Description:
One of the most successful physicists of the generation immediately before Hugh Everett III, E. T. Jaynes shared both Everett's interest in applications of information theory to physics and his foundational orientation. But whereas Everett focused on quantum mechanics, much of Jaynes' work concerned how to use information theory in thermodynamics. Here Everett sketches an initial reaction to a published paper of Jaynes', "Information Theory and Statistical Mechanics," Physical Review, 106, 620-630 (1957). The date on the document corresponds to the date that Jaynes' article appeared in print, and not necessarily to the date on which the notes were written.