Laws of thermodynamics
Circa 1797, Count Rumford (born Benjamin Thompson) showed that endless mechanical action can generate indefinitely large amounts of heat from a fixed amount of working substance thus challenging the caloric theory of heat, which held that there would be a finite amount of caloric heat/energy in a fixed amount of working substance. The first established thermodynamic principle, which eventually became the second law of thermodynamics, was formulated by Sadi Carnot in 1824. By 1860, as formalized in the works of those such as Rudolf Clausius and William Thomson, two established principles of thermodynamics had evolved, the first principle and the second principle, later restated as thermodynamic laws. By 1873, for example, thermodynamicist Josiah Willard Gibbs, in his memoir "Graphical Methods in the Thermodynamics of Fluids", clearly stated the first two absolute laws of thermodynamics. Some textbooks throughout the 20th century have numbered the laws differently. In some fields removed from chemistry, the second law was considered to deal with the efficiency of heat engines only, whereas what was called the third law dealt with entropy increases. Directly defining zero points for entropy calculations was not considered to be a law. Gradually, this separation was combined into the second law and the modern third law was widely adopted.
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen
Georgescu-Roegen's formulation of a fourth law of thermodynamics and the concept of material entropy soon generated a prolonged controversy, involving both physicists and ecological economists; but some twelve to fifteen years after Georgescu-Roegen's death, a consensus on this subject matter finally emerged along the following lines:In the same vein as this consensus, a full chapter on the economics of Georgescu-Roegen has approvingly been included in one elementary physics textbook on the historical development of thermodynamics, and the details (Georgescu-Roegen's mistakes) about the fourth law and material entropy are omitted there.