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

intelligible if it can be referred to final causes. In fact final causes act following a
constant law and thus, if the external conditions are the same (ceteris paribus),
they produce the same effect.
Helmholtz, probably in relation to the vital force debate, asserts that it
might be possible that not all natural processes are actually intelligible 84. Some
phenomena might belong to a realm of spontaneity and freedom, this cannot be
decided conclusively, but the scientist must, all the same, assume the
intelligibility of nature as the departure point for his investigations. Here, in my
view, comes into play the second basic physical assumption to be justified, the
impossibility of perpetual motion. The impossibility of perpetually providing
work without a corresponding compensation is in fact a limit to the spontaneity
and freedom of nature and a physical version of the principle of sufficient cause.
Often the Kantian character of the Einleitung has been stressed 85.
However it has to be remarked that different parts of Kant's work play different
roles here. Up to now Helmholtz has dealt with i) the regulative principle of
empirical causality, ii) the transcendental principle of causality as the one
granting the possibility of scientific knowledge and the lawlikeness of nature.
Instead, Helmholtz's preoccupation in the following pages is iii) the conceptual
explanation of a specific physical model, tending to show the possibility of
Newtonian forces and not, at this stage, their inductive validity 86, The specific
model is the Newtonian one, based on central forces depending only on distance.
Through a detailed conceptual explanation based on the mechanistic categories of
matter and force, Helmholtz tries to show that Newtonian forces can be
considered the ultimate causes of natural phenomena and follows the method of
Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science . Helmholtz's famous
84 Helmholtz Erhaltung P.2
85 Helmholtz himself in 1882: W.A. 1 "Erhaltung" P.68; Ellington, J.W. "Kant". In
C.C.Gillespie (ed.) DSB VII New York: Scribner, 1973. Pp.224-35; P.234; Elkana, Yehuda.
"Helmholtz's 'Kraft': An Illustration of Concepts in Flux". In HSPS 2 (1970): 263-98;
P.Heimann: "Helmh and Kant"; Wise in: Wise, Norton. "German Concepts of Force, Energy
and the Electromagnetic Ether: 1845-1880" In Conceptions of Ether. G.N. Cantor and
M.J.S.Hodge eds. Cambridge : Cambridge U.P., 1981. Pp.269-307, agrees with the influence
of Kant's Metaphysical Foundations on Helmholtz, stressing the role of intensity and capacity
factors; Fullinwider, S.P. "Hermann Von Helmholtz: The Problem of Kantian Influence". In
Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 21 (1990): 41-55.
86 see Heimann: "Helmholtz and Kant" P.229.