Energy Narratives (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Principle of Popularization of Energy
We will examine the emergence of the principle of conservation of energy and its relation to the rise of science popularization. On the one hand, the principle of conservation of energy is an uncommon example of widespread and simultaneous discovery. In fact, more than ten authors can be mentioned as discoverers or inventors of this fundamental principle, all during the middle of the 19 th century. Although its genesis was closely related to research on the nature of heat, energy conservation did not arise to solve any specific age-old problem, nor did it belong to any specific theory. However, once firmly established, it has grown to become one of the most unquestioned principles of science. On the other hand, popular science publishing underwent a notable, if not a radical transformation in the second half of the 19 th century. Not only did this consist of a quantitative increase in scientific content; there was a significant qualitative change as well. In the 20 th century, especially after World War II, popularization experienced again a radical change. Today, mention in the media of new scientific advances is far from scarce. In all of this proliferation the concept of 'energy' plays a crucial role. Moreover, its use has grown beyond scientific spheres, and we can now find it even in the most varied contexts. 'Energy' has become a ubiquitous word. Is 'energy' an especially well-suited concept for popularizing purposes? It has been stated that the concept of energy had already existed in the minds of some of the authors involved prior to its 'discovery' as a metaphysical concept. Therefore, is this a case where society at large has come to influence technical and specialized research? Influences in both directions will be considered.
This book began with research undertaken as a gradu ate student in the Department of Po liti cal Science at Johns Hopkins University. I owe my first, and greatest, debt to my teachers, friends, and fellow students at Johns Hopkins for supporting creative and interdisciplinary scholarship. I am im mensely grateful to my committee members for their guidance. It was in a typically far-ranging conversation with Daniel Deudney that the topic of energy first arose, and I have him to thank for planting the first seed of this proj ect. Because of the faith he invested in me, and his own encyclopedic knowledge of environmental studies, I had the liberty to roam far afield of disciplinary bound aries in my research. I was also fortunate to have the mentorship of Jane Bennett. She provided a model for how to think and write well, and with creativity, as a scholar of politics. If I entered her office feeling discouraged, I almost always left with new inspiration, and likely with some clever turns of phrase that would catapult me over the latest writer's block. Thank you also to the other members of my committee, Bentley Allen, Michael Degani, and Deborah Poole, for their helpful comments.
In this 400-page award-winning book, Smith describes the human side of one of the major concepts in recent times: Energy. This is a word that appears often in today's conversations but most people have only vaguest sense of this idea. Smith is a historian of science, who is fascinated by the personalities involved but he is also very familiar with the science of energy, so he can present both sides of this intriguing story: a powerful new concept and the tough men who created it; mainly from the North of England and Scotland. These scientists and engineers developed energy physics to solve practical problems encountered by Scottish shipbuilders and marine engineers; to counter biblical revivalism and evolutionary materialism; and to rapidly enhance their own scientific credibility and, in the case of Maxwell, promote his own secret religious agenda. This was one of the first examples of unifying physics, when most scientists were stuck in just specialities. It was only in 1853 that the formal Energy definition surfaced but the discoveries of atomic physics ended its conquest as the atomic world was seen to be discrete that contradicted the original continuum assumption. Smith skillfully places this revolution in its scientific and cultural context, exploring the actual creation of scientific knowledge during one of the most significant episodes in the history of physics, showing how this new, difficult idea quickly displaced the central idea of Newtonian physics: Force. The Energy idea spread rapidly across the educated minds of Europe, feeding old metaphorical extensions, as it reinforced the conquest of industrial mechanization. As this book seems written for Smith's fellow scholars, I added extra explanatory sections to help the non-specialists.
A Philosophical Theory of Energy
Stasis
Michael Marder's new book sets a goal even more ambitious than his previous works that were ambitious enough: he endeavors to analyze and describe the concept of energy, and applies it to current affairs. This concept, invented by Aristotle, was once central to premodern European theory. In the nineteenth century it was reinvented and redefined by physicists, only to regain its former weight, this time not in philosophy but in politics, economy, psychology, and in everyday spontaneous metaphysics. "Energy" is everywhere, it is often presented as a higher value of life, above the good and the true. And its cult involves the ever-present anxiety of its loss. However, philosophy has generally had a hard time approaching this subject (with the notable exception of the great Russian philosopher Vladimir Bibikhin, author of the book Energy, still untranslated, which influenced Marder). This is so for three reasons: 1) Great figures of continental thought, such as Heidegger and Lacan, expressed disdain for this overly metaphysical (i.e., absolutist, optimistic) and overly technological notion. 2) The current vulgar usage of the word actually inverts its original meaning (as usually happens to great Modern concepts). Therefore, philosophers are at a loss as to which meaning to discuss: the proper, classical one, or the diametrically opposed metaphorical one accepted in physics and in popular culture. What we normally refer to as energy is an indeterminate quantifiable resource for eventual activity, or, in Aristotelian terms, precisely possibility, dynamis, and not energeia, or actuality.
The Concept of Force as a Constitutive Element of Understanding the World
This paper concerns interpretation and constitutive elements of understanding the world, both of which are treated in relation to the concept of force. Studies are criticized in which students’ conceptions are formulated, without further clarification, in terms of the word ‘force’. From such reports it can neither be concluded what students believe nor how their beliefs relate to science. Instead, reasons or criteria for applying ‘force’ need to be made explicit. Those reasons concern the effects that forces produce, namely deviations from an influence-free state; they also concern their sources, as made explicit in laws from which, for a given situation, the forces acting in it can be derived. The general concept of force, thus associated with the two-tier explanatory strategy of specifying (1) influence-free states and (2) force laws to account for deviations from those states, is a constitutive element of understanding the world. Within the constraints set by this explanatory strategy, the concept of force can still be variously applied, both in everyday and in scientific explanations. The differences between these various applications are partly anchored in distinct explanatory interest
In the latter half of the Victorian period, new theories of energy predicted a future as bleak as it was exciting. Promising both the end of the world and its ambitious mastery through theory, this vision followed the contemporary formulation of the two laws of thermodynamics by scientists Hermann von Helmholtz, Rudolf Clausius, and William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin). The first law-of conservation-portrayed a redemptive world of unified, indestructible, and ever-convertible energy, often likened to the eternal power of the divine. The second law, however, was nothing short of apocalyptic, foretelling the path of all closed energy systems to entropy-to waste, disorder, and irretrievably dissipated heat, with the end result of cosmic extinction. 1 Critics Gillian Beer, Bruce Clarke, and George Levine have all eloquently addressed this "degenerative vision" of a finite, fallen universe-a godless world haunted by "terrors" of "death irrecuperable." 2 The sun and earth would most certainly perish, as Thomson calculated in 1862; and, according to H. G. Wells, thirty million years hence, the sole remnants of life might well be only a few giant crabs, lichens, and liverworts. 3 This chapter examines a particularly fanciful and controversial response to Thomson's grim Karpenko.indd 254 8/1/2016 12:57:44 PM Master Pages The Energy of Belief • 255 thermodynamic scene: The Unseen Universe, or Physical Speculations on a Future State , a work of polytheistic cosmic science that reimagines energy physics as a site of transformative spiritual consolation. In this surprisingly popular treatise, energy serves as a metaphor for belief itself, imagined as a physical force testing the bounds of multiple, invisibly linked worlds. Coauthored by two established professors of physics, Balfour Stewart (1828-1887) and Peter Guthrie Tait , The Unseen Universe redeems the world's wasted energy as evidence of a possible spiritual afterlife, located in an immortal and invisible beyond. Yet, above all, Stewart and Tait's text is a determined exercise of rhetoric, in which the work of energy and persuasion are one and the same. Blending Christian apologetics with astronomy, thermodynamics, and a rather partial survey of world religion, their treatise uses the vast dimensions of modern physics-of cosmic breadth and finitude-to evoke a new affective landscape of religious conviction, speculation, and influence. Stewart and Tait thus revise the traditional clockwork view of natural theology to yield a more dynamic vision of the universe as a series of heat engines nested within the luminiferous ether.
Energy plays a fundamental role in shaping the human condition. People's need for energy is essential for survival, so it is not surprising that energy production and consumption are some of the most important activities of human life. Indeed, it has been argued that energy is the key "to the advance of civilization," that the evolution of human societies is dependent on the conversion of energy for human use. 1 Few people have questioned the long-held assumption that standard of living and quality of civilization are proportional to the quantity of energy a society uses. However imprecise it may be, most people still accept the steadfast formula: energy=progress=civilization. 2