This is the third of a series of essays on the development and reception of Wilhelm Ostwald’s energetics. The first essay described the chemical origins of Ostwald’s interest in the energy concept and his motivations for seeking a comprehensive science of energy. The second essay and the present one discuss his various attempts, beginning in 1891 and extending over almost 3 years, to develop a consistent and coherent energetic theory. A final essay will consider reactions to this work and Ostwald’s (...) replies, and will also seek to evaluate his program of research. Ostwald’s project—to reconstruct physics and chemistry “as a pure energetics”—is worth attending to for several reasons: first, because Ostwald did ground-breaking work in chemistry (he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1909 for his studies in catalysis and rates of reaction); second, because an important school of physical chemistry formed around him at Leipzig, a school that promoted his ideas; and, finally, because he was a prominent and vigorous participant in debates at the end of the nineteenth century concerning the proper course of physical theory. (shrink)

The reversibility problem (better known as the reversibility objection) is usually taken to be an internal problem in the kinetic theory of gases, namely the problem of how to account for the second law of thermodynamics within this theory. Historically, it is seen as an objection that was raised against Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases, which led Boltzmann to a statistical approach to the kinetic theory, culminating in the development of statistical mechanics. In this paper, I show that in the (...) late nineteenth century, the reversibility problem had a much broader significance - it was widely discussed and certainly not only as an objection to Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases. In this period, there was a conflict between mechanism and irreversibility in physics which was tied up with central issues in philosophy of science such as materialism, empiricism and the need for mechanistic foundations of physical theories, as well as with concerns about the heat death of the universe. I discuss how this conflict was handled by the major physicists of the period, such as Maxwell, Kelvin, Duhem, Poincaré, Mach and Planck, as well as by a number of lesser-known authors. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the place of the second law of thermodynamics in Wilhelm Ostwald's physical chemistry. After a brief introduction to his energetic theory, which was supposed to be a generalization of thermodynamics, I contrast Ostwald's understanding of the second law, which ignored entropy and irreversibility, with Max Planck's, which emphasized both. I then consider how Ostwald sought to develop physical chemistry without any concern for irreversibility and little concern for entropy, and I argue that he was mistaken.

Die Fin de Siècle‐These. Der Aufsatz untersucht das Verhältnis zwischen John Heilbrons Argumentation, die Physiker des ‘fin de siecle’ hätten Bild und Substanz ihrer Disziplin kulturellen Belangen angepasst, und Paul Formans Interpretation der Akausalität in der Weimarer Periode. Ergänzend zu ihrer Fokussierung auf Repräsentationen anstelle von Wahrheit, legten die von Heilbron benannten Anhänger “deskriptionistischer” Epistemologien den Schwerpunkt auf Methodik, statistische anstelle kausaler Erklärungen, historisches Verständnis von Epistemologie und unterstrichen die Beziehungen zwischen der Physik und anderen Disziplinen. Ihre Perspektive liefert einen (...) intellektuellen Kontext – innerhalb der Disziplin Physik – für zumindestens einen Teil dessen, was Forman als Kapitulation vor einer feindlichen sozialen Umgebung, wie sie sich in Oswald Spenglers Der Untergang des Abendlandes ausdrückte, beschrieben hat.The Fin de Siècle Thesis. This paper examines the relations between John Heilbron's argument that fin de siècle physicists adjusted the image and substance of their discipline to cultural concerns, and Paul Forman's approach to acausality in the Weimar period. In addition to their focus on representation rather than truth, adherents of the “descriptionist” epistemologies that Heilbron identified also promoted an emphasis on method, statistical rather than causal explanations, historical understandings of epistemology, and stressed the relations between physics and other disciplines. Their views provide an intellectual context – within the physics discipline – for at least some part of what Forman had described as a capitulation to the hostile social environment expressed in Oswald Spengler's Der Untergang des Abendlandes. (shrink)