This book emphasizes those features in solution chemistry which are difficult to measure, but essential for the understanding of both the qualitative and the quantitative aspects. Attention is paid to the mutual influences between solute and solvent, even at extremely small concentrations of the former. The described extension of the molecular concept leads to a broad view, not by a change in paradigm, but by finding the rules for the organizations both at the molecular and the supermolecular level of liquid and solid solutions.

Recent developments in various areas of chemistry have been decisively influenced by the principles of structure and mechanism and by the ideas of coordination chemistry, in particular by the donor-acceptor approach, A unified view of almost all kinds of molecular forces is provided by quantum mechanics, and for practical purposes have been classified according to model assumptions, namely, dispersion, polarization, electrostatic, and short-range forces. The latter are divided into two- and three-center covalent chemical bonds, metallic bonds, and exchange-repulsion forces. This approach...