Conservation and Innovation : Helmholtz's Struggle with Energy ...

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secundary literature, I started doubting of the correctness of some of Kuhn's main historical and historiographical claims. Six not minor points are, in my view, at issue: 1) that in 1845-46 "Helmholtz fails to notice that body heat may be expended in mechanical work" 438; 2) that the concept of work of the old mechanical engineering tradition was "all that which is required" and "the most decisive contribution to energy conservation made by the nineteenth-century concern with engines." 439; 3) that "Helmholtz was not, however, aware of the French theoretical engineering tradition. Like Mayer he derives the factor of1/2 in the definition of energy of motion and is unaware of any precedent for it." 440; 4) that Helmholtz "fails completely to identify as work or Arbeitskraft and instead calls it the "sum of the tensions.." 441; 5) that "the dominance of contact theory in Germany" might "account for the rather surprising way in which both Mayer and Helmholtz neglect the battery in their accounts of energy transformations" 442; 6) that "Helmholtz was able by 1881 to recognise important Kantian residues " in the Erhaltung "that had escaped his earlier censorship" 443 and that this is evidence of influences of Naturphilosophie . I will show below that: 1)Helmholtz before 1847 was aware of the heatwork interconvertibility, despite lacking a numerical equivalent; 2) the concept of work was not a precious contribution to energy conservation till it acquired the requirements of being a total differentiaL; 3) Helmholtz was well aware of the French tradition; he utilised but did not rederive the new expression of the vis viva; 4) Helmholtz consciously dropped also the new interpretation of the term "Arbeit" in favour of "Spannkraft". This was one of his most relevant contributions. 5) Helmholtz not only showed that contact theory was not against conservation, but also dedicated the longest section of the Erhaltung to an analysis of the batteries; 6) Helmholtz did not censor but reinstated in 1847 the philosophical introduction to the Erhaltung before publication were Kantian transcendentalism and not Naturphilosophie idealism played a main role. In 1881, 438 Kuhn Sim Disc p.95 n. 68. 439 Kuhn Sim Disc p.84 and 90. 440 Kuhn Sim Disc p.88. 441 Kuhn Sim Disc p.88. 442 Kuhn Sim Disc p.73 443 Kuhn Sim Disc pp.100-1.
while fighting metaphisicians, he was still stressing Kantian aspects of his earlier approach. What is more important some major aspects of Helmholtz's Erhaltung escaped Kuhn's (and other historians') attention: 1) Helmholtz's methodological four level structure; 2) his demarcation between theoretical and experimental physics; 3) his overcoming of both the engineering and the mathematical approach to the work concept; 4) the lack of an experimental determination of a work equivalent of heat and the mistranslation of Joule's values; 5) the difficult (and sometimes wrong) theory-experiment interplay in the application of the principle; 6) the formulation of a lasting methodology and of a non lasting conceptual model of energy. All that in my view leads to a historiographical problem: in fact if history does not get clarified "perhaps.. the wrong.. questions have been asked" 444 A closer look at Kuhn's paper is needed: Kuhn claimed that twelve scientists, divided into three groups of four 445 , between 1832 and 1854 "grasped for themselves" essential "elements" of the concept of energy and of its conservation. The paper addresses the problem of why these "elements" became accessible in those two decades and seeks to identify not all the "prerequisites" which resulted in the theory of energy conservation but only the "trigger factors" specific to the period. Kuhn outlines three: the "availability of the conversion processes", the "concern with engines" and the "philosophy of nature" 446. In my view two major historiographical problems are related to Kuhn's use of the terms "simultaneous discovery" and "energy conservation" 447. The first 444 Cantor, Geoffrey. "William Robert Grove, the Correlation of Forces and the Conservation of Energy." In Centaurus 19 (1976): 273-90. P.287; see also P.273. 445 a) combining generality of formulation with concrete quantitative applications, between 1842 and 1847: Mayer, Joule, Colding and Helmholtz; b) asserting the quantitative interchangeability of heat and work and computing a value for the conversion coefficient, between "before" 1832 and 1854: Carnot, Séguin (1839), Holtzmann (1845) and Hirn (1854); c) believing in a single force that in all its transformations can never be created or destroyed, between 1837 and 1844: Mohr, Grove, Faraday, Liebig. Kuhn Sim Disc pp. 66-9. 446 Ibid p.73 447"energy conservation" is supposed to be the most "striking instance" of a simultaneous discovery. Kuhn Sim Disc p.69.
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Fabio Bevilacqua Conservation and I
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different formulations 4 and priori
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and interesting results, despite th
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principle of correlation is express
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principle to the existing empirical
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the origin and meaning of the princ
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Whether physiological research, apa
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In a discussion on the origins of a
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his "Wärme" that one of the differ
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generate a determined equivalent of
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"Bericht", despite the application
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experiments in the most disparate b
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The premise reveals that the struct
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intelligible if it can be referred
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elevant consequence of the deductio
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Needless to say the plan was to be
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and from here that the direction an
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since Leonardo 113; the "ad nihilum
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But unfortunately for the whole str
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The principle of conservation of vi
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different from the one joining the
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"The equality that exists between e
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In virtue of its limitations to New
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Helmholtz, while asserting that lig
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the temperature of 1 Kg of water ca
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In his search for a mechanical equi
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had already been achieved in the Be
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approach is discussed at length and
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and unaware of Green's results190,
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potential function 201. It is worth
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and judged unreliable, despite prov
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The relevance of the first question
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principle taking this potential int
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Finally we get to the real conclusi
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conservation 234, on the theory of
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for the mechanical equivalent of he
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The controversy started with some r
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