I don't know why tim333 is being downvoted. The particular quote does sound iffy - Boltzmann did explain the cooling of coffee via purely classical processes.

I don't know why tim333 is being downvoted. The particular quote does sound iffy - Boltzmann did explain the cooling of coffee via purely classical processes. The basic idea - the particle system moves throughout phase space. The vast majority of phase space consists of areas where thermal equilibrium is reached. If you compute the time it would take for the system to return to a non-equilibrium state, it's way larger than the age of the universe. (Note: I'm not an amateur, though I did leave the field a few years back.)