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

formulation there were a number competing 460. Thus it is difficult to apply for
what happened at the middle of last century the historiographical categories of
"simultaneous discovery" 461 of "energy conservation".
As a consequence Kuhn's three "trigger" factors have to be discussed as
well. Dealing with the first factor, "the concern with engines", Kuhn focusses on
the concept of work and on three traditions related to it: the older engineering
practice 462, the analytical tradition 463, dealing with vis viva conservation, where
the stress was on what was later to be called the potential function, a theoretical
engineering tradition starting with Lazare Carnot 464. Kuhn discards the last two 465
and asserts that the older tradition is the one that was really effective 466. This
460 For different versions of the principle in the history of electromagnetism see
Bevilacqua, Fabio. The Principle of Conservation of Energy and the History of Classical
Electromagnetic Theory. Pavia: La Goliardica Pavese, 1983.
461Winters criticises the same passage of Kuhn but with a different example: the
evolution of Helmholtz's ideas on energy shows that there was not a " conservation of energy"
to be discovered. Winters, Stephen. "Hermann von Helmholtz's Discovery of Force
Conservation." Dissertation. The John Hopkins University, 1985. Pp. 11-12.
462 "a century of engineering practice where its use had been quite independent of
both vis viva and its conservation". Kuhn Sim Disc P. 84.
463 Here the concept of work was not recognized as a conceptual entity: "the integral
of a force times differential path elements occurs only in the derivation of the {vis viva}
conservation law. The law itself equates vis viva with a function of position coordinates". Ibid
P.86.
464 Here work is the "fundamental conceptual parameter". Ibid. P.87.
465 For the analytical tradition see ibid. P.83 (on this point he was immediately
criticised by Hiebert: Hiebert "Commentary" P. 393). For the theoretical engineering see ibid.
P.88: "then almost none of the pioneers used it. Instead they returned to the same older
engineering tradition in which Lazare Carnot and his French successors had found the concepts
needed for their new versions of the dynamical conservation theorem.". Also : "That source
within the engineering tradition is all that the pioneers of energy conservation required and as
much as most of them used". Ibid. P. 84.
466 Ibid. p.90. Hiebert Commentary P.394 underlines that a first concept of work
meant to explain the five simple machines goes back to Hero's of Alexandria Mechanica. But
according to Cassirer the connection of the concept of work with "energy" conservation
history goes back to Leibniz. Cassirer, Ernst. Leibniz' System in seinen wissenschaftlichen
Grundlagen, Marburg: Elwert, 1902; Substanzbegriff Chapt 4, Sect 7, Pp.226-48; Das