How the heck Probability Crept into Physics?

[@douglasstrother6584]

Planck's approach to Blackbody Radiation was to analyze the entropy as a function of energy. To make both high-frequency and low-frequency data consistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, he included an additional "guess" term proportional to the frequency (hf); this results in Planck's Law which is strictly Classical. Planck's subsequent application of Boltzmann's Statistical Mechanics to justify his guess then led to his revolutionary conclusion that the material of the walls emit and absorb radiation in discrete quanta. A paper titled "Planck’s Route to the Black Body Radiation Formula and Quantization" by Michael Fowler (7/25/2008) gives a nice discussion. "Theoretical Concepts in Physics: An Alternative View of Theoretical Reasoning in Physics" (1984) by Malcolm S. Longair contains more details.

[@douglasstrother6584]

One can only speculate on the development of Physics if both Maxwell and Boltzmann had lived longer.

[@kiranadhikari4192]

Interesting video. Are quantum mechanical probabilities also a generalization of Maxwell-Boltzmann-type probabilities?