In the first edition of this book I tried to survey in brief compass the
main ideas, methods, and discoveries of rational thermodynamics as it
then stood, only five years after Messrs. COLEMAN & NOLL, while in
Baltimore, had written the fundamental memoir that provided for the new
science the one root theretofore wanting. A survey in the same style
today would require an almost wholly new book, three or four times as
long. As it was in 1968, again in 1983 a consecutive treatise restricted
to the foundations would be premature, for at this moment they are under
earnest discussion, probing analysis, and powerful attack by several
students and from several directions. Because, although in the first
edition I expressed some opinions I no longer hold and made some
statements I should now recast or even re- tract, it seems even yet to
offer a simple introduction to some aspects of the field that remain
current, I have chosen to reprint it unaltered except for emendation of
slips and bettering of the English here and there.