The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics, 1822-1854 by C. Truesdell Review by: David F. Channell Technology and Culture, Vol.

23, No. 1 (Jan., 1982), pp. 104-106 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Society for the History of Technology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3104457 . Accessed: 17/04/2013 12:17
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ficult to follow, but it should repay the scholar of French science and of thermodynamical history.
C. STEWART GILLMOR*

The TragicomicalHistory of Thermodynamics, 1822-1854. By C. Truesdell. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1980. Pp. xii+372. $48.00. This book presents the history of thermodynamics during the first half of the 19th century as a grand tragicomical opera, and, as with any opera, in order to appreciate it fully the audience must have some knowledge of the language in which it is being sung. In this case the libretto is written in the language of mathematical physics. Although the author claims that no previous knowledge of thermodynamics is assumed, the book requires a fairly advanced knowledge of both physics and calculus. In fact, the author does not present the reader with a fully staged opera; rather he provides an elaborate and detailed libretto upon which the actual opera is based. Although Truesdell argues that he is writing for the scientist rather than for the historian, his "conceptual analysis" of the development of thermodynamics during the early 19th century provides the historian of science and technology with a critical line-by-line and equation-byequation analysis of the published mathematical papers on heat and thermodynamics from the 1820s to the 1850s. Much of Truesdell's of modern-day thercritique is based on the developments modynamics, but he sets these ahistorical sections off from the historical narrative. Although the plot of Truesdell's opera is Wagnerian in its complexity, its demands on the audience, and its eventual G6tterddmmerung, there is a sense that the characters are singing an opera buffa. Many of the major figures in thermodynamics seem to play their parts as fools, braggarts, or incompetents, but much of this is due to the fact that the characters in this opera are judged solely on their ability with the play's language-mathematical physics. In Truesdell's opinion, the ultimate failure of early 19th-century engineers and physicists to create a consistent theory of thermodynamics lay in their inability to understand and apply the new mathematical research that was rapidly developing during the same period (p. 339). This internalist study does provide the historian with some new perspectives on the early development of thermodynamics. For example, Truesdell shows how early studies in calorimetry, especially
*DR. GILLMOR, professor of history and science at Wesleyan University, is author of France (1971). Coulomband the Evolution of Physics and Engineering in Eighteenth-Century He is currently writing a book on the history of ionospheric physics.

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the doctrines of latent and specific heats, inhibited the development of thermodynamics because of their lack of mathematical clarity (p. 27). Although Sadi Carnot is given credit for founding thermodynamics, his inability to extend his theory to irreversible processes made the time-independent reversible process the prototype of classical thermodynamics. Carnot's successors either perpetuated his weaknesses or developed individual theories which did little to complete the grand foundation of thermodynamics (p. 137). The great triumvirate of thermodynamics-Kelvin, Rankine, and Clausius-each had problems completing the task begun by Carnot. Kelvin lost himself in the problem of steam tables; Rankine did establish the basic thermodynamics of fluids, but he could not break away from his hypothesis of molecular vortices; Clausius is credited with the creation of the thermodynamics of ideal gases, but his weakness in mathematics kept a truly general theory of thermodynamics out of his grasp (p. 205). If there is a true tragic hero in this opera it is Ferdinand Reech. Although he ultimately failed to establish a general theory of thermodynamics, Reech had begun a program that would provide a common framework to analyze the theories of Carnot and Clausius. Yet until 1971 no scientist paid any attention to this French marine engineer. This book represents both the strengths and weaknesses of the internalist's approach. Although Truesdell has done a monumental job in analyzing the published papers in thermodynamics, the larger context of the history of science and technology is never presented. There is almost no discussion concerning the relationship between thermodynamics and the development of the steam engine. Truesdell also states that the book is not a history of experiments concerning heat (p. 164). Yet this is an important part of the story. Finally, the author rejects any positive conttibution of naturphilosophie to the theory of heat even though many historians such as Thomas Kuhn, Stephen Brush, and David Knight have documented important connections between the two. By neglecting the relationships between science and technology, Truesdell ignores the context out of which thermodynamics developed. Carnot, Rankine, Clausius, and Reech were not simply scientists; each of them had a background and interest in technology. In fact, they all can be seen as representatives of the new emerging field of engineering science. An important element in the theory of thermodynamics was the attempt to reconcile the materialistic heat theory of Carnot with the more mechanistic theory of Joule, yet it was just such a reconciliation between material and mechanical concepts that had formed the basis of engineering science. This book is an important contribution to the history of thermodynamics, but it needs to be placed into a larger context. We have

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before us the magnificent libretto, but we still need to see and hear the fully staged opera.
DAVID F. CHANNELL*

The Evolution of Mechanics. By Pierre-Marie-Maurice Duhem. Edited by G. AE.Oravas. Translated by Michael Cole. Alphen aan den Rijn, The Netherlands, and Germantown, Maryland: Sijthoff & Noordhoff, 1980. Pp. xli+234. Dfl. 95.00/$47.50. This first English translation of Duhem's L'Evolutionde la mecanique (1905 edition) provides the modern-day historian of science and technology some important insights into the state of mechanicalphysical theories at the end of the 19th century. The book cannot easily be classified as scientific theory, history of science, or philosophy of science. Like Ernst Mach, Duhem believed that the creation of a new scientific theory required a critical understanding of the philosophy of science and that such anrunderstanding required an examination of the history of science. The purpose of his historical studies was to show that his conception of a scientific theory could be justified through an analysis of the dialectic process by which it evolved. The Evolution of Mechanics illustrated that Duhem's more phenomenological theory of energetics, which he generalized from the theory of thermodynamics, was just as valid as the more widely accepted mechanistic theories of science. The first part of the book is a critical historical survey of the role of mechanical explanations in the physical sciences from the Greeks to the models of Maxwell and Kelvin in the 19th century. For Duhem, this broad survey demonstrates that "a sequence of disparate models cannot be regarded as a physical theory, for it lacks in it the very essence of a theory, the unity that links the laws of the different groups of phenomena into a rigorous order" (p. 103). The second part of the book is an introduction of Duhem's own theory of science-the energetics. He rejected as superfluous the "explanatory" elements that had been associated with mechanical models. Unlike metaphysics, a physical theory should be a system of mathematical propositions which are "representative" of the relationships between observed appearances and not an explanation of the underlying reality. For Duhem, the generalized axiomatic theory of thermodynamics as developed by Rankine, Clausius, and Helmholtz provided the model for his science of energetics, which would be applicable to all areas of the physical sciences and not just those concerned with heat. Although Duhem modeled his theory of science on thermodynamics, the roots of his theory are found in Aristotelian philosophy. Duhem's theory of energetics was based on a "great anal*DR. CHANNELL, associate professor of history at the University of Texas at Dallas, has written on the history of thermodynamics. His article on the engineering science of W. J. M. Rankine appears in this issue of Technologyand Culture.

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