A Commentary on Thermodynamics

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.