IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB422366227

On the Concept of Energy: Eclecticism and Rationality (2014)

Coelho, Ricardo Lopes (Author)

Science and Education
Volume: 23
Issue: 6
Pages: 1361-1380

URI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-013-9634-1

DOI: 10.1007/s11191-013-9634-1

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Physics Conservation of energy (physical concept) Thermodynamics Energy (physics) 19th century Mayer, Julius Robert von Joule, James Prescott

In the theory of heat of the first half of the nineteenth century, heat was a substance. Mayer and Joule contradicted this thesis but developed different concepts of heat. Heat was a force for Mayer and a motion for Joule. Both Mayer and Joule determined the mechanical equivalent of heat. This result was, however, justified in accordance with those concepts of heat. Mayer’s characterisation of force reappears in the very common textbook definition ‘energy cannot be created or destroyed but only transformed’ and his theory led to a phenomenological approach to energy. Joule and Thomson’s concept of heat led to a mechanistic approach to energy and to the common definition ‘energy is the capacity of doing work’. One and the same term ‘energy’ subsumed these two approaches. The problematic concept of energy, energy as a substance, appears then as a result of an eclectic development of the concept. Another approach, which appeared in the 1860s, is directly based on the mechanical equivalent of heat and can be characterized by the use of ‘principle of equivalence’ instead of ‘principle of energy conservation’. Unlike the others, this approach, which has been lost, poses no problems with the concept of energy. The problems with the energy concept as to the kind of phenomena dealt with in the present paper can, however, be overcome, as we shall see, in distinguishing between that which comes from experiments and that which is an interpretation of the experimental results within a conceptual framework.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB422366227/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Cahan, David; (2012)
The Awarding of the Copley Medal and the “Discovery”of the Law of Conservation of Energy: Joule, Mayer and Helmholtz Revisited (/isis/citation/CBB001251433/)

Article Jones, Anna Maria; (2011)
Conservation of Energy, Individual Agency, and Gothic Terror in Richard Marsh's The Beetle, or, What's Scarier Than an Ancient, Evil, Shape-Shifting Bug? (/isis/citation/CBB001213085/)

Book Kenneth L. Caneva; (2021)
Helmholtz and the Conservation of Energy: Contexts of Creation and Reception (/isis/citation/CBB993217041/)

Article Cahan, David; (2012)
Helmholtz and the British Scientific Elite: From Force Conservation to Energy Conservation (/isis/citation/CBB001220431/)

Article Luca Guzzardi; (2014)
Energy, Metaphysics, and Space: Ernst Mach’s Interpretation of Energy Conservation as the Principle of Causality (/isis/citation/CBB745246152/)

Article Rowlinson, J. S.; (2010)
James Joule, William Thomson and the Concept of a Perfect Gas (/isis/citation/CBB001022700/)

Book Pohl Valero, Stefan; (2011)
Energía y cultura: historia de la termodinámica en la España de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX (/isis/citation/CBB001250520/)

Article Antonino Drago; (2021)
Joule’s Experiment as an Event Triggering a Formalization of a Baconian Science Till Up to an Alternative Theory to Newton’s One (/isis/citation/CBB678427289/)

Chapter Pohl-Valero, Stefan; (2009)
The Circulation of Energy: Thermodynamics, National Culture and Social Progress in Spain, 1868--1890 (/isis/citation/CBB000952583/)

Book Gold, Barri J.; (2010)
ThermoPoetics: Energy In Victorian Literature and Science (/isis/citation/CBB001022926/)

Article Francesco Guerra; Matteo Leone; Nadia Robotti; (2014)
When Energy Conservation Seems to Fail: The Prediction of the Neutrino (/isis/citation/CBB858357211/)

Article Lohrmann, Dietrich; (2006)
Idee und Wirklichkeit des Perpetuum mobile im Mittelalter (/isis/citation/CBB000831129/)

Article Wegener, Daan; (2010)
De-Anthropomorphizing Energy and Energy Conservation: The Case of Max Planck and Ernst Mach (/isis/citation/CBB000933695/)

Article Cyril Verdet; (2017)
Clausius et la chaleur : le passage dissimulé de la substance à l'algèbre (/isis/citation/CBB841585275/)

Article Carl E. Moore; Alfred von Smolinski; Albert Claus; Daniel J. Graham; Bruno Jaselskis; (2014)
On the First Law of Thermodynamics and the Contribution of Julius Robert Mayer:new Translation and Consideration of a Rejected Manuscript (/isis/citation/CBB217323864/)

Chapter Sibum, H. Otto; (2003)
Narrating by Numbers: Keeping an Account of Early 19th-Century Laboratory Experiences (/isis/citation/CBB000330785/)

Thesis Badia, Lynn Ann; (2014)
A Universe of Forces: Energy in Early Twentieth-Century Theory and Literature (/isis/citation/CBB001567589/)

Book Cara New Daggett; (2019)
The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work (/isis/citation/CBB510402598/)

Article Papanelopoulou, Faidra; (2003)
Paris-Province: Energy Physics in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France (/isis/citation/CBB000640254/)

Chapter Neswald, Elizabeth; (2014)
Saving the World in the Age of Entropy: John Tyndall and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (/isis/citation/CBB001202313/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}