Uber die Erhaltung der Kraft by Hermann von Helmholtz; Christa KirstenReview by: Richard Lynn KremerIsis, Vol. 76, No. 2 (Jun., 1985), pp. 281-282Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/231814 .

Accessed: 08/05/2014 19:30

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

The University of Chicago Press and The History of Science Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Isis.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 19:30:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 76: 2: 282 (1985) 281

by the rational-legal character of the state that he was blinded to the rather more messy and complex reality of imperial ex- pansion. By 1913, however, Crook shows that a combination of disappointment at the actual course of social evolution and per- sonal frustration at his increasingly rather isolated intellectual position produced in Kidd a more jaundiced view of the prog- ress of Western civilization.

Crook's book is a useful contribution to the literature on social Darwinism and also to the intellectual history of this period. However, I would make two criticisms. First, Kidd's work should be placed in its intellectual context more thoroughly. He was by no means the first to link the sur- vival of religious and ethical systems to natural selection. Second and less impor- tant, Crook tries once or twice, with the indulgence of a biographer to his subject, to make Kidd more palatable to modern taste than he in fact is. All in all, however, this book should be given a warm recep- tion.

GRETA JONES

Martin Goldman. The Demon in the Aether: The Story of James Clerk Max- well. 224 pp., illus., index. Edinburgh: Paul Harris Publishing; Bristol: Adam Hilger, 1983. (Distributed in the U.S. and Canada by Heyden & Son, Philadelphia.) ?18; $30.

In this engaging book Martin Goldman intends to bring out Maxwell's remarkable qualities "both as a scientist and as a man." By the standards of heroic biog- raphy it is a competent and lively re- working of largely familiar material. To the nonspecialist it offers a lucid and often en- tertaining account of Maxwell's major sci- entific achievements. But historians will find the book disappointing because even where he draws on unpublished correspon- dence and referees' reports, Goldman of- fers no new or important insights. He is writing for scientists (Adam Hilger is the imprint of the Institute of Physics) and seems unaware of or not concerned by problems that interest historians of nine- teenth-century science, let alone Maxwell scholars, whose work is not referred to. Goldman draws extensively from L. Camp- bell and W. Garnett's Life of James Clerk Maxwell (London, 1882). Unfortunately, he also adopts their distinction between bi- ography and the exposition of science. This

means that his discussion of the scientific work, confined to the third quarter of the book, suggests only a very weak interac- tion with the life described in the rest of the book. Goldman fails to offer the con- textual understanding expected by most historians of science (and, I think, by many scientists). More than a whiff of hindsight is apparent, for example, in his unfavorable comparison of Darwin and Kelvin's views of matter and the age of the earth with Maxwell's cautious but prescient views (p. 88). Maxwell's linking of electromagnetism and optics "by a rather flimsy and ad hoc analogy" escapes criticism because it is ev- idence of his genius (p. 152). Goldman's dis- cussion of Maxwell's subtle and complex philosophy of science is similarly flawed by his anachronistic use of a distinction be- tween facts and theory, drawn according to recent idealizations, so that the view of induction Maxwell is said to reject on page 64 is not Whewell's but Karl Popper's or P. K. Medawar's. Uninformative, repeti- tive running heads and chapter titles rein- force the impression that this is an unre- flective and uncritical narrative, however enjoyable it may be to read. Finally, al- though illustrations of some of Maxwell's models and instruments are included, none are adequately discussed. Paintings by Maxwell's cousin Jemima are referred to, yet only one is reproduced in the book.

DAVID GOODING

Hermann von Helmholtz. Uber die Erhal- tung der Kraft. Transcribed by Christa Kirsten. Introduction by Hans-Jurgen Treder. 2 vols. 67 pp. + facs., figs., bibl. Weinheim, FRG: Physik-Verlag, 1983. DM 80.

In February 1847 Helmholtz wrote to Emil du Bois-Reymond that he had once again revised his essay on the "constancy of force," removing everything that "smelled of philosophy." Unfortunately, the draft published by Kirsten and Treder, apparently the only extant autograph of the essay, is the penultimate copy Helmholtz delivered to the printer in August 1847. The cleanly copied draft contains only minor revisions and differs by less than a dozen words from the published version.

Most of the alterations in the autograph are minor and show Helmholtz polishing his prose. We do learn, however, that he originally dedicated the essay to his fiancee

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 19:30:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

282 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 76: 2: 282 (1985)

-~~~~~'

Hermann von Helmholz

"for instruction," and that he once re- moved a reference to a steam engine, pre- ferring to mention "a machine producing a steady amount of work." The only major revision is a preface, written into a margin midway through the text and later crossed out, in which Helmholtz sought to justify the theoretical nature of the study. Other better-equipped experimenters, he argued, could provide empirical proof of the con- servation principle, which "promises to serve the future progress of physics by its fruitfulness and broad applicability." Helmholtz obviously added this preface in response to J. C. Poggendorff, who had re- jected the essay for the Annalen der Physik because it was not experimental; yet for some reason Helmholtz excised the preface when he published the essay privately.

The facsimile also includes the penulti- mate working draft of a note that Helm- holtz wrote to explain the relation of the 1847 essay to the work of J. R. Mayer. The note, which appeared in Helmholtz's Vor- trage und Reden (1884), was interestingly revised to moderate the original harsh at- tack on Mayer's 1842 computation of the mechanical equivalent of heat as too metaphysical and hypothetical.

Kirsten's transcription is quite accurate. Neither explanatory commentary nor notes are provided. The introduction by Treder briefly describes the context of 1847 and derives a mathematical statement of the energy law in post-1847 terms. The edition is conveniently arranged in two slim vol- umes, one for the facsimile of the auto- graph, the other for the transcription.

The seminal importance of Helmholtz's essay probably justifies this facsimile pub- lication. Much more important, however, will be Kirsten's edition of letters, cur- rently under way, from the Helmholtz Nachlass in the Akademie-Archiv of East Berlin. Equally important would be an edi- tion of the earlier "philosophical" drafts of Helmholtz's 1847 essay, if they could be found.

RiCHARD LYNN KREMER

F. W. J. McCosh. Boussingault: Chemist and Agriculturist. (Chemists and Chem- istry.) xv + 280 pp., illus., apps., bibls., indexes. Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: D. Reidel, 1984. Dfl 140; $53.50.

Jean Baptiste Boussingault is as de- serving of a full-length biography as any nineteenth-century scientist. His contribu- tions to knowledge were great. They in- cluded work on the nitrogen cycle in plants, examinations of the relationship of carbohydrates to fat production, and ex- plorations of the metallurgy of iron and steel. Boussingault was politically alive in a scientific sense as well as a partisan one. J. B. Dumas and Alexander von Humboldt were among his scientific patrons, while Justis von Liebig, G. T. Bennett, John Lawes, and George Ville stood as compet- itors. Boussingault spent ten years in South America during the age of Simon Bolivar and tangled with Napoleon III. He re- mained a peripheral figure in the attempt to place Archduke Maximillian on the Mex- ican throne, and his homestead was cap- tured during the Franco-Prussian War. Boussingault did not lack other connec- tions. Either by marriage or by interest, he was related to the Holtzers, Crozets, Four- neyrons, and LeBels, families instrumental in the industrialization of the French coun- tryside.

The magnitude and complexity of Bous- singault's accomplishments and involve- ments make writing his biography a diffi- cult task. F. W. J. McCosh has only scraped the surface. Though well re- searched and thoroughly documented, his book arouses curiosity but answers few questions. Neither Boussingault's person- ality nor his precise scientific milieu are fully delineated. The role of mining in French science is not investigated nor is the nature of agricultural science educa- tion. The book's strength lies in McCosh's

This content downloaded from 169.229.32.137 on Thu, 8 May 2014 19:30:47 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions