A History of the Cultural Travels of Energy av Peter Hjertholm

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<P>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). </P><P></P><P>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 <I>Oxford English Dictionary</I>. 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 fi