Abstract
The modern usage of the term energy in physics and thermodynamics is the end result of a very long evolution of ideas that began with the Greeks and began to accelerate in the sixteenth century. The starting point is sometimes attributed to , who used the term “energeia” (in his Ethics) to mean power and strength to be mentally and physically active, and in his Rhetoric to mean a vigorous style. Elizabethan usage of the word was largely based on the rhetorical sense, as vigor of utterances, force of expression and even the quality of personal presence. As recently as 1842, the Encyclopedia Britannica defined energy as “the power, virtue or efficacy of a thing, emphasis of speech”. Clearly none of these definitions is what we mean today.
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Notes
- 1.
The possibility of perpetual motion was taken seriously at the time. It was officially rejected by the Paris Academy in 1775, paving the way for the Second Law of thermodynamics, although the second law was not formulated (by Clausius) until nearly a century later.
- 2.
The energy required to raise a kg by 365 m is 3580 J. The energy required to raise the temperature of a kg (liter) of water by 10 °C. would actually be 41,900 J. Mayer’s point was that they were both forms of energy (Kraft).
- 3.
The word Kraft also means “strong” or “strength” as in Kraft paper.
- 4.
Heat moves by conduction or convection from higher to lower temperatures, but this does not apply to radiation, which can carry heat from lower temperatures to higher temperatures, as for instance in the “greenhouse” effect in the Earth’s atmosphere where cold layers of the atmosphere re-radiate thermal (infra-red) radiation back to the Earth. Some of the critics of climate change have misunderstood this point. See Sect. 4.1 .
- 5.
Later Gibbs developed vector calculus, worked on the electromagnetic theory of light, statistical mechanics, and helped create the mathematical framework now used in quantum mechanics. Meanwhile electricity and magnetism—and electromagnetic radiation—were also being investigated by many scientists, culminating with the theoretical masterwork of James Clerk Maxwell, published in 1873. I discuss that topic in the next section.
- 6.
Ampere’s memoir (1825) seems to have been by far the most sophisticated description of the phenomena, both of the experiments and the theory. James Clerk Maxwell later called him “The Newton of electricity”.
- 7.
Known today as the divergence theorem or Gauss’ Law.
- 8.
Galileo was the first to try to measure the speed of light (between two hilltops) but he was only able to determine that it was large. The first astronomical measurements were made by Ole Christensen Romer (1676). Later measurements were made by Isaac Newton and Christiaan Huygens leading to estimates of the roughly right magnitude, but about 26 % too low. In 1849 Hippolite Fizeau repeated the Gallileo experiment using a rotating cogwheel to intercept the return beam and calculated c = 3.13 × 105 km/s. which is slightly too high. His experiment was later repeated by Leon Foucault (1862) who obtained c = 2.98 × 105 km/s. with a rotating mirror in place of the cogwheel. The currently accepted value in a vacuum is 2.99782 × 105 km/s.
- 9.
Black bodies were simulated by an artificial cavity penetrated by a small hole, such that almost all of the incoming light is not reflected out but is absorbed inside the cavity. The thermal radiation from the hole is then a very good approximation of black body radiation.
- 10.
The comprehensive 1969 geophysical monograph, “The Earth’s Crust and Upper Mantle” (Hart 1969) contains articles by 92 different contributors, but does not cite Hapgood’s theory. In fact, the concluding article, by V.V. Belousov, entitled “Interrelations between the Earth’s crust and the upper mantle” contains no citations at all, even though it briefly discusses (and effectively dismisses) the possibility of large displacements.
- 11.
The idea was still strongly promoted by Lysenko in the Stalinist USSR.
- 12.
- 13.
Examples include Fourier’s Law (that heat flow is proportional to temperature gradient), Ohm’s Law (that current flow is proportional to voltage), Fick’s Law (that diffusion is proportional to the gradient of chemical potential or composition).
- 14.
For isolated systems in a laboratory, the external constraints are typically externally imposed temperature or imposed pressure, but other possibilities include static electric or magnetic fields, electromagnetic radiation or even gravitational fields.
- 15.
An isomer of a molecule is another molecule with exactly the same atoms, hence a re-arrangement.
- 16.
The best-known phase transitions are melting/freezing or evaporation/condensation. Some of the changes that took place in the first few minutes after the “big bang” can be thought of as phase-transitions.
- 17.
Ostwald was apparently close to caloric theory, insofar as he conceptualized energy as a kind of substance, rather than as an abstract “state” as it was viewed by his contemporaries. (Even today, the “substance” view of energy is commonplace among non-experts). Planck tried to straighten him out on this misconception, but without success. At a conference in 1895 his views were violently attacked by Boltzmann and Nernst, as well as by Planck. Ostwald also disliked the emerging atomic theory and accepted it only reluctantly, and not until long after it had been well established in physics (Mirowski 1989, pp. 57–58).
- 18.
The neo-classical view contrasts strongly with the earlier “classical” theory of value, which viewed value as an inherent property of goods, based on labor inputs. The classical theory is somewhat analogous to the caloric theory of energy.
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Ayres, R. (2016). A Brief History of Ideas: Energy, Entropy and Evolution. In: Energy, Complexity and Wealth Maximization. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30545-5_3
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