Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Conventions
Introduction
1 Helmholtz's Self-Described Principal Concerns
2 The Broader Context
3 More Immediate Contexts: Johannes Müller and Justus Liebig
4 The Problematic Introduction to On the Conservation of Force and the Question of Kantian Influence
5 The Emergence of Helmholtzian Conservation of Force
6 What Helmholtz Believed He Had Accomplished
7 The Reception of On the Conservation of Force: The First Ten Years
8 Helmholtz and the Conservation of Force in Poggendorff's Annalen through 1865 and in the Fortschritte der Physik through 1867
9 Helmholtz's Place in the Acceptance of the Conservation of Energy
10 Helmholtz's Relationship to Robert Mayer
11 Reflections, Assessment, and Conclusions
Historiographical Excursus: How Others Have Interpreted Helmholtz's Achievement
Appendix: Magnus' Letter of 1858 to Alexander von Humboldt
Bibliography of Primary Sources
Bibliography of Secondary Sources
Notes
Index

About the Author

Kenneth L. Caneva is Emeritus Professor in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the author of The Form and Function of Scientific Discoveries and Robert Mayer and the Conservation of Energy.

Reviews

“Every future study of Helmholtz and the conservation of energy will have to contend with what Caneva has so carefully, so thoroughly, and so magnificently present[ed] as the ‘contexts of creation and reception’ of Helmholtz’s pathbreaking essay on the Erhaltung der Kraft. A landmark study based on a close reading of primary sources and filled with insights and acumen, Caneva’s book is a masterpiece.”
—Annals of Science

“Caneva’s impressively detailed piece of scholarship is undoubtedly a landmark contribution.”
—Metascience