Question: What do people regard the working body as in thermodynamics?
About the article "Thermodynamics", section "States and processes".

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The following list gives a rough outline as to when the major branches of thermodynamics came into inception:  Thermochemistry - 1780s  Classical thermodynamics - 1824  Chemical thermodynamics - 1876  Statistical mechanics - c. 1880s  Equilibrium thermodynamics  Engineering thermodynamics  Chemical engineering thermodynamics - c. 1940s  Non-equilibrium thermodynamics - 1941  Small systems thermodynamics - 1960s  Biological thermodynamics - 1957  Ecosystem thermodynamics - 1959  Relativistic thermodynamics - 1965  Quantum thermodynamics - 1968  Black hole thermodynamics - c. 1970s  Geological thermodynamics - c. 1970s  Biological evolution thermodynamics - 1978  Geochemical thermodynamics - c. 1980s  Atmospheric thermodynamics - c. 1980s  Natural systems thermodynamics - 1990s  Supramolecular thermodynamics - 1990s  Earthquake thermodynamics - 2000  Drug-receptor thermodynamics - 2001  Pharmaceutical systems thermodynamics – 2002 Ideas from thermodynamics have also been applied in other fields, for example:  Thermoeconomics - c. 1970s  
Duhem is also known for his work in thermodynamics, being in part responsible for the development of what is known as the Gibbs–Duhem relation and the Duhem–Margules equation.
Duhem thought that from the first principles of thermodynamics physicists should be able to derive all the other fields of physics—e.g., chemistry, mechanics, and electromagnetism.
Duhem, influenced by Macquorn Rankine's "Outlines of the Science of Energetics" carried out this project in "Traité de l'Énergétique" (1911) but was unable to subject electromagnetism to thermodynamic first principles.
With the physicist, philosopher and historian of science Ernst Mach, Duhem also shared a scepticism with regard to the existence of atoms. 
Thermodynamics is a branch of natural science concerned with heat and temperature and their relation to energy and work.
It defines macroscopic variables, such as internal energy, entropy, and pressure, that partly describe a body of matter or radiation.
It states that the behavior of those variables is subject to general constraints, that are common to all materials, not the peculiar properties of particular materials.
These general constraints are expressed in the four laws of thermodynamics.
Thermodynamics describes the bulk behavior of the body, not the microscopic behaviors of the very large numbers of its microscopic constituents, such as molecules.
Its laws are explained by statistical mechanics, in terms of the microscopic constituents.
Thermodynamics applies to a wide variety of topics in science and engineering.
Historically, thermodynamics developed out of a desire to increase the efficiency and power output of early steam engines, particularly through the work of French physicist Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot (1824) who believed that the efficiency of heat engines was the key that could help France win the Napoleonic Wars.
Irish-born British physicist Lord Kelvin was the first to formulate a concise definition of thermodynamics in 1854:Initially, thermodynamics, as applied to heat engines, was concerned with the thermal properties of their 'working materials' such as steam, in an effort to increase the efficiency and power output of engines.
Thermodynamics later expanded to the study of energy transfers in chemical processes, for example to the investigation, published in 1840, of the heats of chemical reactions by Germain Hess, which was not originally explicitly concerned with the relation between energy exchanges by heat and work.
From this evolved the study of Chemical thermodynamics and the role of entropy in chemical reactions. 
The scope of present-day non-equilibrium thermodynamics does not cover all physical processes.
A condition for the validity of many studies in non-equilibrium thermodynamics of matter is that they deal with what is known as "local thermodynamic equilibrium". 
Thermodynamics is the study of the macroscopic behaviour of physical systems under the influence of exchange of work and heat with other systems or their environment.
It is not concerned with the microscopic properties of these systems, such as the movements of atoms.
At the very heart of contemporary thermodynamics lies the idea of thermodynamic equilibrium, a state in which no macroscopic properties of the system change over time.
In orthodox versions of thermodynamics, properties such as temperature and entropy are defined for equilibrium states only.
The assertion that all thermodynamic systems occupying a fixed volume will reach equilibrium in infinite time, which has been central but tacit to thermodynamics, has recently been dubbed the "minus first law of thermodynamics."