We present results for soft nucleon-nucleon collisions at p(lab) = 14.
6, 30, 60, 100 and 200 GeV/c calculated on the basis of classical hadr
odynamics for extended nucleons. This theory, which corresponds to nuc
leons of finite size interacting with massive neutral scalar and vecto
r meson fields, is the classical analogue of the quantum hadrodynamics
of Serot and Walecka but without the assumptions of the mean-field ap
proximation and of point nucleons. The theory is manifestly Lorentz-co
variant and automatically includes space-time nonlocality and retardat
ion, nonequilibrium phenomena, interactions among all nucleons and par
ticle production when used for applications such as relativistic heavy
-ion collisions. We briefly review the history of classical meson-fiel
d theory and present our classical relativistic equations of motion, w
hich are solved to yield such physically observable quantities as scat
tering angle, transverse momentum, radiated energy and rapidity. We fi
nd that the theory provides a physically reasonable description of gro
ss features associated with the soft reactions that dominate nucleon-n
ucleon collisions. The equations of motion are practical to solve nume
rically for relativistic heavy-ion collisions.