DOCS.
42,
43
DECEMBER 1914-JANUARY
1915
49
42. To
Michael
Polányi
Berlin,
30
December
1914
Dear
Colleague,
From
your
letter
I
see
that
we
do not
quite
understand
each
other
yet.
The
tacit
assumption
in
which I
perceive
a
petitio
principii is
that
to
attain
absolute
zero
your process
needs
infinitely many
stages.[1]
However,
if absolute
zero
can
be reached
through
a
finite
number of
stages
in accordance with
your diagram:
then the
proof
fails, even
though
every positive
value
of parameter
v
at
each
tem-
perature
may correspond
to
a
realizable state.
As
long
as
you
cannot exclude
that
your staged
process progresses
in
the
depicted manner, nothing
can
be inferred
about the
validity
of Nernst’s theorem.
Very respectfully
and
humbly
yours,
A. Einstein.
P.S.
I
do
not
return
now
to
my
comment
on
osmotic
pressure,
because
this
is not
necessary
for
an
assessment of
the
principle
issue.
43.
From
Hendrik
A.
Lorentz
[Haarlem,
between
1
and
23 January
1915][1]
You show in
§12
that
it
is
impossible
to introduce
a
coordinate
system
K'
other than the
one
used
initially,
K,
which
differs
only
within
a
finite
region
E
in such
a
way
that,
like
the
guv's,
the
g'uv’s
connected to
K', together
with
their
derivatives,
are
everywhere
constant.[2]
When
you
nonetheless
find in the
following paragraphs
that
you
can
introduce
in
region
E
coordinate
systems
other
than K
(namely
those which
just like
K
are
adapted to
the
gravitational
field),[3]
this
ought
to
come
from
the
fact
that
in
introducing
such
a
K'
not all derivatives of
guv
remain constant at
the
boundary
of E.
Indeed, you
subject
the
coordinate
systems
adapted
to
the
field
only
to
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