ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Kuhn Revisited: On the Emergence of Conservation of Energy

• In Event: Emergence and Interpretation of the Principle of Energy Conservation in the Long 19th Century

English Abstract

Thomas Kuhn’s seminal paper of 1959 on “Energy Conservation as an Example of Simultaneous Discovery” was as flawed as it was insightful. By expanding Kuhn’s set of 12 “pioneers” to 20 and by examining their work in more detail than Kuhn attempted, I have identified an appreciably different set of “trigger factors” that help explain why, "within a short period of time, [a significant number of scientists] grasped for themselves essential parts of the concept of energy and its conservation.” Those factors are both conceptual and individual. Of prime importance among the former are the widespread acceptance of corporeal heat as a mode of molecular motion, allied with a view of radiant heat and light as modes of motion of a space-filling ether, both of which accorded with a general mechanics-friendly ontology of particles in motion that allowed for the applicability of the well-known principle of conservation of vis viva from rational mechanics, which had previously ignored thermal phenomena; and the proliferation of examples of the interconnections among the several natural powers—as exhibited most prominently with the diverse phenomena associated with the voltaic pile--allied with the determinations of a quantitative equivalence between heat and motion (i.e., work). The two individuals of pivotal importance in the 1840s were Faraday and Liebig. Echoing a long-neglected critique of Roget’s, it was Faraday who advanced a crucial energetic argument against the contact theory of the pile: the production of a quantity of work—represented by the current and the effects it can produce--requires the expenditure of an equivalent quantity of work of another kind—here, chemical action. And it was Liebig’s incoherent critique of an implicitly work-performing vital force that stimulated both Mayer and Helmholtz to ponder the general energetic implications of organisms’ production of heat and performance of work. In the paper to be presented, such particulars will be embedded in a richer context of concerns and individuals. Of particular importance is the fact that virtually everyone either had contact with some of the others or knew of their relevant work—here most notably Mayer, whose published works of 1842 and 1845 were much more widely known than has heretofore been recognized.

Author

• Kenneth Caneva