Energeticism, also called energism or energetics (German: Energetik),[1] is a superseded theory in science that posits that energy is the ultimate element of physical reality. Energeticism was developed during the end of the 19th century by the chemist Wilhelm Ostwald and mathematician Georg Helm. It was also promoted by physicist Ernst Mach, though his full commitment to it was sometimes ambiguous.[2] Energetiscism attempted to substitute the hypothesis of atoms and molecules by energy relations.[3]
Ludwig Boltzmann and Max Planck constantly rebutted the idea of energeticism in favor of atomic theory. The program of energeticism faded away in the 20th century with the confirmation of the existence of atoms.
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. During an inaugural lecture in 1887 in Leipzig University, Ostwald outlined his program of energetics as an alternative to atomic theory. In his second edition of his textbook on physical chemistry of 1892, he stressed that energetic ideas should avoid all atomistic considerations.[4] He opposed the reduction of chemistry to mechanics and advocated for the reduction of mass and matter to energy.
In parallel, Georg Helm published his energy principle in The Theory of Energy in 1887, as an extension to the principle of conservation of energy. In his essay of 1890, he proposed to reduce mechanics to energetics by means of his principle. In 1892, he proposed to do the same for electricity and magnetism.[5] His principle can be written as
dU\leqTdS-pdV
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.
In 1895, Boltzmann who supported atomic theory in light of his recently developed statistical mechanics, organized a debate with Ostwald to be held during a scientific conference in Lübeck, Germany. Boltzmann had already prepared his arguments in private correspondence with Ostwald after the publication of his book. The Lübeck Scientific Conference took place in September of that year, with mathematician Georg Helm and Ostwald supporting energeticism in the debate, and Boltzmann and mathematician Felix Klein supporting atomism. Mach was not present. Arnold Sommerfeld records his impression of the conference:After the conference, Helm and Ostwald hurried to write response articles. Mach finished his book Principles of the Theory of Heat in 1886, in which he recorded that energeticism, even if flawed, was better to Boltzmann's mechanistic theories. Max Planck wrote an article after the conference "Against the New Energetics", in opposition to Ostwald's theory.[6]
Under the evidence of Jean Baptiste Perrin's experiments on Brownian motion that confirmed Albert Einstein's theory, Ostwald renounced to energeticism as physical theory in his fourth edition of Outline of General Chemistry in 1908, embracing atomic theory.[7] However he modified energeticism into an ontological philosophy, supported by the recently discovered Einstein's mass–energy equivalence .
After 1908, Ostwald redirected his philosophy to sociological and cultural phenomena as part of sociological energetics (German: Soziologische Energetik).[8] 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 objects to the idea of 'psychological energy' to explain psychology and accuses Ostwald of trying to derive an 'is from an ought'.