So far we have been discussing the properties of matter from the atomic point of view, trying to understand roughly what will happen if we suppose that things are made of atoms obeying certain laws. However, there are number of relationships among the properties of substances which can be worked out without consideration of the detailed structure of the materials. The determination of the relationships among the various properties of the materials, without knowing their internal structure, is the subject of thermodynamics. Historically, thermodynamics was developed before an understanding of the internal structure of matter was achieved….
We have seen how these two processes, contraction when heated and cooling during relaxation, can be related by the kinetic theory, but it would be a tremendous challenge to determine from the theory the precise relationship between the two. We would have to know how many collisions there were each second and what the chains look like, and we would have to take account of all kinds of other complications. The detailed mechanism is so complex that we cannot, by kinetic theory, really determine exactly what happens; still, a definite relation between the two effects we observe can be worked out without knowing anything about the internal machinery!
1 Richard P. Feynman et al., The Feynman Lectures on Physics 44-1-44-2 (1963).
Cf. http://rajivsethi.blogspot.com/2010/02/case-for-agent-based-models-in.html .