical theory does not justify such long-term predictions. In this epistemological
respect he was an agnostic (of course, he was not an agnostic in the religious sense). It
is absurd, he declared, to question this theory [thermodynamics] for information concerning events which might have happened in an extremely remote past, and absurd to
demand of it predictions of events a very long way off. It would be a gross misconception of the scope and nature of science to believe that one could claim for it the
proof of a dogma affirmed by our faith. In agreement with his general philosophy of
science, Duhem pointed out that it would be perfectly possible to construct a new thermodynamics that was in agreement with experimental data and gave the same predictions as the old thermodynamics for ten thousand years; and yet, the new theory could
be constructed in such a way that it might tell us that the entropy of the universe after
increasing for a period of 100 million years will decrease over a new period of 100 million years in order to increase again in an eternal cycle. 40 He definitely did not subscribe to such a strange worldview, but wanted to bring home the point that science is
incapable of making trustworthy predictions about either the beginning or the end of
the world, or its perpetual activity.
Concerning the more general relationship between cosmology and physics, Duhem
claimed that the two fields are so different that physical theory cannot be applied
meaningfully to cosmology. He did not deny that knowledge of physics can be useful,
and even indispensable for the cosmologist, but he argued nonetheless that physical
theory can never demonstrate or contradict an assertion of cosmology, for the propositions constituting one of these doctrines can never bear on the same terms which the
propositions forming the other do, and between two propositions not bearing on the
same terms there can be neither agreement nor contradiction. 41 The only connection
of cosmology to theoretical physics was by means of analogy. Duhems denial of the
possibility of physical cosmology may appear surprising, but one should be aware that
he spoke of cosmology mostly in a philosophical, neoscholastic sense of the word.
The cosmology of Aristotelian physics was, he said, unmistakably analogous to generalized thermodynamics.

The Catholic Context

The fin de sicle ideology in France was colored in part by a growing revolt against positivism, scientism and the agnostic-materialistic ideas that the scientific worldview was
accused of fostering. In early 1895 the French literary critic and orthodox Catholic Ferdinand Brunetire (18491906), inspired by a visit to the Vatican, published an article in
which he attacked positivistic science and argued that it had failed to answer, or even
address the greater questions of matter and life. In the heated debate that followed,
some critics of science proclaimed the bankruptcy of science (Brunetire himself did
not use this phrase, but spoke only of the failure of science).42 Nor was it only in France
that science was charged with being morally bankrupt. The Irish writer and Victorian

390

Helge Kragh

Phys. perspect.

feminist Frances Power Cobbe (18221904) wrote in 1888 that a man bred to science
will view his mothers tears not as expressions of her sorrow, but as solutions of muriates and carbonates of soda, and of phosphates of lime; and he will reflect that they were
caused not by his selfishness, but [by] cerebral pressure on her lachrymal glands. 43
Contrary to what preachers of the scientific gospel claimed, positivistic science was
widely held to be inferior to religion because it provided no insight into the supreme
mysteries of the universe, or into the mysteries of the meaning of love, life, and death.
In this intellectual climate, French Catholics eyed an opportunity to come back on the
scene, not only as critics of scientistic tendencies but also as interpreters of and contributors to science. Jesuit scholars engaged in the history of science to demonstrate
that a substantial part of the progress of science was due to the work of scientists of
Catholic faith.44
Duhem was very much his own man. His ideas, whether scientific, political, or religious, conflicted sharply with those held by the cultural and scientific elite of France.
Although he was a fervent supporter of Catholicism, he was far from representative of
Catholic scientists, most of whom had no problems with arguing apologetically, that is,
to the effect that science supported Christian theology. For example, in 1905 the
Catholic geologist Albert de Lapparent (18391908) gave a series of lectures that was
published as Science et apologtique and whose message was that that recent developments of science were fully congruent with Christian faith. Contrary to Duhem, Lapparent believed that the idea of a beginning and an end of the universe could be given
scientific support: The [Christian] idea of origin and end applied to the entire creation
seems to find a remarkable confirmation in the fundamental law of this energetics in
which all the sciences of matter tend more and more to meet. 45
While Duhem emphatically declined to use science apologetically, he saw his
research in the history of medieval science in a different light. The study of the history
of science would show, he wrote, that during those very ages when men cared above
all for the kingdom of God and of its justice, God accorded to them as a bonus the most
profound and fertile thoughts concerning matters down here. 46 In the second volume
of his book, The Origins of Statics of 1906, he wrote about the many attempts in the
Middle Ages to establish a science of statics that demonstrated the existence of a divine
architect:
How could all these efforts combine with such precision and bring to completion a
plan which was not known to the individual laborer, unless this plan existed previously in the mind of an architect, and if this architect did not have the power to
direct and coordinate the labor of all the masons? Even more than the growth of a
living being, the evolution of statics is the manifestation of the influence of a guiding idea. Within the complex data of this evolution, we can see the continuous action
of a divine wisdom which foresees the ideal form towards which science must tend
and we can sense the presence of a Power which causes the efforts of all thinkers to
converge towards this goal. In a word, we recognize here the work of Providence.47
Although natural theology had no place in Duhems conception of science, it went
hand in hand with the history of science. This may seem rather surprising, if not inconsistent. After all, todays science is tomorrows history of science.

Lgica da cincia e teorias fsicas X histria das cincias

A histria da cincia
apologtica, apesar de as teorias no
o serem.

Vol. 10 (2008)

Pierre Duhem, Entropy, and Christian Faith

391

According to Duhem, the controversy between Catholic thought and modern science was essentially a misunderstanding based upon a failure to appreciate the separate domains of the two fields. He had nothing but disdain for the many words wasted
on the subject:
It has been fashionable for some time to oppose the great theories of physics to the
fundamental doctrines on which spiritualistic philosophy and the Catholic faith rest;
these doctrines are really expected to be seen crumbling under the ramming blows
of scientific systems. Of course, these struggles of science against faith impassion
those who are very poorly acquainted with the teachings of science and who are not
at all acquainted with the dogmas of faith; but at times they preoccupy and disturb
men whose intelligence and conscience are far above those of village scholars and
caf physicists.48
Duhems views were controversial, both within the state university system and within
the Catholic church. As an indiscreet Catholic, his career was deeply affected by the
hostility of anticlerical governments toward Catholicism.49 As an independent mind,
his insistence on a sharp separation between science and faith made him a target of
some Catholics who suspected him of philosophical scepticism and fideism, the
heretical belief that faith rests upon faith and nothing else. Not only was his view concerning science and religion problematical, so was his philosophy of science, primarily
because it was radically antimetaphysical and seemed to undermine natural theology.50
Among Duhems later critics was the influential neo-Thomist philosopher Jacques
Maritain (18821973), who objected to Duhems philosophy of physics and especially
its independence of any metaphysical framework, Thomism included.
Bernard Brunhes (18671910), Professor of Physics and Director of the Observatory at Puy-de-Dme, had a high regard for Duhem and his philosophy of physics. In 1908
he published an excellent and comprehensive review of the second law of thermodynamics entitled La dgradation de lnergie, but he chose not to include its wider cosmological and religious aspects. The Catholic Brunhes was not foreign to these aspects,
but, like Duhem, he wanted to keep them separate from scientific aspects.51 Like many
other Catholic scientists, Brunhes kept a low profile in matters of religion, aware that
controversial statements concerning science and Christian faith might annoy the
Republican establishment and harm his career. Although this was not Duhems style,
he agreed that thermodynamics had no religious implications.

Conclusion: Duhem and Lematre

Duhems refusal to accept, or even take seriously the metaphysical and religious consequences of thermodynamics, such as the beginning of the universe in a state of low
entropy, was not particularly unusual for a Catholic scientist. As mentioned, leading
Catholic philosophers and theologians shared the view that physics cannot prove the
finiteness of the age of the world and even less its divine creation. Yet Duhems reasons for dismissing cosmological thermodynamics were different, as they were rooted
in his general philosophy of physics. According to his philosophy, theories of physics
are mathematical representations rather than explanations. As such, they are neither

392

Helge Kragh

Phys. perspect.

true nor false but merely convenient statements that more or less completely and
exactly cover groups of phenomena; a finite number of phenomena or data may be represented by many different theories. By their very nature, then, theories of physics are
noncosmological and therefore also irrelevant to religious faith.
Of course, Duhem is not the only Catholic scientist who has subscribed to the independence thesis. So did the Belgian priest and pioneer of modern cosmology Georges
Lematre (18941966). Although he did not share Duhems view that physics is of no
direct cosmological relevance, he did agree that science and religion are different and
autonomous ways of knowing. Speaking of the big-bang model of the universe at the
eleventh Solvay conference in 1958, Lematre said: As far as I can see, such a theory
remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental Being. He may keep, for the bottom of space-time,
the same attitude of mind that he has been able to adopt for events occurring in nonsingular places in space-time. 52 This was a view entirely in agreement with what
Duhem had written in Physics of a believer. Lematre, however, did not dismiss the
entropic creation argument for philosophical or other reasons. In fact, the law of
increase of entropy played a significant role in the thinking that led him to propose the
big-bang model of the universe in 1931.53
As mentioned, at the time of Duhem the heat death was a controversial and much
discussed issue. Does the second law of thermodynamics apply to the universe at large?
Does it lead to a dead universe in the far future? One year after Duhems death, Einstein revolutionized cosmology by basing it upon the field equations of general relativity, and since then cosmology has developed into an advanced science of which
Duhem and his contemporaries could scarcely dream. Contrary to what one might
believe, the rapid progress in physical cosmology has not led to a clarification of the
thorny question of cosmic entropy. On the contrary, this entire question rather has
become more complicated and muddled. Few modern cosmologists believe that the
second law is valid for the universe in any straightforward way. It is far from clear how
to apply thermodynamics to a universe governed by classical general relativity, or if the
notion of the entropy of the universe is at all well-defined. I see no reason to expect
that there will be a meaningful notion of the total entropy of the universe, says
Robert M. Wald, a leading expert on cosmology and thermodynamics. Nevertheless, he
believes that in (quantum) general relativity some notion of entropy will exist and the
basic form of the laws of thermodynamics will survive. 54

Acknowledgment
I thank Roger H. Stuewer for his careful editing of my manuscript.

References
1 Michael J. Crowe, Pierre Duhem, the History and Philosophy of Physics, and the Teaching of
Physics, Physics in Perspective 1 (1999), 5464.
2 For biographical accounts of Duhem, see Stanley Jaki, Uneasy Genius: The Life and Work of Pierre
Duhem (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984); Donald G. Miller, Ignored Intellect: Pierre Duhem,

Vol. 10 (2008)

6
7
8

9
10
11
12

13

14

15
16
17

18
19

20

21
22

Pierre Duhem, Entropy, and Christian Faith

393

Physics Today 19 (December 1966), 4753; Donald G. Miller, Duhem, Pierre-Maurice-Marie, in

Charles Coulston Gillispie, Editor in Chief, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 4 (New York:
Charles Scribners Sons, 1971), pp. 225233; Hlne Pierre-Duhem, Un savant franais: Pierre
Duhem (Paris: Plon, 1936).
Pierre Duhem, Notation atomique et hypothse atomistiques, Revue des questions scientifique
31 (1892), 391457; translated by Paul Needham as Atomic Notation and Atomistic Hypotheses,
Foundations of Chemistry 2 (2000), 127180. Pierre Duhem, Le mixte et la combinaison chimique:
Essai sur levolution dune ide (Paris: C. Naud, 1902), translated and edited by Paul Needham as
Mixture and Chemical Combination and Related Essays (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2002).
Pierre Duhem, Notice sur les titres et travaux scientifique de Pierre Duhem (Bordeaux: Gounouilhou, 1913), p. 71; quoted in Robert J. Deltete and Anastasios Brenner, Essay Review [of Duhem,
Mixture and Chemical Combination (ref. 3)], Found. Chem. 6 (2004), 201230, on 224225.
Pierre Duhem, La science allemande (Paris: A. Hermann et Fils, 1915); translated by John Lyon as
German Science (La Salle, Ill: Open Court, 1991). See also Harry W. Paul, The Sorcerers Apprentice: The French Scientists Image of German Science, 18401919 (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1972).
Duhem, La science allemande (ref. 5), p. 12.
Ibid., p. 105.
Pierre Duhem, La thorie physique, son objet, sa structure (Paris: Chevalier et Rivire, 1906); translated by Philip P. Wiener as The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954; New York: Atheneum, 1974).
Quoted in Don Howard, Einstein and Duhem, Synthese 84 (1990), 363384, on 368.
Harry W. Paul, Scholarship versus Ideology: The Chair of the General History of Science at the
Collge de France, 18921913, Isis 67 (1976), 376398.
Louis de Broglie, Foreword, in Duhem, Aim and Structure (ref. 8), p. x.
On the development of chemical thermodynamics, see Varadaraja V. Raman, The Permeation of
Thermodynamics into Nineteenth Century Chemistry, Indian Journal for History of Science 10
(1975), 1637; James R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, Vol. 4 (London: Macmillan & Co.,
1964), pp. 608636.
Pierre Duhem, Thermochimie, Revue des questions scientifique 12 (1897), 361392, on 370. For
the controversy over Berthelots thermochemistry, see R. G. A. Dolby, Thermochemistry versus
Thermodynamics: The Nineteenth Century Controversy, History of Science 22 (1984), 375400.
Marcelin Berthelot, Le principe du travail maximum et lentropie, Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des sances de lAcadmie des Sciences 118 (1894), 13781392, on 1385. See also Helge
Kragh and Stephen J. Weininger, Sooner Silence than Confusion: The Tortuous Entry of Entropy
into Chemistry, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 27 (1996), 91130.
Duhem, Mixture and Chemical Combination (ref. 3), p. 109.
Ibid.
Hermann von Helmholtz, On the Interaction of the Natural Sciences [1854], in Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays, edited by David Cahan (Chicago and London: University
of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 1845.
Ibid., p. 30.
R. Clausius, On the Second Fundamental Theorem of the Mechanical Theory of Heat; a Lecture
delivered before the Forty-first Meeting of the German Scientific Association, at Frankfort on the
Maine, September 23, 1868, Philosophical Magazine 35 (1868), 405419, on 419; italics in the original.
Raymond J. Seeger, On Humanistic Aspects of Entropy, Physis 9 (1969), 215234; Helge Kragh,
Matter and Spirit in the Universe. Scientific and Religious Preludes to Modern Cosmology (London:
Imperial College Press, 2004), pp. 5069; Elizabeth R. Neswald, Thermodynamik als kultureller
Kampfplatz: Zur Faszinationsgeschichte der Entropie 18501915 (Berlin: Rombach Verlag, 2006).
John T. Blackmore, Ernst Mach: His Work, Life, and Influence (Berkeley: University of Calfifornia
Press, 1972), pp. 235, 290292.
Ernst Mach, Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit (Leipzig: J. A.
Barth,1909), pp. 3637.

394

Helge Kragh

Phys. perspect.

23 Harry W. Paul, The Crucible and the Crucifix: Catholic Scientists in the Third Republic, Catholic
Historical Review 58 (1972), 195219; idem, The Edge of Contingency: French Catholic Reaction to
Scientific Change from Darwin to Duhem (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1979).
24 John William Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (New York: Appleton,
1874), p. 363.
25 Desir Joseph Mercier, Address of 1891, quoted in Maurice de Wulf, An Introduction to Scholastic Philosophy (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), p. 270.
26 Dsir Nys, La notion de temps (Paris: Flix Alcan, 1913), p. 193.
27 Cardinal Mercier and Professors of the Higher Institute of Philosophy, Louvain, A Manual of
Modern Scholastic Philosophy, translated by T.L. Parker and S.A. Parker. Vol. I. Cosmology, Psychology, Epistemology (Criteriology), General Metaphysics (Ontology) (London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Tubner and St. Louis: B. Herder, 1916), p. 47.
28 Idem, Vol. II. Natural Theology (Theodicy), Logic, Ethics, History of Philosophy (London: Kegan
Paul, Trench, Tubner and St. Louis: B. Herder, 1917), p. 42.
29 Pierre Duhem, Physique de croyant, Annales de philosophie Chrtienne 1, no. 155 (1905), 4467,
133159; translated in Duhem, Aim and Structure (ref. 8), pp. 273311. On Duhems essay, see
Erwin N. Hiebert, The Uses and Abuses of Thermodynamics in Religion, Ddalus 95 (1966),
10461080, and Paul, Edge of Contingency (ref. 23), pp. 137178.
30 Abel Rey, La philosophie scientifique de M. Duhem, Revue de mtaphysique et de morale 12
(1904), 699744.
31 Duhem, Aim and Structure (ref. 8), pp. 274, 285; italics in the original.
32 Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion (San Francisco: HarperSan Francisco, 2000), pp. 1722.
33 Pierre Duhem, Commemoration article of 1917, quoted in Jaki, Uneasy Genius (ref. 2), p. 233.
34 Pierre Duhem, Trait lmentaire de mcanique chimique fonde sur la thermodynamique (Paris:
A. Hermann, 1897), p. 83.
35 Pierre Duhem, Thermodynamique et chimie (Paris: A. Hermann, 1910), p. 94.
36 Duhem, Aim and Structure (ref. 8), p. 287.
37 Ibid., p. 288.
38 Arthur J. von Oettingen, Ueber Temperatur und Adiabate, Annalen der Physik und Chemie,
Ergnzungsband 7 (1876), 83133.
39 Constantin Gutberlet, Der Cosmos, sein Ursprung und seine Entwicklung (Paderborn: Ferdinand
Schningh, 1908), p. 94.
40 Duhem, Aim and Structure (ref. 8), p. 301.
41 Ibid., p. 299.
42 Harry W. Paul, The Debate over the Bankruptcy of Science in 1895, French Historical Studies 5
(1968), 299327; Roy M. MacLeod, The Bankruptcy of Science Debate: The Creed of Science
and its Critics, 18851900, Science, Technology, & Human Values 7 (2) (1982), 215. See also
Alfred Fouille, Le mouvement idaliste et la raction contre la science positive (Paris: Flix Alcan,
1896).
43 Quoted in J.L. Heilbron, Fin-de-Sicle Physics, in Carl Gustaf Bernhard, Elisabeth Crawford,
and Per Srbom, ed., Science, Technology and Society in the Time of Alfred Nobel (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1982), pp. 5173, on p. 58.
44 Antonin Eymieu, La part des croyants dans les progrs de la science (Paris: Perrin, 1910); Karl
Alois Kneller, Das Christentum und die Vertreter der neueren Naturwissenschaft (Freiburg: Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1912); translated by T.M. Kettle as Christianity and the Leaders of Modern
Science: A Contribution to the History of Culture in the Nineteenth Century (London, St. Louis, and
Freiburg im Breisgau: Bitterder, 1911; Fort Huron, Mich.: Real-View Books, 1995).
45 Albert de Lapparent, Science et apologtique (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1914), p. 180; Paul, Edge of Contingency (ref. 23), pp. 127129.
46 Quoted in Pierre-Duhem, Un savant franais (ref. 2), p. 168.
47 Pierre Duhem, The Origins of Statics: The Sources of Physical Theory; translated by Grant F.
Leneaux, Victor N. Vagliente, and Guy H. Wagener (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1991), p. 447.
See also R.N.D. Martin, The Genesis of a Medieval Historian: Pierre Duhem and the Origin of
Statics, Annals of Science 33 (1976), 119129.
48 Duhem, Aim and Structure (ref. 8), p. 283.

Vol. 10 (2008)

Pierre Duhem, Entropy, and Christian Faith

395

49 Paul, The Crucible and the Crucifix (ref. 23); Miller, Ignored Intellect (ref. 2); Jaki, Uneasy
Genius (ref. 2).
50 Paul, Edge of Contingency (ref. 23); R.N.D. Martin, Pierre Duhem: Philosophy and History in the
Work of a Believing Physicist (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1991), pp. 203207.
51 Bernard Brunhes, La dgradation de lnergie (Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1908); idem, La porte
du principe de la dgradation de lnergie, Annales de philosophie chrtienne 1, no. 151 (1905),
582602; ibid., no. 152 (1905), 2748.
52 Georges Lematre, The Primaeval Atom Hypothesis and the Problem of the Clusters of Galaxies, in R. Stoops, ed., La structure et lvolution de lunivers (Brussels: Coudenberg, 1958), pp. 125,
on p. 7.
53 Helge Kragh and Dominique Lambert, The Context of Discovery: Lematre and the Origin of the
Primeval-Atom Universe, Annals of Science 64 (2007), 445470.
54 Robert M. Wald, The arrow of time and the initial conditions of the universe, Studies in History
and Philosophy of Modern Physics 37 (2006), 394398, on 396. See also Steven Frautschi, Entropy
in an Expanding Universe, Science 217 (1982), 593599.
Steno Institute
Building 1521
University of Aarhus
8000 Aarhus, Denmark
e-mail: [email protected]