Caneva Robert Mayer and the Conservation of Energy

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4008-7281-7
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 464 Seiten

Reihe: Princeton Legacy Library

The principle of the conservation of energy was among the most important developments of nineteenth-century physics, and Robert Mayer, a physician from a small city in Germany, was one of its codiscoverers. As ship's doctor on a voyage to the Dutch East Indies in 1840, Mayer noticed that the venous blood he let from a European seaman was lighter than he expected. This observation set off a train of reflections that led him first to conclude that there must be a quantitative relationship between heat and "motion" and then, over several years, to believe in the indestructibility and uncreatability of "force." Rejecting the commonly invoked influence of Naturphilosophie, Kenneth Caneva provides a rich historical context for the problems and issues that concerned Mayer and for the ways in which he gradually came to understand what became known as the conservation of energy.

Demonstrating that the development of Mayer's thinking was fostered by a constant search for analogies, Caneva also analyzes the transformation of the life sciences in mid-century Germany and offers a major reevaluation of the status of the "vital force" during that period. The intellectual environment treated here embraces medicine, physiology, physics, chemistry, religion, and spiritualism.

Kenneth L. Caneva is Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

Originally published in 1993.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Caneva, Kenneth L.

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Formalen Wissenschaften & Technik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Author's Note

Introduction

Pt. I The Man and His Work 1

Ch. 1 Mayer the Person 3

1 Mayer's Upbringing and Education 3

2 Mayer's Voyage to the Dutch East Indies 7

3 Mayer's Religiosity 8

4 Mayer's Circle of Friends 14

5 Mayer's Character 16

Ch. 2 Mayer's Work 18

1 Mayer's Earliest Presentation of His Ideas 19

1.1 "On the Quantitative and Qualitative Determination of Forces" 19

1.2 "Remarks on the Forces of Inanimate Nature" 23

2 The Leading Ideas and Peculiarities of Mayer's Work 25

2.1 Force 25

2.2 Neutralization of Differences: The Continued Importance of Chemical Analogs 33

2.3 Causality and the Laws of Thought 35

2.4 Quantitative Thinking and the Measure of the Equivalence of Heat and Motion 37

2.5 The Measure of Force 38

2.6 Mayer's Restriction of His Ideas to Inanimate Nature and His Allowance for the Creation of Force Out of Nothing 41

2.7 Force as an Antidote to Materialism 43

2.8 The Search for Valid Analogies 46

Pt. II Establishing the Relevant Context 47

Ch. 3 Physiology and Medicine 49

1 Blood, Respiration, and Animal Heat 49

2 Sources of Organic Activity 68

2.1 Physical and Chemical Processes: The Organism's Connection with the External World 70

2.2 Vital Forces and the Soul: The Organism's Internal Sources of Activity 79

3 Leading Analogies 125

3.1 The Relationship between the Imponderables, Vital Force, and the Soul 126

3.2 Organisms as Machines 142

3.3 The Solar System as a Living Organism 145

4 Physiology as an Opponent of Materialism 150

5 Homeopathy 152

Ch. 4 Physics and Chemistry 160

1 Force 161

1.1 The Parallelogram of Forces and Central-Force Motion 168

1.2 Catalytic, Contact, and Electrochemical Forces 173

2 Imponderables and the Nature of Heat 184

2.1 Thermal Expansion of Gases and Related Phenomena 192

3 Matter 194

4 Metamorphosis, Neutralization, and Indifference: The Chemical and Physical Contexts 198

Ch. 5 Science Circumscribed 207

1 The Nature and Scope of Science 208

2 Religion and Spiritualism 219

Pt. III Mayer's Work in Context 231

Ch. 6 A Contextual Reconstruction of the Development of Mayer's Ideas 233

1 Through the Publication of His 1842 Paper 235

2 Later Developments and Changing Emphases 259

Ch. 7 Mayer and Naturphilosophie 275

1 The Leading Characteristics of Naturphilosophie 282

2 Force and Forces in Naturphilosophie 287

2.1 Vital Force 299

3 Respiration and Animal Heat 304

4 Echoes of Naturphilosophie in Mayer's Work? 309

Ch. 8 Assessment and Conclusions 320

Appendix One: Timeline of Robert Mayer's Life and Work 329

Appendix Two: Courses Mayer Took at the University of Tubingen, 1832-37 332

Appendix Three: The German Text of the Longer Passages Quoted from Manuscript 335

Notes 341

Bibliography 395

Index 425