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

force principle 522. Elkana tried to show 523 that Helmholtz was the "true"
discoverer of energy conservation, but centres his attempt on the 1847 paper and
fails to see, among other problems 524, all the later reformulations of the principle.
Cantor points at the difficulties of framing Helmholtz 525, but I think that Winters
offers a good contribution in analysing Helmholtz's Erhaltung in comparison
with his later works on energy 526 . Necessary I believe is also to discuss the use
and modifications of the principle in the debates of the following decades 527.
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From such an enlarged point of view, the whole problem of "simultaneity" and of
"discovery" of "energy conservation" should be abandoned. What Helmholtz
really did in his Erhaltung was to lay the foundations of theoretical physics,
through the conscious interplay of conceptual models, regulative principles,
mathematical techniques and experimental results. The whole interplay was
based on an explicit methodology and was meant to have the greatest generality
of possible applications. From then on in physics the theory-experiment interplay
was joined and often overcome by the theory-principle one. From the point of
view of Helmholtz's approach, the other contributions can be seen as less
sophisticated and less conscious, but not less interesting, approaches. At the end
of the century the great debates of the "now mighty theoretical physics" 528 show
the progress achieved: the mechanic, energetic, thermodynamic and
electromagnetic views of nature are the frameworks within which basic studies
on the history of energy conservation were written. I believe that contemporary
history of energy studies can be enhanced if the problem is seen in terms of the
522 Heimann, Peter. "Helmholtz and Kant: The Metaphysical Foundations of 'Über
die Erhaltung der Kraft' ." In SHPS 5 (1974) : 205-38; P.208 n.13, and P.223.
523 Elkana, Yehuda. "The Conservation of Energy: A case of Simultaneous
Discovery?" In Arch Int Hist Sci 24 (1970): 31-60.; "Helmholtz's 'Kraft': An Illustration of
Concepts in Flux". In HSPS 2 (1970): 263-98; The Discovery
524 see: Clark, Peter. "Elkana on Helmholtz and the Conservation of Energy." In
BJPS 27 (1976): 165-176.
525 Cantor Locating
526 Winters, Stephen. "Hermann von Helmholtz's Discovery of Force Conservation."
Dissertation. The John Hopkins University, 1985.
527 see my Energy and Electr Pp.59-74 and 110-21.
528 C.Jungnickel,R.McCormmach, Intellectual Mastery of Nature , 2 vols, Chicago:
Chicago U.P., 1986. 2nd vol.