100 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



of sunlight and coal, electric power, water power, winds 

 and tides do the Avork of the world, ' ' 



*'By burning the coal, the energy which has so long 

 been locked up is given forth afresh in its original form 

 of heat and light." 



''All life and all that life accomplishes depend upon 

 the supply of solar energy stored in the food." 



In plants ''the kinetic energy of sunlight is trans- 

 formed * * * into the potential chemical energy of * food- 

 stuffs. Animals * * * convert the potential chemical en- 

 ergy of foodstuffs into the kinetic energy of locomotion 

 and other activities." 



These flowers of rhetoric are uniformly unaccompan- 

 ied by a reference to an observation, experiment or line 

 of reasoning on which they are based, nor has diligent 

 search been able to find such in any literature. 



It is possible that the primary motor in all this is the 

 phrase conservation of energy. We owe the phrase to 

 a translator. Is it not an instance of unhappy scientific 

 nomenclature? By those who are appropriately edu- 

 cated it is understood as the technical name of a trans- 

 cendent generalization regarding the physics of nature. 

 But if the phrase should happen to be without illuminat- 

 ing context, when seen for the first time by one not 

 grounded in physics, he would be likely to feel the need 

 of a dictionary, unless diverted by the fancy that it was 

 from an advertisement of a patent medicine held out as 

 preservative of human vigor. He might not take the 

 phrase in a scientific sense, because of the idea that 

 conservation implies design, which, as controlling na- 

 ture, however religiously believed in, is not within the 

 present reach of science proper. 



But Conservation seems less questionable than Energy. 

 "Capacity for performing work" (Webster) fails to sat- 

 isfy. A recent translator makes Arrhenius say: "Ev- 

 erybody understands what is meant by energ}^" What 

 Arrhenius might have said if writing in English, is un- 

 profitable conjecture. Men of Science use English ex- 

 pressions such as these: "All forms of energy may be 

 regarded as motion"; "Energy is motion"; The princi- 



