Commentary on Thermodynamics - 32

The aim of this book is to comment on, and clarify, the mathematical aspects of the theory of thermodynamics.

The standard presentations of the subject are often beset by a number of obscurities associated with the words "state", "reversible", "irreversible", and "quasi-static".

This book is written in the belief that such obscurities are best removed not by the formal axiomatization of thermodynamics, but by setting the theory in the wider context of a genuine field theory which incorporates the effects of heat conduction and intertia, and proving appropriate results about the governing differential equations of this field theory.

Even in the simplest one-dimensional case it is a nontrivial task to carry through the details of this program, and many challenging problems remain open.