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

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himself) in the specific instances of a) the derivation of the central forces from the principle of vis viva and b) of the definition of potential . Helmholtz's strength was founded on his broad, general viewpoint and on the great heuristic and justificatory power of his approach, which allowed a systematic application to a variety of natural phenomena, and is not founded on the individual, specific demonstrations and applications. This was, with great chivalry, acknowledged by Clausius himself. The debate with Clausius being based on specific instances, Helmholtz was in a weak position ( Clausius was actually formally right in most criticisms) and it is remarkable that he managed not to let Clausius prevail. His target of being accepted among mathematical physicists was achieved. The 1853 paper was the third he published in the Annalen, and as already recalled, the whole controversy was published in that journal, which occasioned a greater diffusion in Germany of the Erhaltung 's ideas. Helmholtz's fame spread perhaps in Britain before at home. W.Thomson read the Erhaltung in 1852 295 and at DuBois-Reymond's suggestion Tyndall translated and published it in 1853, together with Clausius' 1852 paper. Helmholtz met Tyndall in 1853 in Berlin, which began a lifelong friendship, and when, in the same year, he participated in the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Halle he discovered he was better known than in Germany 296. But the result of the controversy with Clausius was not without a lesson for Helmholtz, as will be seen in the next section. Popular conservation of "force" : where have the central forces gone ? (1854-64) In a series of lectures, most of which are not included in the Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen , Helmholtz presented to a large public the universal validity of the theory of conservation of energy. In so doing, he only utilized his very first approach to the problem: the conversion of forces through constant coefficients, the related extension of the impossibility of perpetual 295 Planck Prinzip p.68. 296 Koenigsberger H v H p.109 (Tyndall), p.113 and 120.
motion to all natural forces, the kinetic theory of heat and its mechanical equivalent. That is, he only utilized one of the two conceptual roots of the Erhaltung, and did not talk of the requirement that all the forces be central and that the energies be reduced to only two kinds. Moreover, he abandoned the "narrow laboratory" of the physicist and threw himself at cosmological heights. He did not give examples of applications of the conservation principle to the physical and chemical laws as he had done in the Erhaltung. Instead he gave a large-scale, unified picture of the world in energy terms: from the Kant-Laplace cosmogonic hypothesis to thermal death, to an analysis of the planetary system, of the fall of meteors, of winds, tides and all sorts of technical machines and devices. At variance with what had happened in 1847, these lectures were received enthusiastically both by the scientific milieu and by the general public. The first lecture was soon translated by Tyndall and published in the Philosophical Magazine and this was useful for spreading Helmholtz's fame across the Channel. Did this new-old approach have to be chosen, after Clausius' criticisms, to please both the scientists and the public ? Would it not have been easier to popularize energy referring to its only two asserted forms and to only one model for the forces? But a second shift takes place at the beginning of the seventies: empirical rather than theoretical aspects are stressed in the enunciation of the principle. Was this second shift connected with a more empiricist methodological view adopted by Helmholtz in the late sixties? What was Helmholtz's relation to the other scientists who had been and still were working along similar, but not at all identical lines? Some remarks on these questions are related to the discussions of Mayer's priority which Helmholtz kept introducing into his popular lectures. We are thus led to the priority debate, where some of these problems receive an answer. _______________________ On February the 7th 1854 in Königsberg, Helmholtz gave a popular lecture on the interaction of natural forces 297 that was soon to become extremely famous. On the first of June of the same year, in fact, Helmholtz told his father that a second edition of the lecture had already been requested 298. The lecture 297 Helmholtz, Hermann: Ueber die Wechselwirkung der Naturkräfte un die darauf bezüglichen neuesten Ermittelungen der Physik. Königsberg: Gräfe & Unzer,1854. 298 Koenigsberger H v H p.124
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Fabio Bevilacqua Conservation and I
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different formulations 4 and priori
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and interesting results, despite th
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principle of correlation is express
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principle to the existing empirical
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the origin and meaning of the princ
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Whether physiological research, apa
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In a discussion on the origins of a
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his "Wärme" that one of the differ
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generate a determined equivalent of
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"Bericht", despite the application
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experiments in the most disparate b
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The premise reveals that the struct
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intelligible if it can be referred
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elevant consequence of the deductio
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Page 39 and 40: The principle of conservation of vi
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Page 67 and 68: Finally we get to the real conclusi
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Kant was a Naturphilosophe 480. The
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condition that work done by the for
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histories cites these (Hirn's) arti
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) the experimental determinations o
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force principle 522. Elkana tried t
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Blüh, Otto. "The Value of Inspirat
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Graetz, L. "Das Mechanische Wärme
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Helmholtz, Hermann. "Bericht über
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Helmholtz, Hermann. Wissenschaftlic
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Madison: Wisconsin U.P., 1959. Pp.
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Poincarè, Henry. Electricité et O
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Yagi, Eri."Clausius's Mathematical
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