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

literature 456. There is an intrinsic difficulty in assuming an implicit definition of
energy conservation as a historiographical tool: there were many formulations at
the mid of last century, many competing views in the debates of the following
decades, and even competing views in this century on the general validity of the
principle 457. Thus what is needed for an historical analysis is an explicit point of
view that does not offer "the formulation" but a possibility of grouping and
comparing the various expressions. An important contribution was already given
in 1887 in one of the "classics" mentioned above; Planck in fact clarified the
difficult meaning of the principle of energy conservation: following W.Thomson
he defined "energy" as the amount of work that can be done between two states
of a system, he asserted that can be experimentally proved that this (quantity of)
energy is conserved, he outlined a certain arbitrariety in the theoretical expression
of this quantity, he warned 458 about the impossibility of a primary definition of
energy and about the everlasting theoretical-empirical interplay that leads to
different formulations and applications of the principle. If we accept that "energy"
is not a thing, nor a theory but that it is a relational term 459 whose principle of
conservation, if adopted, had and has a number of different formulations we
understand the reason for the difficulty in the historians' works to offer "one"
explicit definition: there are in fact many. Contemporary textbooks, adopting a
superposition principle, list one for every field of inquiry (mechanical,
electromagnetic, nuclear,...) but for each of these at the time of the original
456 When a definition is referred to, there is always a lack of generality; see for
instance: Heimann, Peter. "Conversion of Forces and the Conservation of Energy." In
Centaurus 18 (1974):147-61, p.148 refers to Rankine 1853. Hiebert holds a factorisation
approach: Hiebert, Erwin. "Commentary on the Papers of Thomas Kuhn and I.Bernard
Cohen." In Critical Problems in the History of Science . M.Clagett ed. Madison: Wisconsin
U.P, 1959: 391-400. P.392; see also: Hiebert, E. Historical Roots of the Principle of
Conservation of Energy University of Wisconsin:1962. Rep: New York: Arno Press, 1981.
Pp. 1-6 and the related criticisms of Jammer, Max . "Factorisation of Energy". In BJPS 14
(1963-4): 160-6.
457 Pauli, Wolfgang. Aufsätze und Vorträge über Physik und Erknenntnistheorie
(1933-58) . Chapt.16.
the "classics".
458 Planck Princip Pp. 104-115.
459 Cantor Locating p.2, recalls Cassirer, showing the relevance of the inheritance of