A Discussion of Phase Cells as the Basic Descriptive Units of Structure in Statistical Mechanics

From the perspective of structural ontology, phase cells are taken as the basic units for describing structure in statistical mechanics. Within this framework, the relationship between a system’s temperature and the distribution of energy within phase cells is one of representation and being represented; that is, temperature is a statistical representation of the system’s energy distribution. Consequently, the photon number in a thermal radiation field has statistical significance, and whether it is conserved is not a question that needs to be decided; thermal excitation, in a statistical sense, represents the redistribution of energy within phase cells.