History of the Cultural Travels of Energy

<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>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 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.</p><p>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. </p>