The Role and the Status of Thermodynamics in Quantum Chemistry Calculations

Abstract

This chapter aims at understanding what is at stake when thermodynamics is used in chemical quantum calculations. Quantum chemistry and thermodynamics seem to be two incommensurable scientific worlds the assumptions and the statements of which are thoroughly different. So my questions are: How was thermodynamics been integrated into the chemical quantum background at the very beginning of quantum chemistry? What are its role and status in current Density Functional Theory and others quantum methods used in chemistry? I refer both to history and epistemology to grasp this entanglement of scientific approaches. First of all, I propose to analyze how thermodynamics became involved in chemistry. In this respect, I will point out how the concept of energy provides the old chemical affinity with a quantitative tool to understand chemical transformations. The birth of thermochemistry aroused opposition between two old rival conceptions of matter that framed the history of chemistry, that is to say the aggregate and the ‘mixt’ stances1. I will then highlight that this duality of conceptions was still at stake when Mulliken and Pauling created two different quantum chemical approaches. In this context, thermodynamics was not just used as a mere tool to calibrate methods; it also guided the contrivance of new quantum concepts or parameters from the outset. Following this line of reasoning, I will query how the concept of ‘state’, be it electronic or thermodynamic, allows us to bridge thermodynamics to quantum chemistry in a different way. I will indicate why and how the second law of thermodynamics is reflexively of importance to understand molecular calculations and to better grasp the relation between a molecular “whole” and its respective parts. These investigations are widened by a global overview of the ways thermodynamic parameters are currently involved in workaday quantum methods in order to describe molecular reactivity. To conclude, the paper will query the status of thermodynamics in predictive quantum methods. I will insist on the status of the concept of energy and the heuristic power of the second law of thermodynamics on quantum grounds.

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