Elkana Y. The discovery of the conservation of energy

Harvard University Press, 1974. — 213 p.The theme of energy and its conservation, as discussed by Yehuda Elkana in this monograph, provides an admirable instance of the necessity for philosophical alertness in untangling the skeins of the history of scientific ideas. He demonstrates that many of the primary questions concerning the 'final' or 'definitive' enunciation of the theorem of conservation of energy cannot even be exactly formulated by the inquiring historian, much less answered, without preliminary philosophical analysis. The oft-debated issue of priority of discovery, or the alleged simultaneous and independent discovery, of the conservation of energy is clarified by Elkana on the basis of an acute philosophical analysis of the concept of energy itself, as it gradually emerged in the course of the nineteenth century. He demonstrates convincingly that this topic can be fully comprehended only by an awareness of the philosophical significance of the doctrine of conservation in general, both in the development of the physical sciences and in the scientific thought of the nineteenth century.