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Diderot, Philosopher of Energy 1988 - The Development of His Concept of Physical Energy, 1745-69 (English, French, Hardcover)
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Diderot, Philosopher of Energy 1988 - The Development of His Concept of Physical Energy, 1745-69 (English, French, Hardcover)
Series: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 255
Expected to ship within 12 - 19 working days
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The title of this work may seem to beg an important question, since
it rests on the assumption that Diderot has a 'concept of physical
energy'. Indeed the aim of the study is, in part, to assemble
evidence in support of the acte de foi implicit in its title. I am
using 'physical energy' in a loose sense, as a convenient term to
denote 'what matter can do' as distinct from 'what matter is made
of'. Hence it may be taken as broadly synonymous with 'power' or
'force', encompassing both active and potential forms, and thus
corresponding to a combination of the fourth and fifth senses
identified by the Oxford English Dictionary: 4. Power actively and
efficiently displayed or exerted. 5. Power not necessarily
manifested in action; ability or capacity to produce an effect.
Modern subatomic physics, of course, recognises no such distinction
between 'being' and 'doing'; at a fundamental level,
matter-as-substance and matter-as-energy are interchangeable (and,
as I shall argue towards the end of the study, Diderot himself
comes close to a similar position). Nevertheless, the division is
both justifiable and useful within the context of
eighteenth-century philosophies of nature. For, as many scholars
have pointed out, the trend towards nature as an integrated, active
phenomenon, in place of the cartesian view of passive etendue only
incidentally endowed with motion, was crucial to the development of
scientific thought in the mid-eighteenth century. Debate and
development on such issues as Newtonian attraction, inertia,
electricity and magnetism, chemical reactions, not only contributed
directly to the advancement of physics and chemistry, but also
(like cartesian mechanism) impinged upon the perennial biological
questions, themselves being investigated from a new and exciting
angle. As a philosopher rather than a practising scientist, Diderot
was ideally placed to draw freely and creatively on all these
areas, and his speculations on what we might call 'the nature of
nature' are highly characteristic of the new approach. He comes
increasingly to discuss and define natural phenomena (organic and
inorganic alike) from the point of view of nature's powers - in the
spirit of Renaissance naturalism, but from the perspective of
up-to-date scientific findings. It is in this sense that I refer to
a 'concept of physical energy'. Given the organic quality of
Diderot's thought, it is not surprising to find the idea of energy
recurring in other areas of his works. If man is composed of matter
- active matter - than all human activity, be it moral, political,
aesthetic, becomes capable of interpretation in terms of energy. I
share Chouillet's conviction that this is a crucial aspect of
Diderot's overall philosophy, which deserves to be more widely
recognised and more fully understood.
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