English | 2023 | Original PDF | 5 MB | 369 Pages
Peter Hjertholm, 1032344458, 1032344466, 9781032344461, 9781000881738, 9781003322184, 9781032344454, 9781000881585, 978-1032344461, 978-1000881738, 978-1003322184, 978-1032344454, 978-1000881585, B0BZ7KW2NB
This
book offers a cultural history of the travels of energy in the English
language, from its origins in Aristotle’s ontology, where it referred to
the activity-of-being, through its English usage as a way to speak
about the inherent nature of things, to its adoption as a name for the
mechanics of motion (capacity for work).
A
distinguished literature deals with energy as matter of science history.
But this literature fails to adequately answer a historical question
about the rise of the science of energy: How did the commonplace word
‘energy’ end up becoming a concept in science? This account differs in
important ways from the history of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Discovering the origins and early travels of energy is essential for
understanding how the word was borrowed into physics, and therefore a
cultural history of energy is a necessary companion to the science
history of the term. It is important that modern scholars in a variety
of fields be aware that energy did not always have a scientific content.
The absence of that awareness can lead to, have led to, anachronistic
interpretations of energy in historical sources from before the 1860s.
A
History of the Cultural Travels of Energy will be useful for those
interested in the history of science and technology, cultural history,
and linguistics.
