power possessed only by the supreme ruler, yet transformations take place which removes
irrecoverably from the control of man sources of power which, if the opportunity of turning
them to his own account had been made use of, might have been rendered available.
7
Kelvin, in this remarkable passage, made the fundamental distinction between
the destruction of energy and lost energy (or, the term he later introduced in 1852,
dissipation of energy): destruction is impossible whereas dissipation happens all the
time. He made the connection of “irrecoverable” changes, though involving no
destruction of energy, to loss in available energy. Energy transformations among
energy forms referred to in Statement #5, Table 3.1, is amended that energy forms
can be ordered in accordance to their available energies and spontaneous transformations takes place in the direction of decreasing available energies—transformations in reverse direction are possible but are made to happen instead of
happening spontaneously.
The technological and social significance of Thomson’s contribution here is
given by Smith and Wise in Energy and Empire [11], and by Smith in the following
sentence from one of his articles:
As every physicist, indeed every schoolgirl and schoolboy know nowadays, energy and its
laws are part of a universal language of science if not of the human race. There can be few
corners of the planet Earth in which the language of energy is unknown. Yet it is generally
much less widely recognized that the terminology of energy had its historical origin in
Glasgow, from which it was promoted and propagated in true imperial fashion to the rest of
Britain, the British Empire, Europe and the world. The role of William Thomson (later Lord
Kelvin) in the origin and promotion of what he himself termed ‘the science of energy’ is
therefore the subject of this paper. [14]
Thomson devoted his life’s work to the promotion of industrial use of energy.
“Energy” as a word was not new. But the idea of industrial energy, or fungible
energy, did not exist before Kelvin. It was through his pivotal role in laying the
fundamentals of the science of heat and promoting the industrial use of energy,
which coincided with the birth of commercial oil in 1859 and the increasing burgeoning application of coal, that the accelerating worldwide use of fungible energy
gave rise to the Second Industrial Revolution, the growth of cities, the Internet Age:
our homes, our cars, and the products and essentials we rely on in our daily lives are
all operated and produced with fungible energy.
As far as the matter of Kelvin’s energy principle as a contribution to the second
universal principle (the principle of unidirectionality) is concerned, the assessment
is mixed: On the one hand, he did achieve the goal of providing a counterpoint to
the principle of conservation of energy by positing the two overarching principles
of energy during energy transformations: the conservation (constancy) of energy
and the preferred direction (preferred direction of spontaneous changes) of energy
transformations. Together, they apply to vastly different kinds of things and phenomena. Specifically, the theory of exergy (Chap. 7) evolved from the two principles; in so far as the understanding of energy is impossible without the concept of
exergy, Kelvin’s contribution is supremely significant.
7
This passage is from a draft of Paper [4]. It is taken from a quotation in Ref. [11:329]
86
4 Carnot’s Theory of Heat, and Kelvin’s Adoption …
irrecoverably from the control of man sources of power which, if the opportunity of turning
them to his own account had been made use of, might have been rendered available.
7
Kelvin, in this remarkable passage, made the fundamental distinction between
the destruction of energy and lost energy (or, the term he later introduced in 1852,
dissipation of energy): destruction is impossible whereas dissipation happens all the
time. He made the connection of “irrecoverable” changes, though involving no
destruction of energy, to loss in available energy. Energy transformations among
energy forms referred to in Statement #5, Table 3.1, is amended that energy forms
can be ordered in accordance to their available energies and spontaneous transformations takes place in the direction of decreasing available energies—transformations in reverse direction are possible but are made to happen instead of
happening spontaneously.
The technological and social significance of Thomson’s contribution here is
given by Smith and Wise in Energy and Empire [11], and by Smith in the following
sentence from one of his articles:
As every physicist, indeed every schoolgirl and schoolboy know nowadays, energy and its
laws are part of a universal language of science if not of the human race. There can be few
corners of the planet Earth in which the language of energy is unknown. Yet it is generally
much less widely recognized that the terminology of energy had its historical origin in
Glasgow, from which it was promoted and propagated in true imperial fashion to the rest of
Britain, the British Empire, Europe and the world. The role of William Thomson (later Lord
Kelvin) in the origin and promotion of what he himself termed ‘the science of energy’ is
therefore the subject of this paper. [14]
Thomson devoted his life’s work to the promotion of industrial use of energy.
“Energy” as a word was not new. But the idea of industrial energy, or fungible
energy, did not exist before Kelvin. It was through his pivotal role in laying the
fundamentals of the science of heat and promoting the industrial use of energy,
which coincided with the birth of commercial oil in 1859 and the increasing burgeoning application of coal, that the accelerating worldwide use of fungible energy
gave rise to the Second Industrial Revolution, the growth of cities, the Internet Age:
our homes, our cars, and the products and essentials we rely on in our daily lives are
all operated and produced with fungible energy.
As far as the matter of Kelvin’s energy principle as a contribution to the second
universal principle (the principle of unidirectionality) is concerned, the assessment
is mixed: On the one hand, he did achieve the goal of providing a counterpoint to
the principle of conservation of energy by positing the two overarching principles
of energy during energy transformations: the conservation (constancy) of energy
and the preferred direction (preferred direction of spontaneous changes) of energy
transformations. Together, they apply to vastly different kinds of things and phenomena. Specifically, the theory of exergy (Chap. 7) evolved from the two principles; in so far as the understanding of energy is impossible without the concept of
exergy, Kelvin’s contribution is supremely significant.
7
This passage is from a draft of Paper [4]. It is taken from a quotation in Ref. [11:329]
86
4 Carnot’s Theory of Heat, and Kelvin’s Adoption …