History of energy

The word energy derives from Greek

ἐνέργεια (energeia), which appears for the
first time in the 4th century BCE works of
Aristotle (OUP V, 240, 1991) (including
Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean
Ethics[1] and De Anima).[2]
Thomas Young - the first to use the term "energy" in the modern sense, in 1802.

The modern concept of energy emerged

from the idea of vis viva (living force),
which Leibniz defined as the product of
the mass of an object and its velocity
squared, he believed that total vis viva was
conserved. To account for slowing due to
friction, Leibniz claimed that heat
consisted of the random motion of the
constituent parts of matter — a view
described by Bacon in Novum Organon to
illustrate inductive reasoning and shared
by Isaac Newton, although it would be
more than a century until this was
generally accepted.

Émilie marquise du Châtelet in her book

Institutions de Physique ("Lessons in
Physics"), published in 1740, incorporated
the idea of Leibniz with practical
observations of Gravesande to show that
the "quantity of motion" of a moving object
is proportional to its mass and its velocity
squared (not the velocity itself as Newton
taught—what was later called
momentum).
In 1802 lectures to the Royal Society,
Thomas Young was the first to use the
term energy in its modern sense, instead
of vis viva.[3] In the 1807 publication of
those lectures, he wrote,

The product of the mass of a

body into the square of its
velocity may properly be termed
its energy.[4]

Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis described

"kinetic energy" in 1829 in its modern
sense, and in 1853, William Rankine
coined the term "potential energy."
It was argued for some years whether
energy was a substance (the caloric) or
merely a physical quantity.

Thermodynamics
The development of steam engines
required engineers to develop concepts
and formulas that would allow them to
describe the mechanical and thermal
efficiencies of their systems. Engineers
such as Sadi Carnot, physicists such as
James Prescott Joule, mathematicians
such as Émile Clapeyron and Hermann von
Helmholtz, and amateurs such as Julius
Robert von Mayer all contributed to the
notion that the ability to perform certain
tasks, called work, was somehow related
to the amount of energy in the system. In
the 1850s, Glasgow professor of natural
philosophy William Thomson and his ally
in the engineering science William Rankine
began to replace the older language of
mechanics with terms such as actual
energy, kinetic energy, and potential
energy.[5] William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
amalgamated all of these laws into the
laws of thermodynamics, which aided in
the rapid development of explanations of
chemical processes using the concept of
energy by Rudolf Clausius, Josiah Willard
Gibbs and Walther Nernst. It also led to a
mathematical formulation of the concept
of entropy by Clausius, and to the
introduction of laws of radiant energy by
Jožef Stefan.
Rankine coined the term
potential energy.[5] In 1881, William
Thomson stated before an audience
that:[6]

The very name energy, though

first used in its present sense by
Dr Thomas Young about the
beginning of this century, has
only come into use practically
after the doctrine which defines
it had ... been raised from mere
 formula of mathematical
dynamics to the position it now
holds of a principle pervading
all nature and guiding the
investigator in the field of
science.

Over the following thirty years or so this

newly developing science went by various
names, such as the dynamical theory of
heat or energetics, but after the 1920s
generally came to be known as
thermodynamics, the science of energy
transformations.
Stemming from the 1850s development of
the first two laws of thermodynamics, the
science of energy have since branched off
into a number of various fields, such as
biological thermodynamics and
thermoeconomics, to name a couple; as
well as related terms such as entropy, a
measure of the loss of useful energy, or
power, an energy flow per unit time, etc. In
the past two centuries, the use of the word
energy in various "non-scientific"
vocations, e.g. social studies, spirituality
and psychology has proliferated the
popular literature.

Conservation of energy
In 1918 it was proved that the law of
conservation of energy is the direct
mathematical consequence of the
translational symmetry of the quantity
conjugate to energy, namely time. That is,
energy is conserved because the laws of
physics do not distinguish between
different moments of time (see Noether's
theorem).

During a 1961 lecture[7] for undergraduate

students at the California Institute of
Technology, Richard Feynman, a
celebrated physics teacher and Nobel
Laureate, said this about the concept of
energy:
There is a fact, or if you wish, a
law, governing natural
phenomena that are known to
date. There is no known
exception to this law—it is exact
so far we know. The law is
called conservation of energy; it
states that there is a certain
quantity, which we call energy
that does not change in
manifold changes which nature
undergoes. That is a most
abstract idea, because it is a
mathematical principle; it says
that there is a numerical
quantity, which does not change
when something happens. It is
not a description of a
mechanism, or anything
concrete; it is just a strange fact
that we can calculate some
number, and when we finish
watching nature go through her
tricks and calculate the number
again, it is the same.

— The Feynman Lectures on

Physics
See also
Timeline of thermodynamics
History of physics
History of the conservation of energy
principle
History of thermodynamics
A Guide to the Scientific Knowledge of
Things Familiar, a book by Ebenezer
Cobham Brewer, published around 1840,
presenting explanations for common
phenomena
Caloric theory

References
1. Aristotle, "Nicomachean Ethics", 1098a, at
 Perseus (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ho
pper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0053:
bekker%20page=1098a&highlight=e%29n
e%2Frgeia#note4)
2. Potentiality and actuality
3. Smith, Crosbie (1998). The Science of
Energy - a Cultural History of Energy
Physics in Victorian Britain. The University
of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-76420-6.
4. Thomas Young (1807). A Course of
Lectures on Natural Philosophy and the
Mechanical Arts, p. 52.
5. Smith, Crosbie (1998). The Science of
Energy - a Cultural History of Energy
Physics in Victorian Britain. The University
of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-76421-4.
 6. Thomson, William. (1881). "On the sources
of energy available to man for the
production of mechanical effect." BAAS
Rep. 51: 513-18 (Quote: pg. 513); PL 2: 433-
50.
7. Feynman, Richard (1964). The Feynman
Lectures on Physics; Volume 1 (https://arch
ive.org/details/feynmanlectureso0001fey
n) . U.S.A: Addison Wesley. ISBN 0-201-
02115-3.

Further reading
Hecht, Eugene. "An Historico-Critical
Account of Potential Energy: Is PE Really
Real? (http://scitation.aip.org/journals/d
oc/PHTEAH-ft/vol_41/iss_8/486_1.htm
l) " The Physics Teacher 41 (Nov 2003):
486–93.
Hughes, Thomas. Networks of Power.
Electrification in Western society, 1880-
1930 (Johns Hopkins UP, 1983).
Martinás, Katalin. "Aristotelian
Thermodynamics," Thermodynamics:
history and philosophy: facts, trends,
debates (Veszprém, Hungary 23–28 July
1990), 285–303.
Mendoza, E. "A sketch for a history of
early thermodynamics." Physics Today
14.2 (1961): 32–42.
Müller, Ingo. A history of
thermodynamics (Berlin: Springer, 2007)
External links
The Journal of Energy History / Revue
d'histoire de l'énergie (JEHRHE) (http://w
ww.energyhistory.eu/en)
Timeline of history of energy for children
(http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/history/ti
melines/index.html)

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