Criticisms of Jaynes' approach to Statistical Mechanics

[DarMM]

In his well known paper “Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics” Jaynes attempted to formulated statistical mechanics as "nothing more" than the inference theory of many body mechanical systems. I am looking for critiques of this approach. Also of use would be summaries or reviews of the "current state of debate".

 

[DEvens]

I have not read it. But that "nothing more" part is kind of worrying. How does he preclude Maxwell's Demon?

If I understand correctly, the usual way to preclude MD comes down to quantum mechanics. MD has to make observations.

 

[Andy Resnick]

Summary: Seeking references for criticisms of Jaynes's information theoretic approach to Statistical Mechanics.

In his well known paper “Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics” Jaynes attempted to formulated statistical mechanics as "nothing more" than the inference theory of many body mechanical systems. I am looking for critiques of this approach. Also of use would be summaries or reviews of the "current state of debate".

Here are a few; I can't vouch for how valid they are:

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82621859.pdfhttps://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.4003.pdfhttps://www.jstor.org/stable/20116117?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

 

[vanhees71]

I have not read it. But that "nothing more" part is kind of worrying. How does he preclude Maxwell's Demon?

If I understand correctly, the usual way to preclude MD comes down to quantum mechanics. MD has to make observations.

Maxwell's demon is "driven out" by Szilard and precisely by applying the information theoretical approach to the notion of entropy.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01341281
A quantum version has been realized recently:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.05161
If you look for counterarguments against the information-theoretical foundation of statistical physics, Maxwell's demon will give you a hard time!