  Most foundational inquiry into statistical mechanics presumes a classical dynamical basis for describing the dynamics of the constituent components of macroscopic systems.  But this cannot be correct, of course, since that underlying dynamics must be quantum mechanical. Gibbs was cautious in claiming a simple explanatory role for his ensemble version of statistical mechanics, for example, since it led to notoriously false predictions for such macroscopic features of systems as their specific heat.  It was later realized that the fault here lay not in Gibbs' statistical mechanics but in assuming classical dynamics at the constituent level.  Once systems were re-described on the correct quantum mechanical basis the predictive errors disappeared.