Although the canonical distribution is one the central tools of statistical mechanics, the reason for its effectiveness is poorly understood. This is due in part to the fact that there is no clear consensus on what it means to use the canonical distribution to describe a system in equilibrium with a heat bath. In this talk, I examine some traditional views as to what sort of thing we should take the canonical distribution to be. I argue that thinking of the canonical distribution as a time ensemble of sorts has a number of advantages that rival interpretations lack.
University of Chicago