The aim of this chapter is to present an extremely abbreviated and selective historical survey of the development of thermodynamics, kinetic theory, and statistical mechanics. No attempt will be made to be comprehensive. Nor is the material presented in a manner that would suit historians of science. Neither issues of chronology and attribution nor the far more important questions of placing the specific scientific results in their broader scientific and cultural context are our primary concern. The goal is merely to present some important developments in the history of these theories in such a way as to provide a background or context that will facilitate our later conceptual exploration.

Many of the scientific results noted in this chapter will only be mentioned here and not referred to again. They are being noted simply to place other, more relevant, results in their historical context. Other aspects of the historical development — those dealing with the conceptual problems at the foundational level — will be treated in much greater detail, especially in Chapters 5 through 7. The reader ought not to be discouraged, then, if certain conceptual and foundational issues seem to be too sketchily treated in this chapter to be grasped with full clarity, nor upset that many questions posed in the historical context are left in abeyance.