Gustave-Adolphe Hirn, the mechanical equivalent of heat, and the conservation of energy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Alsatian engineer Gustave-Adolphe Hirn is best known to historians of science for his experimental determination of the mechanical equivalent of heat, first published in 1855. Since the 1840s, that equivalent has been closely associated with the conservation of energy, indeed often conflated with it. Hirn was one of Thomas Kuhn’s twelve ‘pioneers’ whose work he deemed relevant to the ostensible ‘simultaneous discovery’ of energy conservation. Yet Hirn never wholeheartedly embraced energy conservation. After reviewing his experimental work, his philosophical reflections, and his response to developments in heat theory, this article identifies three factors as having played central roles in this regard: Hirn’s deepest concerns were ontological, not energetic; none of the concepts basic to his natural philosophy were appropriate stand-ins for a quantitatively conserved energy; and, accurately reflecting the most common interpretation of the principle of the conservation of energy from the 1860s on – as exemplified already by Helmholtz in 1847 – Hirn associated its corpuscular-mechanical underpinning with the despiritualizing materialism he saw as dominating contemporary science. Hence although Hirn’s natural philosophy embraced sentiments quite in the spirit of the conservation of energy, he never explicitly subscribed to that principle.