The Tangled Tale of Phase Space

By David D. Nolte. Oxford Scholarship Online, 2010

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This chapter presents the history of the development of the concept of phase space. Phase space is the central visualization tool used today to study complex systems. The chapter describes the origins of phase space with the work of Joseph Liouville and Carl Jacobi that was later refined by Ludwig Boltzmann and Rudolf Clausius in their attempts to define and explain the subtle concept of entropy. The turning point in the history of phase space was when Henri Poincaré used phase space to solve the three-body problem, uncovering chaotic behavior in his quest to answer questions on the stability of the solar system. Phase space was established as the central paradigm of statistical mechanics by JW Gibbs and Paul Ehrenfest.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Global and Planetary Change, Statistics and Probability

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/87da19abd46c65e60109b654bf22e3df7483376e