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

underlined the acceptance of the French engineering tradition in Germany; his
remarks include a review of German textbooks published before Helmholtz's
works 473 and these remarks are also explicitly quoted in Merz 474. As I am going to
show Helmholtz was in fact aware of this more sophisticated tradition and used
the term "Arbeit" ("travail") in its new technical sense in the first chapter of the
Erhaltung . At variance with what Kuhn asserts, he consciously dropped it in the
second chapter to introduce his "sum of tension forces". This conscious meaning
shift is of great importance in understanding Helmholtz's paper.
As to the second factor it has been pointed out that the emphasis on the
interconversion of the forces of nature is not specific to the period 1830-1850 and
thus cannot be attributed to "the availability of the conversion processes" 475.
The third factor that for Kuhn "triggered" the discovery of energy
conservation is the philosophy of nature, and particularly the German movement
of Naturphilosophie . But Haas' book, not unknown to Kuhn, collects a great
number of 'methaphysical' contributions relevant for energy conservation, starting
from Greek atomism 476. These contributions were all outlining the unity,
uniformity and homogeneity of natural phenomena. Naturphilosophie too is
present in the list, but without a privileged role. Kuhn's strategy to show the
relevance of his third factor is the following: this time stressing vis viva
conservation 477, he (correctly) remarks that its metaphysical aspects were
dropped after 1750 and returned a century later. He claims the influence of
Naturphilosophie in this comeback, but he also admits that "The roots of
Naturphilosophie can, of course be traced back .... to Leibniz" 478. Evidence of an
influence on Helmholtz is supposedely found in a controversial remark of 1882,
where Helmholtz recognizes Kantian influences in the 1847 Erhaltung 479. But to
recognize Kantian roots in the Naturphilosophen is different from asserting that
473 Helm Energetik Pp.14-15.
474 Merz European Vol 2. P. 101.
475 Heimann, Peter. "Conversion of Forces and the Conservation of Energy." In
Centaurus 18 (1974):147-61. P.147 and 159.
476 See the detailed analysis in Haas Entwickl ; particularly chapt 5, Pp.31-35 and
ch.6. Pp.35-45. Kuhn in Sim Disc quotes Haas' book in nn. 39, 74, 75, 79, 82, 92.
477 "Though the technical dynamical conservation theorem has a continuous history
from the early eighteenth century to the present.." Kuhn. Sim Disc p.97
478 Ibid n.77 p.97
479 Helmholtz WA 1 p. 68 .