Status As A Physical Law
Le Chatelier's principle qualitatively describes systems of non-instantaneous change; the duration of adjustment depends on the strength of the negative feedback to the initial shock. Where a shock initially induces positive feedback (such as thermal runaway), the new equilibrium can be far from the old one, and can take a long time to reach. In some dynamic systems, the end-state cannot be determined from the shock. The principle is typically used to describe closed negative-feedback systems, but applies, in general, to thermodynamically closed and isolated systems in nature, since the second law of thermodynamics ensures that the disequilibrium caused by an instantaneous shock must have a finite half-life. The principle has analogs throughout Systems theory.
Read more about this topic: Le Chatelier's Principle
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“As a work of art it has the same status as a long conversation between two not very bright drunks.”
—Clive James (b. 1939)
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Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
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“I hope I may claim in the present work to have made it probable that the laws of arithmetic are analytic judgments and consequently a priori. Arithmetic thus becomes simply a development of logic, and every proposition of arithmetic a law of logic, albeit a derivative one. To apply arithmetic in the physical sciences is to bring logic to bear on observed facts; calculation becomes deduction.”
—Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)