Having returned to the last e-mail sent, there is a second new video. Because I can't view Flash at the moment, I read the article, which took me to this General Discussion.

Temperature, I can understand, would be difficult to extend to a more subjective field of study than physical or natural science. I've a suggestion, though. (The definition above could use a few more qualifications (partial derivatives) to insure the system doesn't perform work.)

First, to a mathematician, a definition allows an object to be recognized in whatever form it may appear. The natural scientist might try to list properties necessary & sufficient to be 'temperature'; but this is next to impossible. It's a measure of hotness. When two objects are in thermal equilibrium, their temperatures are the same. All this is rather vague & circular.

The more positivist scientist defines an object by defining the operation he uses to measure or observe it. In thermodynamics, volume is primitive. One might define temperature as the volume change in a sealed, thermally conducting tube of liquid. The scales can be defined by two triple points of phases and a hundred little marks between. This concept can be sharpened by 'absolute temperature'.

Even thermodynamics, however, contains concepts that elude such a concrete definition: energy, isolated system, &c. Things that P.W. Bridgman has called 'paper & pencil operations': logical consequences of definitions & axioms. For these, I fall back upon listing properties in the manner of C.S. Pierce.

Pierce's suggestion, for 'How to Make your Ideas Clear', seems more penetrating. 'Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.'

Petrologist

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