Energeticism

While teaching chemistry in Riga Polytechnic Institute, Wilhelm Ostwald became convinced that certain reactions could only be explained in terms of energy, without the need of invoking the hypothesis of the existence of atoms. He was inspired by Josiah Willard Gibbs's work on thermodynamics. He opposed the reduction of chemistry to mechanics and advocated for the reduction of mass and matter to energy. His principle can be written as :\mathrm d U \leq T\mathrm d S - p \mathrm d V, where dU is a change in the internal energy of a system, T is the temperature, dS is a change in the entropy, p is the pressure and dV a change in volume. This principle recovers the first law of thermodynamics only when the equality holds. Helm changed the equal sign into an inequality in the hope to account for irreversible processes. == Lübeck debate ==

The Lübeck Scientific Conference () took place in September 1895, with mathematician Georg Helm and Ostwald supporting energeticism in the debate, and Boltzmann and mathematician Felix Klein supporting atomism. == Duhem's energetics ==

In France, energetics () was championed by physicist and science philosopher Pierre Duhem. He was convinced that all chemistry and physics, including mechanics, electricity and magnetism, could be derived from thermodynamic principles. He opposed the idea of atoms as constituents of matter. Duhem wrote a publication in 1897 on chemical mechanics where he used the term energetics. Duhem send a draft of his critique on James Clerk Maxwell's electrodynamics to Pierre Curie in 1902. He found Duhem's critique imprudent and lacking a proper alternative. Curie told Duhem "I am in complete disagreement with your theory of magnetism". criticised energetics for its "theoretical obscurities". Duhem finally published his two volume Treatise on energetics () in 1911 which was well received by Ostwald and Helm. None of Albert Einstein's contributions were mentioned. == Ostwald's renunciation as a physical theory ==

Under the evidence of Perrin's experiments that confirmed Einstein's theory on Brownian motion, Ostwald renounced energeticism as physical theory in his fourth edition of Outline of General Chemistry in 1908, embracing atomic theory. However he modified energeticism into an ontological philosophy, supported by the recently discovered Einstein's mass–energy equivalence . By 1918 most physicists had adhered to atomic theory. == Sociology and psychology ==

After 1908, Ostwald redirected his philosophy to sociological and cultural phenomena as part of sociological energetics (). He attempted to create a hierarchy to classify the sciences and social sciences based on life, energy and order. Sociologist Max Weber opposed Ostwald views. In 1909, Weber accused sociological energetics of being ideological, underrating the complexity of the social sciences and overrating the importance of recasting phenomena in energetic terminology. Weber also objected to the idea of 'psychological energy' to explain psychology and accused Ostwald of trying to derive an 'is from an ought'. == See also ==