  The plausibility of this argument, of course, depends on certain views about how meaning accrues to theoretical terms in a theory. However, just by looking at the historical development of thermodynamics one thing seems fairly clear. Most physicists, now, would accept the idea that our concept of temperature and our conception of other “exact” terms that appear in classical thermodynamics such as “entropy,” need to be modified in light of the alleged reduction to statistical mechanics. Textbooks, in fact, typically speak of the theory of “statistical thermodynamics.” The very process of “reduction” often leads to a corrected version of the reduced theory.