0% found this document useful (0 votes)

24 views217 pages

Human Chemical Thermodynamics

The document titled 'Human Chemical Thermodynamics' explores the intersection of thermodynamics with various aspects of human experience, including morals, religion, and society. It discusses historical and theoretical frameworks, as well as the application of thermodynamic principles to human affairs and civilization. The content is extensive, covering a wide range of topics from ancient philosophies to modern theories in thermodynamics and their implications on human behavior and societal structures.

Uploaded by

Romina Lorena

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

0% found this document useful (0 votes)

24 views217 pages

Human Chemical Thermodynamics

Uploaded by

Romina Lorena

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

You are on page 1/ 217

ii

Human Chemical Thermodynamics iii

“Every thing in this universe has its regular waves and tides.
Electricity, sound, the wind, and I believe every part of organic
nature will be brought someday within this law. The laws which
govern animated beings will be ultimately found to be at bottom
the same with those which rule inanimate nature, and as I
entertain a profound conviction of the littleness of our kind, and
of the curious enormity of creation synthesis , I am quite ready
to receive with pleasure any basis for a systematic conception of it all. I look for
regular tides in the affairs of man, and, of course, in our own affairs. In ever
progression, somehow or other, the nations move by the same physico-
chemical process which has never been explained but is evident in the oceans
and the air. On this theory, I should expect, at about this time, a turn which would
carry us backward.”
— Henry Adams 1864 , ‘Letter to Charles Gaskell’, Oct
iv
Human Chemical Thermodynamics v

Human Chemical Thermodynamics

Morals, Religion, Aesthetics, Feelings, Emotions, Affairs,
Society, Civilization, and Individualism
vi
Human Chemical Thermodynamics vii

Copyrights

Human Chemical Thermodynamics

Morals, Religion, Aesthetics, Feelings, Emotions,
Affairs, Society, Civilization, and Individualism

All Rights Reserved © 66 AE [2021 ACM] by Libb Thims

The content of this book is designated as ‘fair use’, which means the right to use portions of
copyrighted materials without permission for purposes of education, commentary, or parody.

Publisher/Distributor:
LuLu.com

ISBN-10:
(add)
ISBN-13:
(add)

Draft version current

28 Apr 66 AE [2021 ACM] (217‐pages)
Hmolpedia article count: 5,500+

AE = ‘After Elements’ were first seen by the human eye (by Erwin Muller on 11 Oct 1955)
ACM = ‘After Christ Myth’ or years since the Roman recension of the Osiris-Horus Ra myth

LuLu
viii
Human Chemical Thermodynamics ix

Contents
“If we say, in the words of Maxwell some years ago (Nature, 1878), that thermodynamics is ‘a
science with secure foundations, clear definitions, and distinct boundaries’, and ask when those
foundations were laid, those definitions fixed, and those boundaries traced, there can be but one
answer. Certainly not before the publication of Clausius’ 1850 memoir ‘On the Motive
Power of Heat and the Laws of Heat Which May be Deduced Therefrom’. This memoir marks an epoch
in the history of physics. Before Clausius, truth and error were in a confusing state of mixture, and
wrong answers were confidently urged by the highest authorities”
— Willard Gibbs (1889), ‘Rudolf Clausius’ (pg. 262)

Engines
7. Hero’s Pneumatica (50AD) 67
8.1 | Engine Pioneers
8. Da Vinci Gunpowder Engine (1508) 75
9.1 | Gunpowder Explosion Chemical Reaction
9.2 | Social Piston and Cylinder Engine
9.3 | Nature allows a Vacuum?
x

9. Beeckman | Atmospheric Pressure (1614) 81

17.6 | Unit of Power | W = J/s

Mathematical | Preliminary
29. δ Euler
22.1 | Reciprocity Relation (1739)
xii

22.2 | Homogeneous Functions (c.1750)

30. Legendre transform (c.1795)
31. Pfaffian form (c.1805)

33.2 | Work Done BY or ON the System

Chemical Thermodynamics
39. Horstmann’s Application of Entropy to Chemical Problems (1869)
40. Massieu’s Characteristic Functions (1869)
41. G
μ
Gibbs (1876)
30.1 | Chemical Potential
30.2 | Title
42. F Helmholtz’ Free Energy Theory of Affinity (1882)
43. Van’t Hoff Equilibrium Box (1886)
44. H Onnes’ Enthalpy (1908)
45.
Lewis (1923)
32.1 | Driving Force
Ψ 33.2 | Fugacity
Human Chemical Thermodynamics xiii

46. Heitler’s Exchange Energy (1927)

47 Guggenheim (1933)
33.1 | Title
33.2 | Title
48. Lipmann’s Coupling Theory (1941)
49. Burton’s Biological Free Energy of Formation Tables (1957)
50. Kinetics

Human Chemical Thermodynamics | Preliminary

51. Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651)
24.1 | Soul, Asoulism, and the Laws of Motion
52.
Holbach (1770)
53.
Goethe (1809)
54. Carey’s Principles of Social Science (1858)
55. Nietzsche’s Monster of Energy (1888)
56. Pareto’s Physico-Chemical Social Sciences (1897)
57. Winiarski’s Social Mechanics (1898)

Human Chemical Thermodynamics | Theoretical

58.
Adams (1908)
59. Lotka (1915)
60. Neumann’s Free Energy as Cash Value Theory (1932)
61. Blum’s Theologically-Free Directive Factory in Evolution (1934)
62. Wilson’s Gibbsian Mathematical Economics (1934)
63. Henderson’s Pareto-Gibbs Based Sociology 23 (1938)
64. Tukey’s Free Energy Attitude State Theory (1966)
65. Rossini’s Chemical Thermodynamics in the Real World (1971)

Human Chemical Thermodynamics | Modern

66.
Dolloff (1975)
67.
Beg (1976)
68. Stephen’s Social Thermodynamic Rain Barrel Model (1977)
69. Lange’s Gibbsian Sociology (1986)
70. Mimkes’ Physico-Chemical Socio-Economics (1992)
71. Reiss’ Chemical Thermodynamic Economics Variables Table (1994)
72. Christie’s Island Model (1994)
73.
Thims (1995 ACM) (245 AG) (40 AE)
74. Nordholm’s Animate Thermodynamics (1997)
75. Muller’s Thermodynamics of Societies (1998)
xiv

76. Stepanic’s Thermodynamic Formalism of Social Systems (2000)

77. Hirata’s Thermochemical Relationships Theory (2000)
78. Hwang’s Thermodynamics of Love (2001)
79. Niu’s Social Combustion Theory (2001)
80. Kozliak’s Chemical Bonding as Business (2002)
81. Wallace’s Thermodynamics Applied to Socioeconomics (2009)
82. Leachman’s Social Thermodynamics (2016)

Human Chemical Thermodynamics | Pure

83. Human Free Energy of Formation
84. Title
85. Title

Human Chemical Thermodynamics | Applied

86.
Abioism
87. Meaning | Pointfullness vs Pointlessness and Meaninglessness
88. Morality | Ethics | Right and Wrong
89. Purpose
90. Sociology
91. Economics
92. Ecological Economics
93. History
94. Philosophy
95. Government
96. Anthropology
97. Politics
98. Business
99. Jurisprudence
100. Religion
101. Relationships
102. Warfare
103. Love
104. Being and Becoming | Vanity / Faust | Officer and a Gentleman
105. Burned Out

Confusions and Debates

106. Bridgman Paradox | Entropy of an Organism (1946)
107. Roegen-Samuelson Copper Economic Model (1971)
108. Rossini Debate | Thermodynamics of Freedom and Security (2007)
109. Moriarty Debate | Entropy of Students in a Field (2009)
Human Chemical Thermodynamics xv

Weed Theories and Ontic Openings

110. Chance, Emergence, Accidents, and Random Mutations
110. Entropy Pied Pipers
60.1 | Shannon’s Information Theory
60.2 | Prigogine’s Dissipative Structures

Summary and Conclusion

111. Early Parental Death and Genius Phenomenon

End Matter
112. Homework Problems

Postscript | Solidification
Index

In the table of contents, chapters with key icons ‘ ’, right pointed: very key and or ‘hard’ key chapters or
sections, or ‘ ’, left pointed: less key and or ‘soft’ key chapters or sections, are CORE chapters essential to
the derivation of the fundamental equations of existence. The more keys, e.g. Clausius , the more
essential the material, and the more time and slowness of processing and digestion one should devote to the
material.
1. What is a Human?
“To a materialist no thing is real but atoms in a void and we are but ‘molecular people’ controlled
by the actions of natural physicochemical law.”
— George Scott (1985), Atoms of the Living Flame (pg. 181)

Chapter point: define a ‘human’ according to chemical thermodynamics [length: 21-pgs].

T The question ‘what is a human?, ‘what am I?’, or what is a person, is quite possibly the oldest
question known to so-called human-kind, or the bipedal ‘animate’ thing that diverged from apes,
some five-million years ago, to become a new species that sexually reproduces with its own kind.

In 3,300BC, humans, in Egypt, had developed a symbolic notation system, which has been verified by
radio-carbon dating, which employed rudimentary drawings of animals, plants, and mountains, along with
records of linen and oil deliveries. In 2,500BC, in Memphis, Egypt, thinkers came to conceptualize the
model that a ‘human’ was a clay thing, formed by one of the children of a phoenix-like son god, who was
born out of the tip of a pyramid:

This sun god, over the centuries, was modified into various incarnate forms, namely: Ra, Ptah, Ogdoad,
Amen, and Aten, etc., as the state religious center changed over time, from Heliopolis (3100BC), to
Memphis (2800BC), to Hermopolis (2400BC), to Thebes (2050B), to Amarna (1300BC). As this model of
this sun god changed over time, so, likewise, did the model of what a ‘human’ was, change over time.
2

The following, in overview, is the general model of the ‘Egyptian human’, derived from the summation
of ideas produced by these previous five Egyptian religious centers, the gist of which being that a human
was thought to be a clay-based type of matter, made by a god, e.g. Khnum, one of the children of the sun
god, who made humans on his divine potters’ wheel, each human having six additional attributes: a heart
(Jb), a soul (Ba), a spirit (Ka), a shadow (Sheut), a secret name (Ren), and a ghost (Aka), in short, as
summarized below:7

In c.850BC to 250BC, the Greek geniuses, specifically: Lycurgus (870BC), Orpheus (695BC), Solon
(608BC), Thales (608BC), Pythagoras (540BC), Empedocles (465BC), Herodotus (454BC), Democritus
(430BC), and Plato (397BC), thirsty for knowledge, all traveled to Egypt, to study abroad in their
universities and religious schools, primarily at the colleges at Heliopolis and Memphis.
In 350BC, Aristotle, in his Physics, after studying all the ideas of all the Greek thinkers come before
him, such as listed above, predominately: Plato, his teacher, Homer, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus,
Pythagoras, Euripides, Socrates, and Heraclitus, in that order, respectively, as determined by the name index
citation rankings of his collected works, came to define a human as either an atomic thing, Democritus’
view, or a four element thing: water, earth, fire, air, which was Empedocles’ view, although he tended to
side more with the Empedoclean model.
All in all, Aristotle came to define a human as a theoretical thing or ‘existent’, as he referred to humans,
as most thinkers back then were ‘thing philosophers’.14 This material based human thing or existent,
according to Aristotle, also had an animus [mind] and anima [soul], which was the principle of its
movement. He also stated that humans had a predisposed destiny, which he called a ‘final cause’, based on
the argument that each thing, had a unique matter-to-void ratio, which directed, via his now-defunct
teleological movement theory, the body to its final destination place, the way, in his mind, heat tends to rise,
and rocks tend to fall. The shortened version of Aristotle’s model of a human, is that he defined people as a
type of existing thing that had motion:
“A similar inquiry is made by those who inquire into the ‘number of existents’; for they inquire whether
the ultimate constitutes of existing things are one or many, and if many, whether a finite or an infinite
plurality. So, they are inquiring whether the principle or element is one or many. We must take for
granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion—which is made
plain by induction.”
— Aristotle (350BC), Physics (§1)
After Aristotle, over the course of the next thirteen centuries, the above so-called Aristotelian model of a
human, became the standard model for nearly the entire world. Presently, a good portion of the world still
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 3

believes this model, or a modified variation of it, particularly when it comes to beliefs in things such
movement, soul, and or destiny.
When, however, the ‘Aristotelian model’ meets the ‘chemical thermodynamics’, i.e. the thermodynamic
model of the universe, or rather the ‘physico-chemical model’ of things, Aristotle loses. To give a quick
example of where this collision, between these two models, impacts our modern belief systems, the
following peculiar quote by Kurt Bell, an American atheistic philosopher, hits directly at the crux of the
matter, in respect to our undisclosed reactionary Aristotelian predispositions:
“On my better days I regard my wife and daughter as ‘soulless bags of chemicals.’ To be fair though,
I think the same of myself and all other forms of life. Souls are supernatural things beyond perception or
measure, worthy only of suspended belief pending some real evidence or the giving up of the tenets of
science. Chemicals we are, despite the clever animation of flesh and musings of mind brought about by
the electricity of life. So why do we think more of ourselves? How are we so offended by these facts?”
— Kurt Bell (2011), ‘Soulless Bag of Chemicals’, Sep 2
Here, the premise of calling one’s wife and or daughter a ‘soulless bag of chemicals’, will likely, to many,
seem to be an anathema or basic derogatory phrasing, indicating that someone does not have morals or a just
belief system. The statement also implies that people, according to the Bell model of things, are worthless
bags of meaningless chemicals? This is similar to Stephen Hawking (1995) referring to people as ‘heated
chemical scum’.5 The term ‘scum’, as defined, by Merriam-Webster (2000), means a: ‘low, vile, or
worthless person or group of people’. Herein, we will employ ‘neutral’ terminology that holds for both
humans and hydrogen.
In 1758, Carl Linnaeus, Swedish naturalist, in his 10th edition of his System of Nature, divided his
previous ‘three kingdoms’ classification of nature, i.e. mineral, plant, animal, into a further so-called
binomial four-part subdivision of: classes, orders, genera, and species, according to which a human, in his
mind, was a thing that belonged to the genus ‘homo’, Latin for man, and the species ‘homo sapiens’, Latin
for wise man.

1.1 | CHEM things

In 1809, Johann Goethe, a German poly-intellect, being greatly influenced by Linnaeus, Torbern Bergman, a
Swedish chemist and student of Linnaeus, Shakespeare, and Spinoza, respectively, in his chemically-coded
novel Elective Affinities, defined, via three different cyphers, namely: ECHO, OTTO, and CHEM, humans
to be metamorphosized chemicals or ‘CHEM-things’, that have an Ovid-stylized ECHO narcissist complex,
tending to see the universe anthropomorphically, i.e. in one’s own image, as Narcissus, while in the
company of Echo, famously fell in love with his own reflection, while looking in a pool of water:1

Lastly, humans, according to Goethe, are things that have an OTTO-cypher confusion, believing on one
hand that they are ‘living’ chemicals, i.e. OTT-things, like the character Ottilie, the new young ‘life’ of the
novel, yet on the other hand, derived from TOT-things, the term ‘tot’ being German for ‘dead’, a reference
to the chemicals the characters experiment with, in the laboratory beakers, which are inherently neither
‘alive’ nor ‘dead’, a question Goethe put to dialogue, but rather only either inert, existive, and or reactive,
depending, such as how we now define noble gas as being inert, per reason that all eight of its valence shell
4

electrons are filled and it is satisfied, so to say. All of this, more than deep dialogue, was frankly put-to-the-
mind, in Goethe’s now-overly famous chapter four, multiple film renditions of which now being available.

1.2 | Powered CHNOPS+ things

In 1926, William Ostwald, German physical chemist, auto-defined himself as a ‘CHNOPS combination’, as
shown below, meaning that he knew that he was a combined thing made of six elements: carbon (C),
hydrogen (H), nitrogen (N), oxygen (O), sulfur (S), and phosphorus (P):
“I am made from the C-H-N-O-S-P combination from which a Bunsen, Helmholtz, Kirchhoff came.”
— Wilhelm Ostwald (1926), Autobiography
In 1936, Frank Thone, an American plant physiologist, in his Science News Letters article ‘Nature
Ramblings: Chnops, Plus’, explained things to us as follows:
“Six chemical elements are essential parts of protoplasm, the living substance itself. These are carbon,
hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. Their initial letters, which also happen to be their
chemical symbols, have been arranged into a memory saving word or mnemonic: CHNOPS,
pronounced like the German word for strong liquor, Schnapps.”
— Frank Thone (1936), ‘Nature ramblings: Chnops, Plus’ (pg. 110)
Thone, to illustrate this, depicted a heat-powered growing plant, captioned as a CHNOPS+ thing:2

The plus symbol ‘ + ’, on Thone’s initiative, will be employed herein, frequently, as a shorthand tool to say
that a human, e.g., is a CHNOPS ‘plus’ twenty other elements thing, i.e. CHNOPS+20E thing, or a fish is a
CHNOPS plus sixteen element thing or CHNOPS+16E thing, etc., in short.
In 1964, the term "CHNOPS system" was introduced by a group of researchers led George Armstrong,
in their US National Bureau of Standards report ‘Preliminary Report on Survey of Thermodynamic
Properties of the Compounds of the Elements of CHNOPS’, after which the term CHNOPS+ or CHNOPS
system, became standard accepted terminology, for chemically defining plants and animals.
In 1974, Henry Swan, an American surgeon, noted for his thermodynamics-based hypothermia-induced
heart stop technique for cardiac repair, in his Thermoregulation and Bioenergetics, via citation to
Armstrong, described human, in a general way, as a ‘powered’ CHNOPS system or matrix. Specifically, in
reference to hypothetical types so-called extraterrestrial ‘life forms’, Swan says the following:
“A biochemistry could emerge [on other planets], in which life is ‘powered’ by the energizing of
electrons by photons arriving from space, e.g. the rays of a star, with the local ‘sink’, i.e. final electron
acceptor, being sulfur instead of oxygen. Such a [sulfur-based] life system would run on H2S instead of
H2O, and in an entirely different temperature range. Its inhabitants would have no resemblance to life
forms as we know them. Others, likewise, have suggested that liquid ammonia NH3, instead of water,
might serve as a solvent for biologic activity, per the reason that since ammonia boils at -33.4° C that
this would permit [ammonia-based] life at temperatures well below the freezing point of water.”
— Henry Swan (1974), Thermoregulation and Bioenergetics (pgs. 2-3)
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 5

Here, barring digression on Swan’s use of the now defunct term ‘life’, we will pause for a moment and try
to focus in and absorb this notion of humans and plants as being a powered thing, or specifically powered
CHNOPS+ systems or matrices.
When the term ‘powered’ is inserted into the equation and verbal description, the term ‘life’ becomes
superfluous, i.e. unnecessary. A human, thermodynamically speaking, in this Swan definitional sense of the
matter, is a powered CHNOPS+ system (or matrix), and NOT a living CHNOPS+ system. This will be
confusing, at first, for many. Just keep in mind that humans are derived from hydrogen atoms, and hydrogen
atoms, by definition are NOT alive. The following quote should be kept in mind:
“Hydrogen is a light, odorless gas, which, given enough time, turns into people.”
— Edward Harrison (c.1990), Publication
We will sidestep this involved topic for the moment, and leave it for an end chapter called ‘Abioism’. The
important point to keep in mind, at this point is that when chemical thermodynamically theorizing about
yourself, society, economics, or what have you, it important to use the Swan terminology of ‘powered
CHNOPS+ system’ instead the ‘living CHNOPS+ system’, per reason that physics, chemistry, and chemical
thermodynamics in particular, as Charles Sherrington (1938) has pointed out, does NOT recognize the term
‘life’.
This is a very important semantic point to keep in mind, particularly in the chemical thermodynamic
study of human existence and origins. When, e.g., one tries to trace the concept of ‘life’ backwards in time,
human to hydrogen, one runs into, at the scale of complexity of about the virus, a number of absurdities and
convoluted chemical perpetual motion theories. If, alternatively, one carries the model of a human, animal,
or plant, etc., being defined as a ‘powered CHNOPS+ system’, then there are no difficulties encountered in
tracing the mechanism back into to the formation of the first hydrogen atom in the universe.
When, for example, to elaborate, in passing, we discover that there exists a 3-element molecule called
retinal, in the back of the human eye, that animates via a light-powered mechanism, as shown below, we
arrive at a decisive amount of anthropomorphically-ingrained confusion, about the nature of our own
movement:3

Likewise, when we learn that researchers can now make synthetic ‘walking’ molecules, in laboratories, such
as DTA (Bartels, 2004), shown above, middle row, or AQ (Bartels, 2007), as shown above, bottom row,
both being heat-powered types of animation, i.e. they only begin to walk, when on a copper surface, AND
also heated, the notion of self-powering becomes defunct.
6

The reader is encouraged to go online to view the animated gifs of these three CH-based walking
molecules, so to evidence to one’s own minds eye, the importance of using the prefix ‘powered’ when
describing humans or animals as being powered CHNOPS+ things.3
1.3 | Periodic Table
The following is a standard periodic table, albeit with all synthetically-made elements, numbers 93 (Np) to
118 (Og), removed, as these unstable elements do not naturally occur on earth, and therefore have no
bearing in respect to the chemical thermodynamics of humans, thus showing, resultantly, the 26-elements,
according to modern mass composition tables and physiology, that define a person, elementally and
compositionally, hydrogen H, atomic 1 (H), or hydrogen, to atomic number 53 (I), or iodine, with mass
composition percentages shown for the top six elements which comprise humans, by percent mass:

First, we note, when comparing our elemental composition, with the relative abundance of elements on the
surface of the earth, as shown in the following so-called Sheehan periodic table (1970), we see that we are
predominately things made of the skin of the earth, so to say, i.e. oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen,
phosphorus, calcium, mainly, based or comprised things:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 7

Second, as we see, we are predominately a ‘reactive nonmetal’, as indicated by the yellow color-coding, of
the elements: O, C, H, N, and P, which thus characterizes our so-called ‘reactive nature’, which quite
obviously differentiates us from a say a typical ‘rock’, and its typical non-reactive nature, generally, like
glauconite, molecular formula: (K, Na) (Fe, Al, Mg)2 (Si, Al)4 O10 (OH)2, shown below:13

The rock vs human comparison, of note, in the history of philosophical debate, in all probability, is one of
the most reoccurring idiotic yet very ‘intelligent’ comparisons, and a ripe, frequently reoccurring query, in
human chemical thermodynamics, which is a strange peculiarity, to say the least
Third, we note that in respect to mass, the top six elements in humans are: O (61%), C (23%), H (10%),
N (3%), Ca (1%), and P (1%), respectively; whereas, in respect to ranking actual numbers of elements in a
human, the top six elements are: H (2.5E9), O (9.7E8), C (4.9E8), N (4.7E7), P (9E6), and Ca (6.9E6);
which, as we have just learned, is noticeably different from the classical: C, H, N, O, P, and S, aka the
‘CHNOPS model’, pronounced ‘Schnapps’ (Thone, 1935) or ‘Chin-ups’ (Thims, 2005), of the historically
presumed to be core six elements of a person.
This difference, generally, is a result of the size of some elements, e.g. calcium (Ca) the element in
humans with the largest radius, as shown below, as compared to hydrogen (H), the element in humans with
the smallest atomic radius, which differs from the distribution of elements by numbers rather than mass:
8

We will, however, continue to employ the classically ordering of: CHNOPS, for the first six main elements
of humans, out of respect to historical modus operandi.12
Fourth, we note that columns 14, 15, and 16, are unique, in that the valance shell electrons of each
column, periodically repeat, stepping upwards in each row, to make the properties of mind, power, and
body, respectively, speaking in an anthropomorphic sense.
Column 14, is the so-called ‘mind’ column, being that the predominate material basis of ‘thinking’
involves changes in the hydrocarbon bonds of the mind; the element carbon C, with its four-pronged
bonding arrangement, which is where the feeling of ‘choice’ originates, being the row 2, column 14
element. This is similar to how silicon, Si, the row 3, column 14 element, being a semi-conductor, is used to
make silicon chips, for the central process unit of computers, the ‘brain’ of laptops, so to say. Similarly,
germanium (Ge), the row 4, column 14 element, was used in 1947 by John Bardeen and Walter Brattain,
working under William Shockley, at Bell Labs, to make the first transistor, a device used to amplify or
switch electronic signals, kind of like a neuro, and is also now being used for silicon chips.
Column 15, represents the ‘power’ column, per reason, firstly, that most of our diet is a result of a
process called ‘nitrogen fixation’, wherein nitrogen N2 in the air is converted into ammonia NH3 or related
nitrogenous compounds in the soil, which acts as fertilizer for plants, nitrogen N being the row 2, column 15
element. Secondly, a large majority of the powering of the physiological reactions inside of a human,
actuates by the cleavage of the three high energy phosphate bonds, of adenosine triphosphate (ATP),
otherwise known as the ‘energy currency’, which pays, so to say, for various exergonic, i.e. energy
absorbing, chemical processes, such as seen in the powering of muscle contraction, phosphorus being the
row 3, column 15 element. Phosphate, has the formula PO43-, which shows that the energy, or ‘peculiar type
of chemical energy’, as Fritz Lipmann (1946) put it, released, from these powerful bonds, derives from
valence shell electron nature of phosphorus. This is similar to how nitrogen, the element behind
nitroglycerin, aka dynamite, which has the formula C3H5N3O9, has an explosive nature, defined by the
following reaction:
4C3H5N3O9 (s) → 6N2 (g) + 12 CO (g) + 10 H2O (g) + 7 O2 (g)
During which the unstable nitroglycerin, when tapped on, which triggers a lowering of the activation energy
barrier, results in an explosive transformation into the new product molecules, with strong stable bonds,
seen in the molecules N2 and O2.
Column 16, containing the human composition elements, O, S, and Se, constitutes the so-called ‘body’
column of the periodic table, as seen in the Sheehan periodic table (1970), per reason that a human is 61
percent by mass comprised of oxygen. The next two elements, by mass, being carbon, 23 percent, and
hydrogen, 10 percent, and nitrogen 2.6 percent. So, in short, a human is predominately a ‘oxygen thing’.
All of the row column patterns repeat, to note, per reason that elements are basically proton electron
geometries, wherein the electrons arraign in spheres around the protons, kind of like Russian dolls, and the
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 9

properties of these dolls, e.g. mind, power, body, repeat, periodically, as ordered rows and columns in the
periodic table.

1.4 | System and Boundary

Having now clearly established the so-called elemental definition of a human, wherein, to repeat: a human is
a powered 26-element thing, in respect to the location of the elements of a human on a periodic table,
which makes a person a ‘unique’ bound state atomic thing, say as compared to the other atomic ‘things’ that
are made, on earth, from the total 92 natural elements, it now becomes a matter of default imperative to
digress, in a preliminary manner, on the subject of the thermodynamic system ‘boundary’, which is the
vessel, region, surface, or area of space, which encompasses the elemental thing we call ‘human’.
The following, in this direction, shows the basic ‘system’ model, in its simplest form, showing a
region of space, delineated by the dotted line, or surface, which is called the ‘boundary’, which contain
things inside of it which is called the ‘working body’, and where whatever is outside of the boundary of the
system, is called the ‘surroundings’, the system here showing humans on a surface:

In this ‘system’ we see six humans. Outside the system, in the immediate surroundings, we see four humans,
two of which are attached, via a chemical bond, signified by the triple bond symbol ‘≡’. The bond, as was
discovered by Fritz Lipmann (1941), stores ‘bond energy’, which is an important component, as we will see
when we get to the coupling chapter.
One important point or caveat to keep in mind, when choosing one’s ‘system’ of study, is that the
system must be large relative to molecular dimensions, i.e. relative to the dimensions of one human:
“The first step is to define the system. A thermodynamic ‘system’ is simply that part of the universe in
which we are interested. The only caveat is that the system must be large relative to molecular
dimensions. Properties are either extensive, proportional to the mass of the system, or intensive,
independent of mass.”
— Gordon Hammes (2000), Thermodynamics and Kinetics for Biological Sciences (pg. 2)
In the quote Hammes cited, the molecules or molecular ‘things’ in question are enzymes, such as
ribonuclease, dihydrofolate reductase, chymotrypsin, which have the dimensions of several dozen
angstroms. Humans, being the ‘things’ under study herein, have dimensions of meters. Simply put, one’s
system should generally be dimensioned so as to contain more than one human, more than hundred being
ideal, but smaller dimension systems can be appropriate, where reality or necessity calls. There are the fields
of single particle or single molecule thermodynamics, but these are advanced topics. The law of
thermodynamics still apply to single molecule systems, to note, but in these system, which we will touch on,
the function internal work of the molecules on each other does not exist, which is one of the components via
which entropy change and entropy increase are defined; hence new formulations are required, and the topic
becomes less real-world, like finding a single person on a deserted island.
The terms extensive and intensive, refers to variables or quantities of a system, that are proportional to
the dimensions or mass of the system, and those that are not, respectively.
Below the ten humans, or ten powered CHNOPS+20E things, we see the surface of the earth, which is
called ‘substrate’. Humans, in a chemical reaction sense, technically are called ‘reactants’, which are the
powered animate chemical ‘things’ that react on the substrate. Humans are comprised of 26 elements. The
10

substrate is comprised of 92 elements. There are many types of ‘systems’, and we will go through many
examples.
The biggest conceptual problem we will face, is where to draw the boundary, in respect to which field of
study we are working in, e.g. economics, sociology, ecology, history, or philosophy; the following is one
frank statement of this so-called boundary problem:
“Boundaries pose a problem for [energy-based] sociology.”
— Richard Adams (1988), The Eight Day (pg. 143)
Historically, to point out, great confusions, philosophically, as arisen by the idea that there are only three
types of systems in thermodynamics, namely: ‘open’, ‘closed’, or ‘isolated’, and that if you know, in your
great wisdom and mastery of thermodynamics, the correct ‘type’ of system, then you will know what
entropy is doing, and therein state or proclaim some sort of proclamation about the future? While the tool of
prediction does indeed exist within the framework of thermodynamics, the understanding of this is far more
complex than picking A, B, or C. We will need to progress, however, through many chapters, before we can
even begin to answer questions related to varieties of boundaries found in societies, thermodynamically
speaking.
The first important point to make note of, is that the ‘boundary’, only includes the locations in which
humans, or the 26 elements that comprise the bound state of a person, move, in a given system under study,
in their daily, monthly, or yearly orbital movement patters. There is a top boundary, a bottom boundary, and
many types of side boundaries.
The top boundary, typically is the height of a given social system, e.g. the tallest building in a given
town. Alternatively, if humans are flying, different ‘systems’ can be drawn, such as John Boyd (1960), a
fighter pilot during the Korean War and engineer, theorized about, in the field of war thermodynamics, in
terms of pilots, conceptualized as air molecules, battling each other in three-dimensional system in the sky,
in order to formulated kill ratio models, in respect to air combat tactics.
The bottom boundary, for the most part, for discussions of analysis, tends to be the line or region at
the bottom of one’s feet. The bottom boundary, in human chemical thermodynamics analysis, generally,
does NOT extend several miles under the surface of the earth to include ‘natural resources’, like coal, gas, or
oil. These are types of material elements that facilitate reactions between humans, but do not take part in the
free energy reaction changes between humans. Certainly, to note, one can draw their ‘boundary’ in any
location in the universe.
Generally speaking, however, chemical thermodynamics applied to humans will be concerned with
social boundaries, i.e. protected or semi-protected barriers to where human are able to move, e.g. the Berlin
Wall, the front door to a country club, the region around the ‘alpha’ table in the high school cafeteria.
In short, in the most basic definition of things, a completely naked ‘human’, with no attachments,
clothes, food, jewelry, money, personal possessions, or other internal things, such as smuggled contraband
in the anal cavity, e.g. heroin smuggled into prison, or swallowed contraband, e.g. diamonds kept secret
during wartime, is a 26-element thing, plain and simple.
The side boundary, or side boundaries, however, are more complex. Below right, we see the Great
Wall of China, built to protect China from its enemies and invaders from the North, especially the Mongols.
The system, in this example, is China, the surroundings are the regions or territories outside of the wall. The
wall is the boundary, which is semi-permeable, meaning that people can cross at guarded crossing points, or
via stealth, scale the guard protected wall at great energetic risk and possible expense:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 11

Above left, we see a ‘man in piston and cylinder’, a semi-famous illustration from German physicist Ingo
Muller’s 1994 Essentials of Thermodynamics: with Historical Notes, which shows a thinking man sitting
next to a fire pit of burning wood or coals, who is being rained on by condensed steam, or something to this
effect. The cylinder is the man’s fixed social boundary, meaning un-moveable. The piston is the man’s
adjustable social boundary, meaning that he can push out on it, or the surroundings can push in on his
system. The system, which is the space inside of the piston and cylinder, has an internal pressure PI,
representative of social pressure internal to the system. The surroundings, by contrast, has an external
pressure PE, representative of social pressure external to the system. The social piston, in short, will move,
thus allowing for either work to be done by the man on the surroundings or, conversely, for the surroundings
to do work on the man.
The surface, on which humans stand, or are ‘attached’, is called the substrate, and is comprised of 92-
elements, give or take.
The surrounding gaseous atmosphere, in which this 26-element thing resides, is comprised of two
elements, predominately, namely: nitrogen N2 (78%) and oxygen O2 (20.9%), along with residual amounts
of six elemental things, namely: Ar (0.90%), CO2 (0.03%), along with neon Ne, hydrogen H, helium He,
and krypton Kr, comprising 0.17%, is classified as the reaction milieu. Just as some reactions will only take
place in the water phase or aqueous phase, symbol ‘aq’, so to will human chemical reactions only actuate in
the air phase, or the social milieu of an oxygen-based atmosphere.
We also are ‘water’ requiring reactionary things. The most basic model of this, was delineated when in
1775 Torbern Bergman, in his Dissertation on Elective Attractions, defined all reactions as being of two
types: the ‘wet way’ (occurring in water) and the ‘dry way’ (occurring in air). Human social, sexual,
political, and revolutionary ‘reactions’ actuate, in sum, amid a mixture of the wet way, e.g. large cities tend
to be near water ports, and the dry way, in the atmosphere.
Things not part of a human, but which become ‘part’ of the existence of a person, such as a gold ring, a
flower in a women’s hair, shoes, clothes, a house, etc., are what are called catalysts, i.e. types of matter or
material elements that lower ↓ the activation energy barrier of social reactions, but do not take part IN the
social reactions themselves.
Things that a person consumes for metabolism, are defined as ‘nutritive matter’ or turnover matter, as
discussed in a section to follow. Bacteria, e.g. will grow in agar, which is a gelatinous substance derived
from red algae, which acts as the growth medium plus nutrients, for the bacteria. Humans, likewise, will
grow in tropical region, but will not generally grow in a desert region, so much.

1.5 | Types of Matter and Reaction Energy

Boundary assignment, as we have said, is a complex subject. To touch on a quick example, one of the most-
confused ‘boundary assignment’ examples, in recent years, is found in the fields of so-called ‘entropy
economics’, centered around the work of Kenneth Boulding (1966), Nicholas Roegen (1971), and Herman
Daly (1977), Roegen’s PhD student, and physical ‘ecological economics’, centered around the work
Howard Odum (1976) and Charles Hall (2011), Odum’s PhD student. This will be digressed on more in the
12

Roegen-Samuelson Copper Economic Model chapter. Here, to get our feet wet to some real time, being
practiced currently, working confusions, the gist of their total confusion resides in a basic lack of having
boundary-defined system model and also how energy and or entropy related to ‘natural resources’, such as
oil, coil, trees, copper, food crops, etc., are conceptually defined as per human chemical thermodynamics.
Boulding, e.g., attempting to defined natural recourses as ‘matter energy’; Roegen, thinking of coal and
oil as ‘bound energy’ as waste gases as ‘free energy’; Daly employing terms such as ‘matter-energy’ and
‘entropy traps’; and Odum and Hall using electric circuit diagrams, as their thermodynamic system, thinking
economic and ecological energy as like electric current flowing through ecological and economic systems;
all of whom attempting to discuss these confused terminologies, in a grasping wan, in terms of the first two
laws of thermodynamics. The problem here is that each of these persons are either economists or ecologists,
nome of whom ever had any fundamental training in thermodynamics, let alone chemical thermodynamics.
To clarify, the following energy diagram, from Frederick Rossini’s Chemical Thermodynamics (1950),
shows the correct way ‘energy’ is defined, specifically for two molecular entities, M and N, transforming,
which in our scenario can be considered as two potential states of an economic system, embedded within an
ecosystem:15

This diagram shows the energy of each system, on the vertical axis, showing the different states of potential
energy existence of each system, the state’s energy reaction path shown by the curved line. Rossini explains
the specifics of this diagram as follows:
“In the thermodynamic equilibrium, M N, the initial and final states of the atoms and molecules
involved in the reaction are represented by M and N, respectively. The state N is at a lower level of
energy than the state M. The energy E (M N) is the energy of the reaction, is related to the
thermodynamic equilibrium, M N, and, combined with the respective entropies, gives a complete
description of the thermodynamic equilibrium. The energy A (M → N), is the energy of activation in the
forward direction, M → N, and helps to determine the rate at which the molecules in the state M change
to those in state N. The energy A (N → M), is the energy of activation in the reverse direction, N → M,
and helps to determine the rate at which the molecules in state N change to those in state M. The
difference in the energies of activation in the two directions is equal to the energy of reaction, E (M
N). By means of a suitable catalyst, the energy of activation can be materially reduced, producing a
correspondingly large increase in the rate of reaction.”
— Frederick Rossini (1950), Chemical Thermodynamics (pg. 3)
Here, the key words are bolded. In the transformation between two potential types of economic systems, M
and N, the symbols M and N only represent the ‘atoms and molecules involved in the reaction’. In this case,
it is the atoms and molecules of the humans in each potential economic system. The humans reacting
between themselves will have a corresponding ‘energy of reaction’, symbolized by energy E (M N),
which combined with the ‘respective entropies’, gives a complete description of the thermodynamic
equilibrium, in respect to the two states of M and N.
Now, in respect to where confusion abounds, the atoms and molecules of ‘natural resources’, which are
connected to these forward and reverse reactions, such as coal, oil, gas, which power societies, or crops,
which feed societies, or valuable metals, such as gold and platinum, which are used for tools, etc., are what
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 13

Rossini calls ‘suitable catalysts’, and their operational effect is on the raising or lowering of the two
activation energies, A (M → N) and A (N → M), of either the forward and reverse reactions, depending.
Two examples from history clarify this. The first occurred when Fritz Haber figured out how to make
ammonia NH3, a key soil fertilizer for crop growth, from air nitrogen N2 and oxygen O2, and in 1913 began
to produce ammonia on an industrial scale, after which the world’s population exploded, as shown below,
previous ammonia fertilizer, being made in limited amounts, predominantly coming from guano or bat
droppings accumulated in caves in South America:

The second ‘suitable catalytic’ effect being the discovery of the steam engine, or method of transforming
heat, in coal, into reciprocal motion, which resulted in the industrial revolution, and the economic and
population growth derived therefrom; the key dates being 1732, when there were, supposedly, more than
100 Newcomen engines in Britain and Europe, and 2,000 Newcomen engines by 1800.
In each of these examples, namely the steam engine ‘energy’ and crop ‘energy’, were not economic
reaction energies E (M N), and the reaction entropies correlative therein, but rather they were related to
the activation energies, A (M → N) and A (N → M), of the forward and reverse reaction, respectively. We
will need to progress through many core chapters before we can elaborate more on this in detail.
The essential point to keep in mind, however, at this point is firstly that the human reaction system of
study needs to conceptualized in terms of the ‘piston and cylinder’ reaction model, and secondly the matter
inside of the system are divided into two categories, the first being: reactive matter, specifically humans, in
our subject of study, and the remaining matter, which can generally be divided into three types, namely: and
substrate matter, that which facilitates the reactions, e.g. the metal of the steam engines which facilitated the
industrial revolution, nutritive matter, e.g. the ammonia derived from the Haber process, which facilitated
the population explosion of the 20th century, and in chemistry is called the system milieu matter, e.g. does
the reaction occur in the ‘wet way’, typically an aqueous reaction, or the dry way, occurring in an air
environment.
To help conceptualized the idea of the ‘system’, in a thermodynamic definitional sense, the core model
of which being the Clausius system (1865) reformulation of the Carnot engine (1824), which we will cover
in detail later, the following two thermodynamic system models will be frequently employed as conceptual
basic system models, appliable to social systems, namely the Da Vinci gunpowder engine, below left, and
the Van’t Hoff equilibrium reaction box model, below right:
14

In the Da Vinci model, gunpowder explodes inside a piston and cylinder, the products, which are gases, and
therein occupying greater volume, escape through a one-way out valve, this creates a partial vacuum in the
system, which works to lift a weight. This could be, e.g., a country exploding in a civil war, where citizens
are forced to flee their country, such as currently happening in Niger and the Boko Haram situation.
In the Van’t Hoff model, two reactant and two product species, all in the gas phase, are connected to the
reactive system, by four different semi-permeable membrane piston and cylinders, and we are able to gauge
how much pressure-volume work each species does, at that entrance or exit point. This could be similar to
the work involved when migrants, immigrants, or tourists, enter or leave a country.
At this point, many will be over processed, in their mind, as to what exactly the ‘system’ is, as
per modern thermodynamics. In an effort, to remedy this confusion, via a simple image, the following,
sculpture, from the second story ledge of the Louvre Museum, Paris, which is the world’s largest art
museum, found aligned with statues of Descartes, Diderot, Voltaire, is the French engineer Denis Papin,
shown holding a sectioned piston and cylinder, namely a cylinder, cut away to expose a piston and rod
within it.
The region of space below the head of the piston, but above the bottom of the cylinder, is our social
system, in its most basic form. Just let this work through your mind multiple times, for many years:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 15

The following, a third conceptual system model we will employ, is the Agar Model, wherein the system is
the petri dish, the bacteria are the reacting species, and the agar, which is a gelatin like material derived
from red algae, is food + system milieu material, which allows the reacting species to grow, when heated:
16

In the Da Vinci model, the ‘system’, in its most basic sense, is comprised of a cylinder, an immovable
boundary, the piston, a movable boundary, a one-way out-going escape valve, which lets newly synthesized
combustion products, i.e. gases made following combustion of gunpowder, out of the system, and a working
substance, namely gunpowder, which is the equivalent of ‘humans’, in our case. The numbered particles
shown being either gunpowder, humans, or bacteria (above right). In da Vinci’s original draft model, the
gun powder is ‘ignited’ inside the system. Think of a person being ignited by falling in love ‘light’. This
ignition, thereby causes the working body to explode, via chemical reaction.
The process of going from a solid phase to a gas phase results in a great increase in volume. Owing to
this increase in volume, the products (gases) exit the piston and cylinder, through the escape valve. This
results to make a partial ‘vacuum’ inside of the piston. This new change in state, results to make the ‘forces’
the molecules of the atmosphere, i.e. the weight of the atmosphere, to push down on the piston, i.e. do
pressure-volume work on the system. Da Vinci, in order to utilize this newly made natural work, yielded by
the powerful bonds stored in the gunpowder, connected the rod of his piston, via an inverted connecting
mechanism, to a weight, which was thus lifted off the ground.
In the ‘agar model’, of bacterial growth, the walls of the petri dish make the boundary, which is fixed,
the agar being the reaction milieu. This is one of the more basic comparison intermediate ‘system’ models,
somewhere in between the da Vinci gunpowder model, and the more complex human social system. Here,
the bacteria is a powered CHNOPS+9E thing, and is ‘powered’, via ‘warming’, namely the agar (food) is
heated (think ‘sun’ at this point) to a temperature of 45 to 50° C (113-122° F), then mixed with the bacteria
(think: human = ‘evolved’ bacteria), then spun (think rotating earth), left to incubate (think of the first 18-
years of your existence), until the colonies (think: human colonies of early America) ‘grow’, i.e. sexually
reproduce with other bacteria to form more bacteria.
The Van’t Hoff model too complex in conceptual terminology to adequately summarized here, but we
introduce it here, to show three levels of thermodynamic system modelling, namely simple combustion, gas
phase reactions where boundary work is measured, and heated growth of CHNOPS+ things, as we progress
our way up to the modelling of system of humans, which are heated, have explosive reactions, and do
pressure boundary work and boundaries.
The point to note here, which has been confused up to the point of law-enforced US congressional
legislation, is that gunpowder reacts with oxygen to make gas phase products, and bacteria react with other
bacterial to make new colonies of bacteria. In the last model, which begins to become similar to human
system models, the bacteria do not react WITH the agar, i.e. its food or substance milieu, which in chemistry
is defined as the catalyst or substrate of the bacteria. Hence, humans, likewise, do not react with coal,
carrots, or diamonds, but with each other, and this ‘reaction energy’ is the subject of focus.
Baring prolonged digression, which we will save for later chapters, the following quote, in respect to
‘life’ in general, will suffice to illustrated the general conclusion, as historically evidenced, that if one does
not defined their system properly, they will, retrospectively, be shut down, in the future, in a not so pleasant
manner, by someone of discerning intellect:

It is important to define the system .

When Schrodinger (What is Life?, 1943) is writing about a change in entropy of the system, he
NEVER even defines the ‘system’. Sometimes, he seems to consider that the system is a ‘living
organism’ with no interaction whatever with the environment; and sometimes it is a living organism in
thermal equilibrium with the environment; and sometimes it is the living organism plus the
environment, i.e. the universe as a whole.”
— Linus Pauling (1989), ‘Schrodinger’s Contribution to Chemistry and Biology’8
The important point, in conclusion of this subsection, is that if we are to arrive at a ‘systematic conception
of it all’, as Henry Adams so-longed for, shown below, we must properly defined our system:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 17

I am quite to receive with pleasure ANY basis for a

of it all.”
— Henry Adams 1864 , ‘Letter to Charles Gaskell’, Oct
Then we need to properly first understand what a system is and then properly define our system.

1.6 | Turnover Rate

In 1938, Charles Sherrington, the English physiologist and neuroscientist, famous for introducing terms
such as synapse and dendrite, the transmission connecting points of nerves, described humans,
thermodynamically speaking, as being ‘eddies’ in the stream of energy of the universe, or swirling atomic
structures in the thermodynamic arrow of time:
“The ‘living energy-system’, in commerce with its surround, tends to increase itself. If we think of it as
an eddy in the stream of energy it is an eddy which tends to grow; as part of this growth we have to
reckon with its starting other eddies from its own resembling its own. This propensity it is which
furnishes opportunity under the factors of evolution for a continual production of modified patterns of
eddy. It is as though they progress toward something. But philosophy reflects that the motion for the
eddy is in all cases drawn from the stream, and the stream is destined, so the second law of
thermodynamics says, irrevocably to cease. The head driving it will, in accordance with the ascertained
law of dynamics, run down. A state of static equilibrium will then replace the stream. And yet they will
have been evolved. Their purpose then was temporary? It would seem so.”
— Charles Sherrington (1938), Man on His Nature (pg. 78)
Here, barring digression on Sherrington’s ‘running down’ model of the second law, which we will correct in
later chapters, here we see that, in his mind, a human is like the swirl pattern in a river, below left, having
water molecules flowing through it, yet keeping its overall structure constant, or like afferent neuron, shown
below right, which shows two ‘excitatory afferents with their field of supraliminal effect in the moto-neuron
pool of a muscle’, the image being a commemorative stained glass window built in 1990, in the dining hall
of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in his honor:

Above right, we see the famous ‘Ship of Theseus’ paradox, which goes back to Thales, the gist of which
being that if you replace every part of ship or every atom of a human, which turnover rate implies, is it the
same ship or human? The short answer is yes: the geometry of the electromagnetic field holds, while the
atoms turnover.
In 1949, Paul Aebersold, an American physicist, as discussed in his ‘Atomic Energy Benefits:
Radioisotopes’, had conducted a number of experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, using
18

radioisotopes and the tracing of elements in and out of the human body, wherein he found that about 98
percent of the atoms in a person are ‘turned over’ and replaced with new atoms every two years, with the
longest turnover rate of elements occurring in the teeth:

Aebersold described this atomic turnover as follows

“The atoms now in your body are being replaced by new atoms at an amazingly rapid rate. Before we go
into more detail about the terrific traffic of atoms in your body, or, for that matter, the rapid atomic
turnover in all forms of life, in even the simplest organisms, let us pause for some background
information that may forestall the quite justified unbelief you may have concerning these startling facts.
How do we know all this? How do we follow all the fast and complicated maneuvers that atoms enter
into in our bodies and other complex systems?”
— Paul Aebersold (1949), ‘Atomic Energy Benefits: Radioisotopes’ (pg. #)
To help us conceptually understand the phenomena of human atomic turnover, we can, in some realistic
sense, think of humans as geometric ‘proton-electron configurations’, or a ‘locus in the electron-proton
movement continuum’, as Albert Weiss, American physicist and second generation student of Max Planck,
defined things; for example:
“For purposes of description, each separate geometrical electron-proton pattern, no matter how
simple or complex it may be, is to be regarded as a ‘system’. Such systems may be classified into the
degrees of the similarity or dissimilarity postulated of atoms, molecules, compounds, tissues, plants,
animals, men, races, nations, planets, etc. The systems of especial interest to the behaviorist are
classified under animal tissues and social organizations.”
— Albert Weiss (1925), A Theoretical Basis of Human Behavior (pg. 19)
With this definition in place, we will now cite the famous ‘floating magnets’ experiment, originally
performed by William Gilbert (c.1590), with little floating cork boats, then expanded on by Alfred Mayer
(1878) with up to about 20 magnets, the geometries found drawn by him, as shown below, then repeated by
the author (2015), shown below, using more powerful neodymium magnets:

In short, Mayer and Gilbert found, that by placing little magnets on floating cork, with the positive pole
facing upward, and placing a bigger magnet above them, with the negative pole facing downward, that
three-dimensional magnetic geometries would form, like the hexagonal pyramid, shown above right. By
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 19

adding increasing numbers of smaller magnets, Gilbert and Mayer found the system arranging into large
geometrical patterns, which at certain magnet count level, became unstable, e.g. at the 18-magnet level,
wherein two alternative geometries would form, as shown below:

In short, by thinking of humans, in a simplified manner, as proton-electron configurations, the protons being
like little floating positively charged particles, or positively oriented magnets, so to say, the electrons like
little negatively charged particles or negatively oriented magnets, which interact to form three dimensional
geometries, like a fish, ape, human, or hexagonal pyramid, we can understand how when a new atom or
floating magnet is pushed or forced into the extant geometry, one atom or floating magnet, previously in the
geometry, will be forced out, where, overtime, an atomic or magnetic turnover of material will accrue.
Here, just as with atoms in humans, certain geometries will be stable, based on the number of protons
and electrons in a region of space, or large positive magnet in the vicinity of smaller floating negative
magnets, as shown above. Hence, when the stable hexagonal pyramid forms, one can push in smaller
magnets into the arrangement, during which, the electromagnetic force, will push out the old atoms or the
destabilized magnets, but the overall pattern of the electromagnetic field, i.e. ship, hexagonal pyramid, or
personhood, holds.
While this magnetic turnover model is not exactly the same as atomic turn, it does give a general
conceptual idea of things. This model, in fact, was used in the discovery of the positive and negative
geometric structure of the atom, by Joseph Thomson, in the derivation of his so-called plum pudding model.
The following outline, gives a good idea of humans and societies as a system of positive and negative
points, orchestrated via the tune of the gravitational and electromagnetic forces:
“If we regard the chemical atom as an aggregation of a number of primordial atoms, the problem of
finding the configurations of stable equilibrium for a number of equal particles acting on each other
according to some law of force—whether that of Boscovich, where the force between them is a
repulsion when they are separated by less than a certain critical distance, and an attraction when they
are separated by less than a certain critical distance, and an attraction when they are separated by a
greater distance, or even the simpler case of a number of mutually repellent particles held together by a
central force—is of great interest in connexon with the relation between the properties of an element and
its atomic weight. Unfortunately, the equations which determine the stability of such a collection of
particles increase so rapidly in complexity with the number of particles that a general mathematical
investigation is scarcely possible. We can, however, obtain a good deal of insight into the general laws
which govern such configurations by the use of models, the simplest of which is the floating magnets
of professor Mayer. In this model the magnets arrange themselves in equilibrium under the mutual
repulsions and a central attraction caused by the pole of a large magnet placed above the floating
magnets.”
— Joseph Thomson (1897), ‘Cathode Rays’ (pg. 293)
With this subsection on atomic turnover complete, we will quickly look at the molecular formula model or
conception of a human.

1.7 | Molecular Formulas

In 2000, Robert Sterner and James Elser, two American limnologists, defined a ‘human’ according to the
following 22-element empirical molecular formula:

H375,000,000 O132,000,000 C85,700,000 N6,430,000 Ca1,500,000 P1,020,000 S206,000 Na183,000

K177,000 Cl127,000 Mg40,000 Si38,600 Fe2,680 Zn2,110 Cu76 I14 Mn13 F13 Cr7 Se4 Mo3 Co
20

They stated, in passing commentary on this human empirical formula, that: ‘this formula combines all
compounds in a human being into a single abstract ‘molecule’.’ Here, supposedly, we have become an
abstraction?
In 2002, the author, following several months of independent research, involving collations of data in
respect to mass composition tables, surrounding the question of what defines a person at the second of
‘death’ or ‘cessation of existence’ (Jefferson, 1775), in the eyes of the first law of thermodynamics, a
repercussion of an idea that arose amid drafting a chapter on death, for his unpublished Human
Thermodynamics manuscript, research done independent of Sterner and Elser, calculated the following 26-
element molecular formula for an average human :

Following this, in the decades to follow, the author began to define a human as a ‘molecule’, as had been
done by Jean Sales in 1789. Some, of note, objected to this terminological usage. In comparing these two
formulas, the Sterner-Elser human molecular formula (2000) with the Thims human molecular formula
(2002), we note that four elements, namely: B, V, Ni, and Mo, shown in italics in the above formula, are not
seen in the Sterner-Elser formula, whereas they are shown in the Thims formula. This is a result of better
research and formulation. The significance of these four additional elements is indicated by the added white
boarders of these four elements in the so-called hmolscience periodic table, shown previously.

1.8 | Molecular Evolution Table

In 2005, Thims, following his calculation human formula, empirical and molecular, then began to calculate
the molecular formulas of a number of things, smaller than humans, going backwards in the standard model
evolution-based chain of beings, human to monkey, to reptile, to fish, to aquatic worm, to bacteria, and to
smaller scales, e.g. DNA, urea, water, hydrogen, down to subatomic particles, constructed the following so-
called molecular evolution table, which was published first online (2005), then in the chapter ‘Molecular
Evolution’ of the author’s two-volume 2007 Human Chemistry book, which was the reproduced, with some
elaboration, in the author’s 2008 The Human Molecule booklet, on the history of thinkers to have
conceptualized a person as a molecule:4
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 21

Here we see an expanded version of the ‘abstract’ of this book. Each row shows a characteristic H+, CH+,
CHO+, CHNO+, CHNOPS+, etc., thing. Each of these things, when heated by the sun, chemically reacts to
form either new product species, of the same nature, or new species. In order for any of these chemical
reactions to proceed, a decrease in the free energy, for each reaction, must actuate. The measure of the free
energy, or isothermal-isobaric chemical potential, is defined by symbol G, and is the result of a summation
of the first and second law of thermodynamics. Notice, very clearly, how in all of this, hydrogen to human,
rows one to twenty-six, we did NOT say anything about order form disorder.
Barring prolonged discussion, at this point, which will be clarified as we progress, the following
statement, from American neurosurgeon Ben Carson, the first person to successful separate conjoined at the
head Siamese twins, turned 2015 presidential candidate, gives a general idea of how the average person,
22

ignorant of basic human chemical thermodynamics, understands things, when it comes to questions that
surround faith and science:
“And you know, I get a lot of grief out there. People say, ‘How can you be a scientist and believe that
god created the earth? Obviously, you know [they say] we developed from a puddle of
promiscuous biochemicals. And if you believe in anything other than that, you’re a moron.’ I
don’t criticize them. I say, ‘Can you tell me how something came from nothing?’ And, of course, they
can’t. They say ‘well, we don’t understand everything.’ I say ‘ok, no problem’. ‘I’m just going to give
you that there’s something’. And now you’re going to tell me there’s a big bang, and it comes into
perfect order? So that we can predict seventy-years hence when a comet is coming, that kind of
precision. And they say, ‘Well, yeah.’ And I say, ‘But don’t you also believe in entropy, that
things move toward a state of disorganization?’ [they say] ‘Well yah’. [I say] ‘So how does that
work? “And they say, ‘We don’t understand everything.’ And I said ‘I’m not sure you understand
anything! ‘ But, I said, ‘I’m not going to be critical of you, not a problem. You’re entitled to believe
what you believe, even though it requires a lot more faith than what I believe. But everybody believe
what you want to believe.”
— Ben Carson (2015), ‘Campaign Speech’, Liberty University, Nov 11
Here, Carson, while being direct, thus opening up refreshing new Roegen avenues, is employing
anthropomorphic pejoratives, which is not the correct way to go about chemical thermodynamics applied to
the humanities, which employs an unbiased objective approach.

1.9 | Working Definition

In respect to working definitions, we will note that in 2011, American thermodynamicist Kalyan Annamalai,
in his Advanced Thermodynamics Engineering, per citation of the author, defined a human as a ‘26-element
energy and or heat driven dynamic atomic structure’. This is in the neighborhood of the presently suggested
term of ‘powered CHNOPS+20 element’ structure, matrix, system, chemical, molecule, existent, or thing.
Historically, the online Hmolpedia ‘human’ article, in tabulated chronological format, lists the top 130+
terms employed, over the last several centuries, to defined a human, from the physical, chemical, and or
thermodynamical point of view. The more interesting terms, some of which we have touched on, are:
‘tormented atoms’ (Voltaire, 1755), ‘cogged dice matter machines’ (Holbach, 1770), ‘molecule’ (Sales,
1789), ‘animate combination of the universe’ (Shelley, 1815), ‘metamorphosized CHEM’ (Goethe, 1809),
‘carbon gorgon’ (Haeckel, 1888), ‘phase’ (Adams, 1908), ‘electron-proton configuration’ (Weiss, 1925),
‘CHNOPS plus’ thing (Thone, 1936), ‘energy eddy’ (Sherrington, 1938), ‘dissipative structure’ (Prigogine,
1972), ‘powered CHNOPS system or matrix’ (Swan, 1974), ‘fermion or boson’ (Stephan, 1977), ‘star
stuff’ (Sagan, 1980), ‘electron spin’ (Montroll, 1981), ‘carbon-based biped’ (Clarke, 1992), ‘heated
chemical scum’ (Hawking, 1995), ‘baryonic matter’ (Robinson, 1999), ‘soulless bag of chemicals’ (Bell,
2011), and of course the last and more to the point ‘promiscuous biochemical’ (Carson, 2015).5
All of these, some bolded above to signify focus, Voltaire and Carson, aside, lack the basic components
of ‘emotion’ and desire. Herein, per citation to David Buss’ 1994 The Evolution of Desire, the anchor book
of the science of evolutionary psychology, we will assume, as a standing matter of fact, that desire, however
this term gets reformulated in the future, be it in the context of force, work, power, or energy, exists, and has
evolved or transformed, as an exactly-defined thing or process, hydrogen to human, big bang up to the
present day of this publication. Technically, however, one cannot say that hydrogen ‘desires’ oxygen, so to
form water; this is but an example of terminology reform. First, however, we must register our working
definition of a human: a power, as follows:

Human: powered CHNOPS+20 element existive

In this definition, to summarize and clarify, the terms: ‘CHNOPS combination’ (Ostwald, 1926),
‘CHNOP+’ notation (Thone, 1936), ‘powered’ (Swan, 1974), the number ‘20’, being the difference of 26
minus 6, meaning the six CHNOPS elements, the number 26 being total number of elements in a human, per
the Thims human molecular formula (2002), plus the clarifier ‘existive’, which is defined as follows:6
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 23

a combination of the Aristotelian-themed

model of people defined as ‘existing things’
and or ‘existents’, which was modified, by the
author (c.2103), into the new term ‘existive’,
a conjunction of reactive + existence, as an
upgrade to the now-classified defunct term
‘alive’ (Sherrington, 1938). The adjacent word scramble, to put this chapter into laughable perspective, is
2013 Yahoo Answers query, turned 2014 quote meme, which says that: if ‘we are made of atoms’, which is
true, then a ‘scientist’, say you or I, studying atoms, is actually a ‘group of atoms’ studying themselves,
which is a rather accurate synopsis of things, as Aristotle might say.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. (a) http://www.eoht.info/page/CHEM+cypher
(b) http://www.eoht.info/page/ECHO
(c) http://www.eoht.info/page/OTTO
2. http://www.eoht.info/page/CHNOPS%2B
3. http://www.eoht.info/page/animate+thing
4. http://www.eoht.info/page/molecular+evolution+table
5. http://www.eoht.info/page/human
6. http://www.eoht.info/page/existive
7. http://www.eoht.info/page/Egyptian+human
8. http://www.eoht.info/page/Note+to+Chapter+6
9. http://www.eoht.info/page/Aristotle+citation+rankings
10. http://www.eoht.info/page/element
11. http://www.eoht.info/page/Boundary+problem
12. http://www.eoht.info/page/CHNOPS
13. http://www.eoht.info/page/Rock+vs+human
14. http://www.eoht.info/page/thing+philosophy
15. Rossini, Frederick. (1950). Chemical Thermodynamics (pg. 3). Wiley.
16.
Unlearn
“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach
superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and
only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he or she be in after years relieved of them. The reason
for this is that a superstition is so intangible a thing that you cannot get at it to refute it.”
— Hypatia (400), Publication (pg. #)

T
he following handful of five or so chapters, on ‘gods, Greeks, and the dark ages’, are a slow, but
necessary prerequisite, prior to the engagement of the chemical thermodynamics of humans. In the
original Egyptian conception of things, heat was believed to be a god. Much of this ideology, was
transmitted and carried forward into Greek science, in rescripted format. Much of this Greek science
ideology, was transmitted and carried forward to us, not necessarily in our modern science, as objections
about so-called Aristotelian science, as it was called, began to be raised in the 16th century, and thereafter
reformed. These reformations, however, only actuated in the area of physics and chemistry of so-called
inanimate things. No such reformation as actuated in the area of so-called animate things. No amount of
trivial hand-waiving will erase this deeply ingrained, culturally and mentally, dichotomy.
That the ‘child mind’ believes and accepts that ‘heat is a god’, we will not attempt to address, nor argue
at this point. We will acknowledge that this belief, covertly, is more than prevalent, worldwide. It will be up
to the mind of the read to unlearn much of this ideology, if one is to fully understand chemical
thermodynamics, either as a standalone subject, or applied to humans. We will not attempt to say much
more on this topic, per reason that some of these ‘unlearns’ might require a decade, e.g. abioism, or more
than half one’s existence, as Gerald Massey frankly put things:
“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach
superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only
through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he or she be in after years relieved of them. The reason for
this is that a superstition is so intangible a thing that you cannot get at it to refute it.”
— Hypatia (c.400), Publication (pg. #)
“You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what
you will later have to unlearn.”
— Desiderius Erasmus (1497), ‘Letter to Christiaan Northoff’
“It is now some years since I detected how many were the false beliefs that I had from my earliest
youth admitted as true and how doubtful was everything I had since constructed on this basis.”
— Rene Descartes (date), Medications on the First Philosophy (pg. #)
“It hath often seemed to me beyond an ordinary probability, and something more than fancy, however
paradoxical the conjecture may seem, to think that the least bodies we are able to see with our naked
eyes, are but middle proportionals (as it were) betwixt the greatest and smallest bodies in nature, which
two extremes lye equally beyond the reach of human sensation: for as on the one side they are but
narrow souls, and not worthy the name of philosophers, that think any ‘body’ can be too great or too
vast in its dimensions; so likewise are they as inapprehensive, and of the same litter as the former, that
on the other side think the particles of matter may be too little, and that nature is stinted at an ‘atom’,
and must have a non-ultra of her subdivisions. Such, I am sure, our modern engine (the micro-scope)
will ocularly evince and unlearn them their opinions again: for herein you may see what a subtill
divider of matter nature is.”
— Henry Power (1664), Publication (pg. #)
“The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false
opinions he had contracted in the former.”
— Jonathan Swift (1706), ‘Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting’
26

“The shortest and surest way of arriving at real knowledge is to unlearn the lessons we have been
taught, to mount the first principles, and take nobody's word about them.”
— Lord Bolingbroke (c.1730), Publication (pg. #)
“I remember well the enthusiasm with which I devoured Hume when young, and the length of time, the
research and reflection which were necessary to eradicate the poison it had instilled into my mind.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1810), ‘Letter to William Duane’, Aug 12
“Almost all of the latter part of my life has been spent unlearning the nonsense I learned in my
youth.”
— Godfrey Higgins (1833), Anacalypsis, Volume One (pg. x); cited by Tom Harpur (2004) in The
Pagan Christ (pg. 200)
“It takes the latter half of all of one’s lifetime to unlearn the falsehood that was instilled into us
during the earlier half. Generation after generation we learn, unlearn, and re-learn the same lying
legendary lore. Henceforth, our studies must begin from the evolutionist standpoint in order that they
may not have to be gone over again.”
— Gerald Massey (1883), The Natural Genesis, Volume One (pg. 2)
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”
— Bernard Shaw (c.1920), Publication (pg. #)
“Pareto’s Treatise on General Sociology is the hardest boiled book I have ever read. Three times, since I
passed my puberty, has my mind been made over. Once by a nexus of which Henry Adams was the
center, once by a matrix of which Frazer burned brightest, and once by a long study of genetics and
evolution. Pareto is doing the job a fourth time, and far more vitally than any others.”
— Bernard DeVoto (1928), commentary on Pareto’s Treatise on General Sociology (pg. #)
In order to formidably proceed past this point, one must be willing to potentially ‘unlearn’ many of the
mental errors, he or she was instructed upon, in youth, and or culturally ingrained with. The new belief
system we will be learning herein, based on reproducible, and time-tested experimental observation, aka
experimental philosophy, as it began to be called about four-hundred years ago, is the understanding that all
volumetric systems in the universe, containing matter, can be expanded by heat addition, which cause
volume expansion, then heat subtraction, which causes volume contraction, and the difference of this heat
arithmetic, is what is defined as the ‘equivalence value of all uncompensated transformations’, in Rudolf
Clausius (1865) explained things. One has but either to accept this new theory, which we have greatly over-
simplified, or to overthrow it. As this new view of things, has been accepted and applied universally, up to
the present day, human societies included, we will endeavor to present this new view, applicably, along the
way, discarding any hazardous subject matter we might, per force, be required to discard, unlearn, or usurp,
which are too many to list at this point.
2. Gods | Neter, Theta Θ, and the Alphabet
“If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction.”
— Baron d’Holbach (1770), The System of Nature; paraphrased or restated by Percy Shelley (1811)
in The Necessity of Atheism

Chapter point: to introduce the original model of ‘gods’ as power, give the etymologies of chemistry and
thermodynamics, and give overview of the roots of the Egyptian-based English alphabet [length: 10-pgs].

T
he name ‘god’ etymologically derives, in the predominate active world religions sense of the matter,
from the Egyptian term neter Ntr (Netjer, Netcher), represented by the ‘ ’ hieroglyph, the symbol of
a ‘hatchet’ (Birch, 1848), ‘weapon’ (Brugsch, 1862), or ‘axe’ (Budge, 1904), which in plural form,
‘neteru’, is represented by the combined hieroglyph set of symbols ‘ ’, meaning ‘gods’. When the neter
symbol is shown groups of eight (8) axes: as ‘ ’, or Ogdoad, in Greek, e.g. Hermopolis
Ogdoad, or nine (9) axes as: ‘ ’, or Ennead, in Greek, e.g. Heliopolis ennead, it refers to a
‘paut’ or group of gods, generally symbolic of the strength of the ‘military power’ of the given city.1
In a modern sense, to say, in ancient Egyptian
speak, that a nine-axe city has more god-based
military power than a three-axe city, is equivalent to
saying that a 200+ nuclear warhead country, e.g.
US, Russia, China, has more ‘military power’ than
a 100+ nuclear warhead country, e.g. India,
Pakistan, North Korea. The term ‘god’,
accordingly, in its original definition sense, was a
synonym for ‘power’, be it military power or
social power.
The term ‘power’, in modern terms, is now
defined, via the science of thermodynamics, in a
quantifiable manner, as work per unit time (Watt,
1783). The term ‘work’, likewise, is defined, no longer by the phrase ‘god works in mysterious ways’, but as
being mechanically equivalent to heat (Joule, 1843), specifically a unit of work W divided by a unit of heat
Q, which has unit of joules.
The term ‘heat’, similarly, is now understood, in conceptual terms, as a quiddity of motion of matter
(Bacon, 1620); quantified, as we will explain in later chapters, in terms of what are called an exact different
units of entropy dS, defined as the product of the absolute temperature T of a body and the inexact
differential δQ of heat, or TδQ, defined at the point where the unit if heat ‘δQ’ enters or leaves the body
(Clausius, 1865); which is mechanistically understood, in particle physics terms, as a quantum
electrodynamic ‘exchange force’ interaction of photons and electrons (Feynman, 1985), which moves
attached nuclei.
The ancient astro-theology based mythical concept of god, accordingly, has been ‘reduced’ to
thermodynamics, and hence becomes superfluous. A short history of god, in order to necessitate this god
reduction, will be touched upon in this chapter.

2.1 | CHEM-istry etymology | Keme

The term ‘chemistry’, or chem-istry, derives from the Egypt hieroglyph kmt meaning ‘black’ as follows:
The prefix chem-, in more detail, is from the Egyptian ‘keme’, meaning ‘fertile black soil, from the
Egyptian hieroglyph ‘km.t’, meaning ‘black’, a reference to the alluvial, overly-fertilized, black soil, rich in
minerals and nutrients, and a good crop soil, deposited annually on the banks of the Nile River, following
28

the yearly Jun to Dec 150-day flood, the ‘black’ part of the soil, being carried down from Ethiopian
mountains, with the flowing waters of the melting snow.2

Hence, Egypt was called the country of the ‘black land’, as contrasted with the country of the ‘red land’, the
surrounding desert. The early forms of chemistry practiced in Egypt was thus called the kemetic art, aka the
‘black art’, as early versions of alchemy were named, before becoming the science of chemistry in the 17th
century.
In the first millennium BC, the Greeks, from Lycurgus (850BC) to Manetho (275BC), all travelled to
Egypt to study in their great colleges, after which they began to call the so-called ‘kemetic art’, or ‘black
art’, as it later came to be called, related to recipes for working with metals, dying cloth, and for preparing
false silver, false, and false gems. This is evidenced by two Egyptian chemistry papyri (c.300AD), found in
a tomb in Thebes, namely the Leyden Papyrus X and the Stockholm Papyrus, by the Greek name χημεια or
‘Chemeia’, such as found in the works of Zosimos of Panopolis (300AD). This became alchemy in Arabic
and eventually chemistry in 17th and 18th centuries. The following is a basic overview, to this effect:
“Chemistry implies that the amalgamation of metals was its first occupation, and many see in that form
of the word a reference to Chemia, which is, according to Plutarch, an old name of Egypt, in which this
amalgamation was first practiced with success. The word druggist came from the drugs he sells.”
— James Mitchel (1908), Significant Etymology: Roots, Stems, and Branches of the English
Language (pg. 142)
In modern times, the details of processes such as plant growth, in respect to this ‘keme’, as shown by the
Egyptian planting crops above, are well known, as explained by the actions of light, energy, heat on 92
elements, as covered in basic treatises on plant physiology.
Five-thousand years ago, however, there were only four elements: earth, air, water, and fire, not 92, and
in relation to plant growth, this was not understood not in terms of ‘synthesis’, but in a cosmo-theological
sense, wherein each element was considered a different god: water (Nun), sun (Ra), earth (Atum), and air
(Shu). Hence, the Egyptians, instead of thinking of heat, as we do now by the symbol δQ, an inexact partial
differential, as we now defined things, thought of heat, or the radiance of the sun, as being the power of the
sun god Ra, or an equivalent sun god alternative, e.g. light rays thought of as the long outstretched ‘fingers’
of the sun god Aten. This latter description, of note, is from where, in the Old Testament, the story of god
writing the ten commandments, on a stone tablets, with his ‘finger’ derives.
These ancient sun beliefs, without going into detail at this point, are rooted, in various unseen ways, in
the modern cultural language and heritage of all our minds. To exemplify, we will simply point out the fact
that, in the English-speaking world, the name ‘Father Ra of Egypt’, is known by the name Abraham or Ab-
Ra-ham, the suffix -ham pronounced ‘chem’ in Hebrew, which is the same root as found in the name chem-
istry. In the Hindu world, similarly, the sun god Ra is known as Brahma or B-Ra-hma. In the modern
scientific world, the -ham or -hma, resounds as the root of ‘chem’ in the name chem-istry.
Chemistry, Abraham, and Brahma, accordingly, all have the same root ‘keme’ or kmt, and hence are
rooted, etymologically, in ancient beliefs about sun gods born out of the land of the keme or black fertile
soil.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 29

2.2 | THERMO-dynamics etymology | Θ + Δ

The etymological development of ‘thermodynamics’, accrued as follows:3
Person Date Term
1. Heraclitus 570BC Energon (en-ergon)
2. Aristotle 350BC Dynamis + Energia
3. Galileo 1602 Study of effect of gravity on falling bodies
4. Newton 1686 Mathematical principles of natural philosophy
5. Gottfried Leibnitz 1689 Dynamics
6. Sadi Carnot 1824 Mechanical theory of generalized heat engines
7. Gustave Coriolis 1829 Dynamode = 1000kg lifted one meter
8. William Thomson 1848 Carnot’s theory of the motive power of heat
9. William Thomson 1849 Thermo-dynamic = perfect engine of Carnot’s theory
10. William Thomson 1851 Dynamical theory of heat
11. William Thomson 1854 Thermo-dynamics
12. William Rankine 1855 Energetics
13. Rudolf Clausius 1865 Mechanical theory of heat
14. James Maxwell 1867 Θcs
15. Gustave Hirn 1868 Thermodynamics
16. James Maxwell 1876 ΘΔcs
The core coining, of the science of thermodynamics, was done by William Thomson in 1854, as we will
discuss. Thomson was followed by Rudolf Clausius, who, in 1865, building on his work, founded the
science of thermodynamics, albeit under the name ‘mechanical theory of heat’. The finalized, globally
accepted, unhyphenated, term ‘thermodynamics’, was employed, in French, by Gustave Hirn, in 1868,
wherein, this new science, namely of the study of the operations of heat, work, and energy, on bodies or
systems of bodies, became a new accepted branch of science, and no longer just a ‘theory’ as Clausius had
described his program of study.
Now, in respect to the ‘symbols’ used in thermodynamics, in the last of these name usages, namely row
fifteen, we see James Maxwell, in 1876, referring to the new science of thermodynamics, in his
communications to Peter Tait and William Thomson, as ‘ΘΔ’ or Theta-Delta-ics. As to where Maxwell
conceived or learned this peculiar Greek notation shorthand for thermodynamics, we can only conjecture?
We do know, however, that in 1825, James Forbes, aged 16, at the University of Edinburgh, was
contributing articles to the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal under the anonymous name symbol of ‘Δ’ and
that from 1836 to 1844, in the Transactions of the Royal Society, he published four articles on ‘researches
on heat’, themed on his undulatory theory of heat. Secondly, we know that Forbes mentored William
Rankine, at the Edinburgh University, and that Rankine gave Forbes two copies of this ‘molecular vortices’
hypothesis of atomic structure and his ‘vortex heat generation’ theory. Rankine, in turn, not only went on to
become one of the core handful of thermodynamics founders, albeit a second ranked one, but he was one of
the core links in the Thomson, Tait, Maxwell letter communication network.
The use of the Delta ‘Δ’, historically, a symbol
classically employed, represents either fire, change,
or heat, as an assignment that goes back to at least
Pythagoras (who also studied in Egypt); the
adjacent diagram being one example of a
Pythagorean-schemed alchemical symbols table
published in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1766.4
Likewise, we see upside down triangle symbol
‘∇’ for water. These two symbols, fire Δ and water
∇, haven been built into chemistry and alchemy for many centuries, going back millennia, to the Egyptians,
as we will explain. Here, on an aside, we note that the 10 alchemical things in this Nuremberg alchemical
30

symbols table, namely: fire, air, water, earth, i.e. the ‘four elements’, sulphur, salt, mercury, the ‘three
principles’, male and female, the ‘two seeds’, and the tincture, the ‘fruit’, at this period in time, were
conceived as being the tetractinal summation of Pythagoras (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10), and thought to be allocated
or associated with to the ‘philosopher’s stone’, a legendary alchemical substance thought to be capable of
turning base metals such as mercury into gold. This is an example of what is called the ‘Pythagorean
delusion’, namely getting one’ mind swept up in number patterns, thinking, therein, that the is greater
meaning in the number pattern, that as compared with what actually matches up with reality. Many
mathematicians fall prey to this focus on number patterns.
Now, to get to the point of things, the employment of Theta ‘Θ’, by Maxwell, in referring to Thermo-
Dynamics, in shorthand, as ‘ΘΔ’, leads us into refreshingly, semi-uncharted territory, etymologically
speaking. In short, to awaken the mind of the reader, we will but simply point out that the Greek Theta ‘Θ’
is the root letter of the following six key, seemingly unrelated, yet historically-dominating terms, divide into
mythical and scientific categories, respectively:
English Greek
1. Theos Θεός
2. Theology Θεολογία
3. Theogonia Θεογονία
4. Thermal Θερμικός
5. Temperature Θερμοκρασία
6. Thermo-Dynam-ics Θερμοδυναμική
ΘΔ-ics Maxwell (1876)
The Greek letter Theta ‘Θ’, in short, as is historically agreed upon, as we will explain, via cited historical
consensus, is the symbol of the sun or one of the Egyptian sun gods in its various incarnate forms or cultural
rescripts.
The Greek letter Delta ‘Δ’, while not so historically certain, in regards to etymological accuracy, is
generally acknowledged, according to what is called ‘accepted history’, which is code for culturally
accepted history, to be a reference the triangle
shape of the ‘Nile delta’, the watery fertile
upside down triangle-shaped green crop-
growing region, of the Nile River, as this area of
land was called or named by the Greeks, amid
their Egyptian to Greek translation of things.
Now, while the Greeks may have named the
green fertile region as the Delta, symbol ‘Δ’
aside, it seem more logical that the Δ-shaped
fire or sun god birthing pyramids of Giza,
shown above left, build near Memphis and
Heliopolis, in 2500BC, are truer etymological
basis of the Greek Delta symbol; whereas, in
ancient Egyptian Greek alchemy, the upside down triangle ‘∇’ became the symbol for water, possibly in
reference to annual flooded upside down triangle-shaped region of the crop-growing region called ‘Delta’
by the Greeks.
While we can only speculate, as to these ‘Δ’ (fire) and ‘∇’ (water), which have been handed down to us,
we will note that the fire symbol on top of the water symbol becomes a square:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 31

which forms a square ‘□’, which via Egyptian-learned Pythagorean tautology, in the mind of Plato, became
the cube, as the symbol of the earth, the origin of the phrase ‘four corners of the earth’.

The Theta symbol ‘Θ’, as now employed, as a circle with some kind of accentuated line inside of it,
according to historical consensus, derived from an aggregation or synthesis of the myths and astro-theology
behind the sun with an ‘x’ symbol, ‘⊗’, which is part of the hieroglyph for the city of Heliopolis, below
left, and the symbol of the sun or sun god, Ra or Atum-Ra, or possibly another sun god variant, depending
on period, of a circle with a dot inside ‘ʘ’, such as shown below center, and or the ancient symbol of the
sun with a snake around it or inside of it, below right, either with or without the eye of the sun god inside:

In c.110, Philo of Byblos, a Roman antiquarian writer of grammatical, lexical and historical works in Greek,
reported that the Greek Theta owed its form to the Egyptian habit of designating the deity by a ringed
serpent, with its head turned inward, the dot representing the eye of god in the world.5 The snake doing
nightly battle with the sun god, either Ra or Horus, corresponds to what we now call the Ouroboros. The eye
of the sun corresponds to what we call the eye of Ra or eye of Horus, depending.
In c.280, Porphyry, a Roman philosopher, and student of Plotinus, stated that the Greek theta
corresponds firstly to the ‘soul’ of the world, which correlates to the ‘world soul’, retrospectively, and also,
more importantly, that the significance of number ‘nine’ (9), which he says was numerically representative
of the famous nine sun god family known as the ‘Ennead’, by the Greeks, as explained in the Heliopolis
creation myth, which is the basic theory behind the constructions of the pyramids.5
In c.555, John Lydus, a Roman antiquarian scholar, stated that the Egyptians used a symbol in the form
of a Theta for the ‘cosmos’, with an airy fiery circle representing the world, and a snake, spanning the
middle, representing the agathos daimon
or ‘good spirit’; which again seems to
correspond to what we now call the
‘ouroboros’.5
The adjacent diagram summarizes of
these three views of Philo, Porphyry, and
Lydus, in regards to what the Theta
symbol represents. These conjectures,
however, to note, are attempted at some
900 to 1400 years after the Theta symbol
became part of the newly formed Greek
alphabet.
We will also point out that,
presently, no satisfactory explanation of
the reason behind the ‘x’ symbol of the
sun ‘⊗’ found in hieroglyph for the city
of Heliopolis, which, per above opinion, is behind the middle bracket in the present form of Theta?
Classically, hieroglyphic scholars have simply labeled it as the generic symbol for ‘city’. Others will say
that it was simply copied from the Phoenicians ‘Tet’ symbol ‘⊗’? The Phoenicians, however, as has been
32

pointed out by Charles Bunsen (1848), copied or derived all their gods from the Egyptians. In this sense,
have conjectured that the ‘x’ symbol has something to do with the sun being re-born, on Dec 15, in the
constellation of the ‘Southern Cross’, or Crus Australis, such as popularized by Peter Joseph, in his 2006
Zeitgeist video, via citation to Dorothy Murdock, Gerald Massey, among others. Massey (1883), e.g. points
out that the southern passage of the telescopic tubes of the great pyramid points directly to the star Centauri,
which rises over the Southern Cross.7 Others have conjectured that the cross in the sun symbol has
something to do with the four cardinal points. We will leave this an open question.
The earliest extant reference to use of ‘Theta’, in Greece, in a published work, pottery usages aside,
which tended to employ the dot in circle symbol, in a dominate term sense, occurred when Hesiod penned
his Theogony, or book on the generation of gods, which is primarily a god reduction rescript of the Egyptian
pantheon.6
The ancient symbology of the evil snake doing battle, nightly, with the ‘good’ sun, however, is a core
religio-mythology, that goes back at least 2,200-year before the Theta symbol was introduced, and the myth
evolved or went through at least five rescripts. The following two quote, by Wallis Budge, gives a cogent
summary of the four main rescripts of the Theta symbol, or god-snake motif, over the last 5,000-years:
“The mythological and religious texts of all periods contain many allusions to the fight which Set waged
against Horus, and more than one version of the narrative is known. In the first and simplest form the
story merely records the natural opposition of day to night, or night to day, and the two combatant gods
were Heru-ur, or Horus the Elder, and Set. In its second form the two combatant gods are Ra and Set,
and the chief object of the latter is to prevent Ra from appearing in the East daily. The form which Set
assumed on these occasions was that of a monster serpent, and he took with him as helpers a large
number of small serpents and noxious creatures of various kinds. The name of the serpent was Apep [

] or Aaapef [ ], which is preserved in Coptic under the form [ ],

but he was also called Rerek [ ], and since he was identified with a long series of serpent
monsters he had as many names as Ra. In the third form of the story the combatant gods are Osiris and
Set, and we have already seen how Set slew his brother and persecuted his widow and child, and how he
escaped punishment because Osiris had, at the time of his death, none to avenge his cause. In the fourth
form of the story the combatant gods are Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, and Set, and the avowed
intention of Horus is to slay him that slew his father Osiris.”
— Wallis Budge (1904), The Gods of Egypt, Volume Two (pg. 254)
Likewise, the following quote, by Gerald Massey, summarizes the so-called fifth form or fifth incarnation
or rescript of the ancient tale or myth of good vs evil:
“The Hebrew Satan was the Egyptian Set, who became the evil one of the later theologies as an
anthropomorphic rendering of Apep the ‘serpent of evil’. Sut was one of the seven sons of the old ‘first
mother’, the goddess of the Great Bear in the astronomical mythology [astro-theology]. He was not one
of ‘the sons of god’, as there was no god extant when he was born. Sut was brought forth twin with
Horus, and first born as the adversary of his brother Osiris. In a truer version of the mythos the conflict
was in phenomena that were physical, not moral.”
— Gerald Massey (1907), Ancient Egypt: the Light of the Modern World, Volume Two (pg. 493)
Having now rendered the basic outline of the Theta symbol to the sun connection, the following alphabet
evolution table, shows how these sun symbols, were carried over, from Egyptian hieroglyphs, to the
Phoenician alphabet, to Greek alphabet letters:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 33

Numerically, in respect to the Greek numbers 1 to 9, as listed in the alphabet table, Ra, the main sun god of
Egypt, or in his syncretistic form of Ra-Atum, a c.2500 joining of the gods Ra + Atum, together with his or
34

their eight sibling gods, namely: Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys, as we will discuss
further in the ‘Sun gods’ and ‘Ancient Egypt’ sections, formed a group of gods called by the Greeks the
‘Ennead’ or Heliopolis Ennead, meaning group (or paut) of nine (9) gods. This Ennead (Ra + eight children
sun gods), was symbolized, in hieroglyphs, by the Egyptians, as nine axes, each axe, representative of the
‘power’ of a given god:
Ennead =
power here being thought of in the sense of war power. In the mind of a typical ancient Egyptian, however,
the axes would be ordered, one axe for each god, as follows:

Ennead = (Ra) + (Shu & Tefnut) + (Geb & Nut) + (Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys)
The origin and generation, of this group of original creation myth nine gods, is explained by the famous
Heliopolis creation myth, covered shortly. The numerical value of Theta equaling nine, therefore, is code for
the Theta Θ being symbolic of BOTH the supreme sun god, e.g. Ra or Atum-Ra, plus the Ennead, or nine-
god family derived from this sun god.
With these details in place, we next point out the peculiar fact that the ‘numerical sum’, per the Greek
numerical system, of the letters in the word Theta (Θῆτα), according to ‘isopsephy’, a learning technique, or
cypher technic, employed by early Greeks, who used pebbles arranged in patters to learn arithmetic and
geometry, has the same numerical value (318) as the term Helios (Ηλιος), as follows:
Θῆτα (Theta) = 9 + 8 + 300 + 1 = 318
Ηλιος (Helios) = 8 + 30 + 10 + 70 + 200 = 318
The number 318 is the number of the diameter of the perfect so-called ‘solar circle’, having a circumference
of1,000 units, namely the ‘monad’ in Greco-Hebrew arithmetic.8
Moving forward, we acknowledge that the ‘triangle’, throughout human history, at least as far as extant
alchemical texts illustrate, has been the symbol of ‘heat’ or ‘fire’, which in the post thermodynamics era,
became the symbol for change, e.g. the change in the internal energy, symbol U, of a system, defined as
follows:

where Ufinal (or UF) is the internal energy at the final state, of existence, of the system, and Uinitial (or UI) is
the measure of the internal energy at the initial state, of existence, of the system, and where Δ signifies the
change or final minus the initial values for each measure.
In c.570BC, Heraclitus, presumably after studying in the colleges of Egypt, as most Greeks did during
these centuries, developed his ‘en-ergon’ model, -ergon meaning ‘work’, and en- meaning ‘in’, ‘to go into’,
or ‘cause to be’, of things, wherein flux or change Δ and fire Θ was the basis of all things. The Heraclitus
model is shown below, in the context of the other models of this period:

In 350BC, Aristotle, in his Physics, building on the early en-ergon ideas of Heraclitus, along with the four
element and two force model Empedocles, and atoms and void model of Democritus, introduced the term
dynamis, meaning ‘potentiality’, along with a second term energeia, meaning ‘being at work’, or something
to this effect. These meanings are, to note, different from the modern day meanings, but his terminology
stuck.
In 1602, Galileo, after doing experiments with falling bodies and gravity, broke with the older models of
Aristotle, and went on, over the next thirty years, to found the outline or basis of what we now consider to
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 35

be modern ‘dynamics’. This Galilean version of dynamics was refined by Newton, Leibnitz, Lagrange, and
Hamilton.
In 1875, Clausius had subsumed the Hamilton version of dynamics, which was used to formulate the
internal energy, symbol U, of a system, after which time dynamics-models + heat-models became the
science of thermo-dynamics, as a new standalone universal science.
In sum, the basic model of how Pythagoras, and following him Democritus (c.420BC), Plato (360BC),
Kepler (1596, Croll (1909, Bergman (1775), and Maxwell (1876), were taught that fire relates to a Delta
symbol ‘Δ’ is outlined below:

The standard model, in the days of the pyramids, in Egypt, was a creation myth which said that first the
world existed as some type of primordial watery abyss or flood, water being hieroglyphically symbolized by
water waves , or the water god Nu, or the symbol N, as in Noah, in English alphabet notation, out of
which land, in the form of a pyramid, symbolized by Delta symbol ‘Δ’, arose, out of the tip of which the sun
burst forth, carried by a benu bird or ‘phoenix’, as Herodotus (450BC) named it.
The following, to put things into perspective, are views representative of the Egyptian to Greek cultural
transmission of this sun born out of a pyramid, or capital Delta Δ shape, etymology:
“Though it was primarily with reference to the properties and powers and motions of bodies that they
assigned them their shapes, the latter are inappropriate. For instance, since fire is mobile, and since it
heats and burns some made it a sphere, others a pyramid. They are the most mobile since they are in
contact with the fewest things and have the smallest base, the most productive of heat and burning
because the one, the sphere, is an angle all over, while the other, the pyramid, has the sharpest angles,
and heat and burning are produced by the angles, so they say. Next, if what is burned is set on fire, and
fire is a sphere or a pyramid, what is burned has to become spheres or pyramids.”
— Aristotle (c.350BC), De Caelo (306a26-307b5)
“There is also the problem of why a flame is shaped like a pyramid. Democritus says that as its
extremities cool down it contracts into a small shape and eventually tapers to a point.”
— Theophrastus (c.320BC), On Fire (52)
As heat, historically, as we see, has been associated with the pyramid or delta symbol, so to did the Delta
symbol Δ became the symbol of heat, change, or transformation in the science of thermodynamics.
“Thermodynamics is the kingdom of the delta.”
— Clifford Truesdell (1980), The Tragicomical History of Thermodynamics: 1822-1854 (pg. 3)
In respect to the thermodynamically important symbol ‘S’, which derives from the Greek Sigma ‘Σ’, the
latter of which being employed by Leonhard Euler in 1755 as the mathematical summation symbol ‘ ∑ ’,
while we cannot digress on this fully until we get to the Clausius chapter, we will point out that the symbol
S, in the sense of summation, was employed by Rudolf Clausius in 1865 for the term ‘entropy’,
conceptualized by him as the ‘sum’ of the all of the ‘transformation equivalents’ going into and out of any
system in the universe, in one ‘Carnot cycle’. We will learn these important terms as we progress. The
important point to see here, is that entropy is NOT a measure of disorder, it is a measure of an exact
differential transformation equivalent.
36

Suffice it to say, accordingly, prior to our soon to come engagement in chemical thermodynamics, aka
the ‘Kemetic art of ΘΔcs’, as Maxwell might vicariously say, it behooves one to learn a bit of the ancient
Greco-Egyptian theories of heat and chemistry, so as to situate things in historical context, not only in
respect to the heat symbol, but also to the main sun gods or ‘heat gods’ as they came to be conceptualized,
per reason that belief in them, in modern day cultural times, is still prevalent, albeit sublimated, in forms
such as the prophet Abraham or the god Brahma.
In sum, in this chapter, our point here was not to suggest that Thomson, Clausius, and Maxwell had
Egyptian mythology, religion, or secret coded symbolism in mind when they coined what we now refer to as
thermodynamics, but rather to point out that our language as a culture, scientifically and religiously, is
deeply imbedded with heat-based language, much of which being held strongly by some of our most
cherished beliefs about being, becoming, and existence. We have to get all of our cards out on the table,
before we can correctly play the game, in short.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. http://www.eoht.info/page/Neter
2. http://www.eoht.info/page/Chemistry+%28etymology%29
3. http://www.eoht.info/page/Thermodynamics+%28etymology%29
4. Read, John. (1957). From Alchemy to Chemistry (pg. 71). Dover, 1995.
5. http://www.eoht.info/page/Theta
6. http://www.eoht.info/page/theos
7. Massey, Gerald. (1883). The Natural Genesis: Second Part of a Book of the Beginnings, Containing an
Attempt to Recover and Reconstitute the Lost Origins of the Myths and Mysteries, Types and Symbols,
Religion and Language, with Egypt for the Mouthpiece and Africa as the Birthplace, Volume Two (pg. 337).
Williams and Norgate.
8. https://hmolpedia.com/page/318
9.
3. Gods | Ra and Heliopolis
“This name Abram or Abraham at once suggests the mythological nature of the history. It is one of the
innumerable instances in which, in the ancient world, the sun, or a priest of the sun, was claimed to be
the patriarch or first ruler or lawgiver of many nations. In Egypt ‘Ra’ was the Sun, and Osiris an
incarnation of the sun, was the first ruler there. Brahma was the first lawgiver of the Hindus, and there is
little doubt that ‘Brahman’, as stated by Thompson, in his notes to the Bhagavad-Gita, was originally a
name for the sun. This word ‘Ra’, meaning ‘bright’, is contained not only in the Egyptian
mythological names connected with the sun, but a long list might be given, in which it appears in the
names of all the sun heroes of all the Indo-Aryan languages, just as the cognate word ‘El’, ‘bright’,
appears, in the same way, in the names of the Semitic sun heroes.”
— Thomas Scott (1876), The Serpent in Mythology (pgs. 8-9)

Chapter point: Introduce Egyptian sun god based religio-mythology, and to give the outline of its modern
form, in terms of what are called rescripts, in the Abrahamic and Brahmic faiths [length: 11-pgs]

T
he following shows the distributions the world’s religious beliefs, which are divided according to the
sub-branches of either the Abrahamic (53% world belief) or Brahmaic (19% world beliefs), both
originally being ‘Father Ra of Egypt born out of the Nun or Keme’ belief systems, prior to their
cultural rescripts, which shows that, in large, Ra-based belief systems currently dominate the mindsets of
72% of the modern world, otherwise known in ancient days as Anunian theology or Ra theology (aka
Egyptian mythology):

Historically, Ra, the sun god, took on many incarnate forms. The following shows the five main sun gods,
aka ‘heat gods’, of Ancient Egypt, are shown below, upon which all ancient models of human origination,
existence, and becoming are based, baring digression on Yellow River based belief systems, which accounts
for a marginal section of the current world population:
38

Firstly, above left, is Ra, a falcon-headed god, on whose head rests the sun disc, surrounded by a snake, who
rides a solar barque though the sky carrying the sun and or turns into a bird and flies the sun through the sky
on its head; secondly Khepri, a scarab beetle who either flies the sun through the sky each day and or rolls
the sun through the sky only to bury it each night; three Atum, a god who either takes the form of the first
land mound that arises from the primordial watery abyss, out of which the sun bursts forth in the form of the
phoenix; forth Ptah who makes a golden egg out of which the sun is born; fifth Amen, who is said to be a
morph or reincarnated form of the previously named gods; and sixth Aten, who was considered a heat disc,
surrounded by a snake, whose sun rays were the long out-stretched arms of god. The semi-scientific poetic
descriptions of this last god, Aten, according to some, e.g. Karl Luckert (Egyptian Light and the Hebrew
Fire, 1991), boarder remotely on naturalistic scientific atheism.
To the shock of many if not most of the aspects of all of these six main sun god models have been
transmitted forward, in disguised form, into the majority of the world’s modern religions, and hence into the
taught childhood cultural knowledge; e.g. most do not know that the long outstretched ‘finger of god’ that
penned the Ten Commandments, onto two stone tablets, are rescripts of the sun ray arms and fingers of
Aten.1 Many, to note, do not take well to this unprogrammed view of things:
“The number of people on the borderline of insanity in a big country is simply appalling, and these
seem especially addicted to believing themselves, saviors, and prophets. It only takes a slight stimulus to
throw them entirely off their balance.”
— Clarence Darrow (1932), The Story of My Life
Accordingly, before we can engage properly in human chemical thermodynamics properly, which, again, is
the modern replacement and upgrade to the above summarized ‘heat-as-god’ logic, we must digress, again,
in what seems to be wasted page fluff, on Ancient Egypt.

3.1 | Ancient Egypt

In 3100 BCM, the 20 nomes (states) of Lower Egypt, numbered below, united with the 22 nomes of Upper
Egypt to form the first dynasty of Ancient Egypt, comprised of 42 united nomes or territories, each with its
own nome god, united by a state capital, originally situated at Heliopolis (#1) aka the city of the sun:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 39

As religio-political power shifted, over time, so too did the state capital, switching from Heliopolis (#1), to
Memphis (#2), to Hermopolis (#3), to Thebes (#4), to Amarna (#5), to Sais (#6), each with its own supreme
god, e.g. Ra-Atum, or god paut (group), e.g. Ogdoad, all bound by a henotheism or supreme god plus lesser
gods type of national religion.
In this map, we see, shockingly to some, the origin of many of our most ancient and cherished beliefs,
such as: a god (Khnum) creating humans from clay (Adam) and breath (Eve) in Elephantine, Horus (aka
Jesus) raising Osiris (aka Lazarus) from the dead, in as depicted on the temple walls at Dendera Temple
(30AD), the Hindu god Brahma (aka Ra) being born out of a lotus the stem of which arises from a water god
named VishNu (aka Nu), also as depicted on Dendera Temple walls. We see the origin of the ‘Christmas
Tree’ (aka djed pillar) in Busiris, certainly the author was bemused when, two decades ago he learned that
Egyptians put evergreen trees in the pyramids. We see the long-outstretched ‘fingers of god’, aka Aten’s sun
ray fingers, which, that we are told as children, penned the Biblical ten commandments, as depicted in the
temples at Amarna. We see the word ‘Amen’, aka god Amen, which in 20th century America was said at the
end of the Lord’s prayer, particular in in Church service, and we see the chief god of Thebes, the myth of
the sun being born out of a golden egg, crafted by the god Ptah, in Memphis, among others.
All of these Egyptian god models, are centered around the annual Nile River flood and its correlative
astro-theology conceptualized cosmology, the first dominate and longest running version of which being the
Heliopolis creation myth, promoted in the city of Heliopolis (#1), aka the ‘city of the sun’, the religious
center of Egypt in c.3500 BCM, whereat the sun god Ra was supreme. The Heliopolis creation myth, in
short, is based on the following factual data points:
40

Event #1. On Jun 25, the star Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, previously absent from sight for 70-
days, rises, and this so-called ‘helical rising’ marks the start of annual Nile River flood, water coming
from the melting of snow in the Ethiopian mountains, which lasts on average 150-days, which is
EXACTLY the number of days of the length
of Noah’s flood (Genesis 7:24), waters
rising to heights of 30-feet or three stories,
submerging entire islands.
Event #2. On Dec 10, as the waters begin
to recede, and a black fertile soil called
‘keme’, the root term of both Egypt and
chemistry, is left behind on the banks of the
Nile, the so-called Khoiak festival starts, a
planting of the grain month, that runs until
Jan 8; which, to note, is the forerunner to
our modern Christmas season, replete with
the raising of an evergreen tree, aka djed
pillar, or backbone of the god Osiris reborn
as a tamarisk tree, and the Dec 25 rebirth of the sun (in terms of brightness), in the form of the
syncretistic sun god Osiris-Ra.
The following, to exemplify, is an image of what the Nile flooding used to look like, for millennia on end,
prior to the completion of the Aswan Dam, in nome one, in the year 1970:

In 2500BC, when the pyramids were being built, the dominate version of the myth of land mound arising
out of the water abyss was the Heliopolis creation myth, promulgated in the city of Heliopolis, according to
which a land mound, conceptualized as the god Atum, arose out of the water abyss, conceptualized as the
god Nun, out of which simultaneously the sun burst forth, after which the god Atum, now in the form of a
man, appeared.
In more detail, the gist of this observable annual flood-star-sun pattern, resulted in a famous creation
myth, as formulated in Heliopolis, according to which, prior to the flat earth coming into being, things
existed in the form of a flood, water, or a watery abyss, which the Egyptians referred to as the god ‘Nun’ or
Nu, out of which a primordial land mound arose, from which the sun god Atum-Ra burst forth, carried into
the sky by the benu bird (aka phoenix), from whose powers he produced the group of nine gods called the
Ennead; the following is how it is explained on the walls of the pyramids:
“To say: O Atum-Khepri [Ra], when thou didst mount as a hill; and didst shine as bnw or benben
[bird] in the temple of the ‘phoenix’ in Heliopolis; and didst spew out as Shu, and did spit out as Tefnut;
(then) thou didst put thine arms about them, as the arm(s) of a ka, that thy ka might be in them. Atum, so
put thine arms about N; about this temple, about this pyramid, as the arm (s) of a ka; that the ka of N.
may be in it, enduring for ever and ever. O Great Ennead [9] who are in Heliopolis: Atum, Shu, Tefnut,
Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys.”
— Anon (c.2500BC), Pyramid Text (Utterance 600)
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 41

Here, we will recall that this ‘Ennead’, or group of nine [9] gods, born from the sun god [Ra], is where, as
we have shown, the Greek letter Theta ‘Θ’ arose, as employed by Maxwell in referring to science of
thermodynamics as ‘ΘΔ’.
The following diagram, so to bring all of this previously introduced alphabet and number etymology
introductory discussion full circle, is the basic model of the famous Heliopolis creation myth:

This Ra-Atum based Ennead creation myth, and surrounding mythology, before and after, up to the present-
day religious beliefs, to note, takes a minimum of ten years of rigorous study, inclusive of ‘unlearning’ what
one was previously taught, culturally, to get a beginner’s level understanding of this diagram.
The god Atum, to continue, originally a local god of Heliopolis, arose, of this primordial earth-covering
flood, either in the form of the primeval land mound, out of which the sun burst forth, in the form of the
benu bird, or phoenix, as Herodotus (450BC), or in the form of a human standing on the primordial land
mound, who summoned for the sun, or something to this effect, depending on the two alternative versions of
the myth that exist. Atum, as the new main creator god, made four generations of offspring gods and
goddess. In short, this utterance 600, states that Atum, described here as the syncretistic god Atum-Khepri,
i.e. the sun gods Atum and Khepri joined into one new supreme god, breathed out two more gods, Shu or
‘air’ and Tefnut or ‘moisture’.
42

Alternatively, to note, according to Pyramid Text Utterance 527, an alternative version of the myth
states that the creation of Shu and Tefnut is described such that ‘Atum took his phallus in his grip and
ejaculated through it to produce Shu and Tefnut’. This is an example of myth parallelism, often seen in
Egyptian mythology, meaning that two alternative theories are incorporated into the text, thought of as two
different hypothetical points of view. This myth parallelism was carried directly through into the penning of
the creation myth of the Bible, of which two creation myths, Creation Version A and Creation Version B, as
found on the Nesi-Amsu Papyrus (310BC), are told in parallel, not to mention that we can read Ovid’s
Metamorphosis (8AD), which can be
considered Version C, of the same
general original model.2
At this point, in the history of
human thought, we have the basics of
‘four element theory’, at least in its
proto-conceptual god-based
framework, the origination of all things
in terms of earth, air, water, and fire, as
illustrated adjacent (right).
Next, according to Heliopolis
creation myth, the gods Shu (air) and
Tefnut (moisture) divinely procreated
the gods Geb (earth) and Nut (sky), who were thereafter separated by their father Shu, who is shown below
holding them apart; and above which Ra the sun god rides in in solar barque, accompanied by the gods
Thoth, the god of wisdom and science, and Maat, the goddess of morality and justice, to be reborn each
day:

Also shown above, below each god name, is the Greco-Roman god rescript of each Egyptian god, as well as
the conceptual ‘thing’, e.g. sun, earth, heaven, morality, etc., each Egyptian god represented, a model
otherwise known as Egyptian cosmology; which, to note, is the forerunner to Aristotelian cosmology, and
hence Ptolemaic cosmology, aka an earth or Geb-centric (geo-centric) model of the world. It would not be
until the mind of Copernicus, and his On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs (1543), that this model
would be overthrown.
The following is a c.2500BC artistic representation of either Khepri, Atum-Khepri, or Khepri-Ra, from
one of the temple walls in Abydos, Egypt, carrying the sun through the sky on his solar barque:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 43

Next, according to Heliopolis the genesis story, Osiris (Christian rescript: God the Father / Holy Spirit) and
Isis (Christian rescript: virgin Mary) then paired to make the god Horus (Christian rescript: Jesus).
Next, Nephthys (Christian rescript: Mary Magdalene), who was, as the tale tells, an unwilling partner in
marriage to Set (Christian rescript: Satan), tricks Osiris into sleeping with her, via pretending that she was
her twin sister Isis, and therein makes Anubis (Christian rescript: John the Baptist) the mortuary and
baptism god. This genealogy, in this period, was a progressive merger of far older disjunct local
mythologies, e.g., in one older version, Anubis was the sun of Ra, and Horus, who battled Set, was the
oldest and greatest of all the gods.
In 2100BC, in the era the penning of the Coffin Texts (c.2100BC), the Atum-Khepri supreme god
model began to be replaced with a syncretism of the more ancient god Ra, aka the ‘father of the gods’
(Budge, 1904), whose origin is unknown, into the form of the joint god Atum-Ra.
In the Roman era, most of this Heliopolis myth was culturally known in the sense of a crude astro-geo-
cosmology; such as summarized below:
“Who is there that does not know that the vapor of the Sun is kindled by the rising of the dog-star
[Sirius]? The most powerful effects are felt on the earth from this star. "When it rises, the seas are
troubled, the wines in our cellars ferment, and stagnant waters [Nile] are set in motion. There is a
wild beast, named by the Egyptians Oryx, which, when the star rises, is said to stand opposite to it, to
look steadfastly at it, and then to sneeze, as if it were worshiping it. There is no doubt that dogs, during
the whole of this period, are peculiarly disposed to become rabid.”
— Pliny the elder (77AD), “On the Rising of the Dog Star”
Naturalistically speaking, Romans, in this period, and presumably Greeks and Egyptians prior, believed that
when Sirius rose, on Jun 25, the flame of the sun began to rekindle, and this somehow triggered the start of
the Nile River flood. Over time, going forward, the structure of the myth changed, as religious power
centers shifted from Heliopolis, to Memphis, to Hermopolis, to Thebes, to Amarna, to Jerusalem, to the
Middle East, as follows:9
0. Pre-Dynastic creation myth | 3500BC | Supreme god: Horus
1. Heliopolis creation myth | 3100BC | Supreme god: Atum-Ra / Ennead
2. Memphis creation myth | 2800BC | Supreme god: Ptah
3. Hermopolis creation myth | 2400 BC | Supreme god: Ogdoad
4. Thebian creation myth | 2050 BC | Supreme god: Amen
5. Amarnan creation myth | 1300BC | Supreme god: Aten
6. Second Theban recension | 1150BC | Supreme god: Osiris-Ra
7. Saite recension | 670BC | Book of Dead (canonized)
8. Biblical creation myth | 500BC | Supreme god: El-Yahweh-Amen
9. Muslim creation myth | 700AD | Supreme god: Allah
The core dominate strand of all of these myths, regardless of reformulation, was that Nu was a water god
who carried Ra as a sun god on his solar barque though his daily journey through the sky.
44

3.2 | Hindu and Judeo-Christian-Islamic Rescripts

The Egyptian Ra born out of Nu, or Ra carried by Nu, following the rising of Sirius, motif or model, over
time, via the methods of cultural migration, wars, study abroad education programs, and trade route based
information exchange, became rescripted, cross-culturally, as follows:
Ra Rescripts Nu Rescripts Sirius Rescript
Hindu (900BC) Brahma MaNu Saraswati
Judeo-Christian (300BC) Abraham Noah Sarah
Islam (600AD) Ibrahim Nuh Sara
Intermixed with this Ra-Nu sun rebirth motif was the famous so-called myth of the death and resurrection of
Osiris, which is based on the annual rising of the Orion constellation, which occurs nightly in late Nov to
Dec, wherein the human figure like Orion constellation of stars appears to be rising from the dead, such as
shown below at three time intervals on Dec 24:

This annual observable raising of the Orion constellation became the motif for c.2800BC myth of the death
and resurrection of Osiris, as shown below:

This model, when spread culturally, became the prototype for all dying and rising gods, historically, in the
form of what are called Osiris rescripts.3
In 30AD, a variant of the Osiris resurrection myth was being told, wherein the god Horus, the son of
Osiris, raises his father from the dead, such as shown below, left, as carved onto the walls of Dendera
Temple. By 550AD, this Horus raising Osiris model had been monotheistically recast into the myth of Jesus
(aka god Horus) raising the mummy Lazarus (i.e. El Osiris) from the dead, as shown on the walls Saint
Apollinare Nuovo Church, Ravenna, below right:4
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 45

In 1250 to 1150BC, in Thebes, the so-called ‘second Theban recension’ occurred resulting in Osiris and Ra
becoming reconceptualized as equal in supreme god power, in the form of the joint god Osiris-Ra, wherein
the annual Dec 25 rebirth of the sun and the Nov-Dec rising of Orion constellation, as shown above, were
rescripted to the affect that the sun or sun god Ra was said to be born out of the djed pillar or backbone of
the god Osiris, resurrected in the form of an evergreen tree (tamarisk tree), as shown below:

The gist of this myth, which is from where the modern Christmas tree with a star (or angel with sun disc
halo) at the top originated, is recounted as follows:5
“Myths told how the [bennu/phoenix] bird [bird that carried the newborn sun on its head] was born from
the midst of flames which arose from out of the summit of a tree in Heliopolis, and that it was known
to men by the beauty of its song, to which even the sun himself love to listen. The phoenix symbolized
the morning sun arising out of that fiery glow of dawn which dies away as the new born luminary
ascends the sky, and hence was regarded as the bird of Ra. But since the dead sun was held to become
an Osiris and the new sun to arise from the embalmed body of the old which had been duly brought to
Heliopolis, in like manner also the phoenix was supposed to be a form of Osiris in which the god
returned to his own country.”
— Alfred Wiedemann (1897), Religion of the Ancient Egyptians
As this Egyptian astro-theology was carried into neighboring cultures, the sun god Ra became: the Hindu
god Brahma (c.900BC), the Judeo-Christian prophet Abraham (c.300BC), and the Islam prophet Ibrahim
(c.600AD); the water god Nu became: the Hindu man MaNu and or the god VishNu (900BC), depending,
the Judeo-Christian man Noah (c.300BC), and the Islamic prophet Nuh (600AD); and god Osiris (as Orion)
became the Jewish lawgiver Moses as well as the Christian dying and rising god Jesus. A synopsis of these
‘physical things’ (river, star, sun, etc.) to ‘god’ to ‘prophet’ rescripts are tabulated below, for the five main
theologies:
46

Egyptian Hindu Jewish Christian Muslim

(3100BC) (800BC) (300BC) (300AD) (700AD)
Nile Nun VishNu / MaNu Noah Noah Nuh
Earth Atum Atman / Adimo Adam Adam Adam
Milky Way Hathor Eve Eve Hawa
Sun Ra Brahma Abraham Abraham Ibrahim
Sirius Isis Saraswati Sarah Sarah / Mary Sara / Maryam
Orion Osiris Krishna Moses Jesus Musa
The gist of Egyptian to Hindu myth rescript is shown below, wherein the sun god Ra is depicted, below left,
as a bulb of sun light coming out of a lotus (the stem of which dipping into the water god Nu), becomes the
Hindu creator god Brahma (the stem of which comes from the navel of the water god VishNu):6

The main rescripts of the Egyptian to Judeo-Christian-Islamic myth is shown below, wherein to make a
monotheism out of a polytheism, the ‘Hebrews turned gods into Patriarchs’ (Dunlap, 1858), aka they
effected a god-to-prophet rescript:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 47

In short, the god Atum became the man Adam, the goddess Hathor became Eve, the water god Nun became
the man Noah, the sun god Ra became the man Abraham, Ptah becomes the man Japheth (one of the three
sons of Noah), Shu becomes the man Joshua (son of Nun; Moses’ aid), Geb becomes the man Joseph (step-
father of Jesus) the syncretistic god Osiris-Dionysus became the lawgiver Moses, Osiris becomes god the
father and the holy spirit, Set becomes the Satan (or the devil), the goddess Isis becomes the virgin mother
Mary.
Moreover, Nephthys becomes Mary Magdalene, the syncretistic god Osiris-Horus becomes Jesus, the
god Anubis, cousin of Horus, became the John the Baptist, cousin of Jesus, and the 42 nome gods that sat in
attendance in the afterlife Judgment Hall, during the weighting of the soul, between Ra and Osiris, became
the 42 generations (men) between Abraham and Jesus. Last, but not least, the polymorphous god Amun (the
gods Nun, Ra, Ptah, and Atum incarnate), becomes rescripted as the word said at the end of prayers, all
amalgamated together into a sort of Shrek-like aggregate of all the main classic fairy tales or creation myths,
the numbers (1-4) indicating when the supreme god reformulations or recensions of the Egyptian state
religion took place, the first being when in Heliopolis the ancient god Ra and the local god Atum were
syncretized into the joint god Atum-Ra:
Next, in c.700AD, Islamic theologians would, in the same god-to-prophet reduction tradition, claim a
lineage from Abraham to Muhammad via an invented son Ishmael, substantiating the myth via a story that
Muhammad visited all the previous ‘prophets’, e.g. Moses, Abraham, Noah, and Adam, in his famous night
journey while riding on a flying donkey (buraq):7

The online ‘god character rescripts’ table goes through, in fuller detail, the god character equivalents, from
Egyptian, to Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Indian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Christian,
Germanic, and Muslim.8 The online ‘Osiris rescripts’ and ‘supreme god timeline’ tables should be consulted
as well to better understand the above.9 The subject of religio-mythology decoding is an evolved one, to say
the least.
Those new to the subject of religio-mythology and astro-theology, much of the above is still very
prevalent in the modern cultural milieu, as real beliefs, e.g. prior to 2003 the author actually believed, in
some naive sense, that Abraham was a real person, and would spend days in Barnes & Noble reading trying
to figure out who he was; accordingly, much time and reworking of the mind will be required to unlearn
much of the above mythology.
“Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach
superstitions as truth is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only
48

through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he or she be in after years relieved of them. The reason for
this is that a superstition is so intangible a thing that you cannot get at it to refute it.”
— Hypatia (c.400 ACM), Publication
The inquisitive reader is encouraged to read through the works of the top 155+ religio-mythology scholars
who have made the above decoding possible.10

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. http://www.eoht.info/page/Finger+of+god
2. www.eoht.info/page/Genesis
3. http://www.eoht.info/page/Osiris+rescripts
4. http://www.eoht.info/page/Raising+of+Lazarus
5. http://www.eoht.info/page/Christmas+Tree
6. http://www.eoht.info/page/Brahma
7. http://www.eoht.info/page/Judeo-Christian+pantheon
8. http://www.eoht.info/page/God+character+rescripts
9. (a) http://www.eoht.info/page/Osiris+rescripts
(b) http://www.eoht.info/page/Supreme+god+timeline
10. http://www.eoht.info/page/Religio-mythology+scholars
11.
4. Four Elements, Atoms, and Void
“Greeks, thirsting for knowledge, sought the Egyptian priests for instruction. Thales, Pythagoras,
Oenopides, Plato, Democritus, Eudoxus, all visited the land of the pyramids. Egyptian ideas were thus
transplanted across the sea and there stimulated Greek thought, directed it into new lines, and gave to
it a basis to work upon.”
— Florian Cajori (1991), A History of Mathematics

Chapter point: to outlined the Greek model of things, with focus on their views in respect to existence or
non-existence of the void [length: 4-pgs]

I
n c.850BC, the Greeks, beginning with Lycurgus, followed by Orpheus, Solon, Thales, Pythagoras,
Empedocles, Herodotus, Democritus, Plato, Eudoxus, and Manetho, travelled to Egypt, via the study
abroad method, to learn Egyptian cosmology, and to therein, over time, convert their god-based element
origin of things, into a proto-scientific water, earth, fire, air model of things.1 Thales, foremost among this
group, during his travels in Egypt, measured the height of a pyramid and to have introduced geometry into
Greece from his studies in Egypt. The key concept Thales took away from his studied in Egypt was the
model that the universe originally existed in the state of a watery abyss, called the Nun, and that from this,
the other three elements are derived.
“The Egyptian myth, of Atum rising from the Nun, i.e. of an earthen hill rising from the water chaos,
matches Thales’ world portrait better than anything gathered from the disjunctive mythology of
Greece.”
— Karl Luckert (1991), Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire (pg. 199)
Anaximander, Thales’ immediate student, likewise thought to have travelled to Egypt, and he is thought to
have expanded on his mentor’s philosophy, by focusing not on the water aspect of the Nun, but on the void
or infinity aspect of Nun, such as found in the space or void god Huh of the Hermopolis recension of the
creation myth, as shown below:

≈Θ
Δ≈
This so-called ‘Hermopolis creation model’, as is generally understood, such as speculated by Aristotle
(Physics, 320BC), is from where Hesiod, in his Theogony (700BC), derived his model of the god Chaos
(void), creating Gaea (earth) and Uranus (sky) origin of things, which he conceived as a void or gap.
Anaximander would have known both models. Anaximander summarizes his version of the origin of things
as follows, wherein the ‘apeiron’ is what he conceptualizes as the infinite void or boundary without form,
from which all things arise:
“It is neither water nor any other one of the things called elements, but the infinite [apeiron] is
something of a different nature, from which came all the heavens and the worlds in them. And from
50 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

what source they arise, to that they return of necessity when they are destroyed; for they suffer
punishment and make reparation to one another for their injustice according to the order of time.”
— Anaximander (c.545BC), Publication2
In 530BC, Pythagoras, in alignment with Anaximander, employed the notion of non-being or void as the
original chaos or dark abyss from which things; he is said to have argued the following:
“I assert the existence of the void, and hold that it enters the heavens from the unlimited breath, so
breathing the void, which demarcates natural things, forming a void space or distinction between things
which are in succession. It is this void which distinguishes their nature. Outside the cosmos there is a
void, into and out of which the cosmos breaths.”
In 520BC, Xenophanes, employing Anaximander’s apeiron model, stated things thusly:
“The upper limit of earth borders on air. The lower limit reaches down to the unlimited, i.e. the
apeiron.”
Xenophanes, in turn, is said to have influenced Heraclitus, the flux and fire based being and becoming
philosopher, and Parmenides, the being and void-denying philosopher. Parmenides, in turn, influenced,
Empedocles.
In 455BC, Empedocles, in his On Nature and Purifications, gives either of four or five element account
of things according to which the order of generation goes, depending on fragment and interpretation, as
follows:
“The strength of the aether pursues him [the daemon] into the sea, and the sea spits him onto the surface
of the earth, and the earth into the beams of the blazing sun, and it throws him into the eddies of the
air.”
— Empedocles (c.455BC), Fragment I11 / DK 115
Here, we have the general order: sea (root #1), earth (root #2), sun (root #3), air (root #4), and ether (root
#5), give or take debates on whether or not Empedocles considered either as an actual root. Another
fragment, which gives a different generation of roots order, reads as follows:
“First, hear the ‘four roots’ of all things, gleaming Zeus [Sun/Lightening] and life-bringing Hera
[Air/Earth] and Aidoneus [Air or Earth], and Nestis [water], who moistens with tears the spring of
mortals.”
— Empedocles (c.455BC), Fragment I12 / DK 6
The earliest contemporary account of this generation of roots process, which cites Empedocles as referring
to ether as the first root, reads as follows:
“Empedocles says that aether was separated off first, and fire second, after which came earth, from
which, as it was squeezed about by the force of the rotation, water gushed out. From the water, air was
vaporized and the heaven came into being from the aether, and the sun from the fire, and the things
around the earth were condensed from the others.”
— Aetius (c.125AD), Publication (2.6.3)
In 420BC, Democritus, after studying in Egypt or five years, and supposedly everywhere else for that
matter, would boast that he was one the smartest men on the planet, at least in respect to geometry:
“Among all my contemporaries, I have travelled over the largest portion of the earth in search of things
the most remote, and have seen the most climates and countries, heard the largest number of thinkers,
and no one has excelled me in geometric construction and demonstration—not even the geometers of
the Egyptians, with whom I spent in all five years as a guest.”
— Democritus (c.420BC), Fragment #; cited by Friedrich Lange (1865) in History of Materialism,
Volume One (pg. 17)
In this period, he developed, based on part of his studies of Leucippus and likely from the Hermopolis
creation model of the Egyptians, a theory arguing that the universe is comprised of things he called ‘atoms’,
from the Greek atomos meaning ‘uncuttable’; the following being the standardly accepted etymology of the
term:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 51

“It is called the ‘atom’ not because it is the smallest thing, but because it cannot be cut, since it cannot
be affected and contains no void.”
— Eusebius (c.313), Praeparatio Evangelica (XIV.14.5)
The following, to summarize, are the various derived methodologies, according to which each philosopher
transformed the Egyptian god-based four element theory into a proto-scientific theory of the first principles
or basic stuff of things (those show with an E superscript are definitively known to have travelled to study
abroad in Egypt), the main god of each element shown as well:3

Other
Heliopolitans (2600BC)

[Nun] [Atum] [Ra]

[Shu]
Hermopoleans [Ogdoad] [Atum] [Ra] [Shu]
(2400BC)
Hesiod (700BC) [Chaos] [Gaia]
Thales (580BC)E Primary matter
Anaximander (570BC) Primary matter Apeiron
Anaximenes (545BC) Primary matter
Pherecydes (540BC) Primary matter
Pythagoras (530BC)E Derived Derived Derived Monad / Yes
Void

Tetractys
Xenophanes (520BC) Primary matter Primary matter Apeiron
Heraclitus (495BC) Secondary matter Secondary matter Primary
matter
Parmenides (470BC) Primary matter Primary matter Being
Leucippus (460BC) Atoms & Void
Anaxagoras (460BC) Ether / No Void
Empedocles Root 1 Root 2 Root 3 Root 4 Love and Strive
E (ether: root 5) (no emptiness)
(455BC)

Democritus (420BC)E Atoms & Void

Pyramid

Plato (385BC)E

Icosahedron Cube Tetrahedron Octahedron Dodecahedron

Aristotle (340BC) Primary Primary Primary Primary Ether /
Teleology
Epicurus (300BC) Atoms & Void
Atoms & Void
Lucretius (55BC)
Round atoms Pointed / Tiny
Hooked atoms atoms
52 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

The term ‘atom’, as some, e.g. Rene Lubicz (1948), have conjectured, could possibly be etymologically
related to the Egyptian land god Atum.4 Likewise, the term ‘void’, meaning empty space, derived either
from Hesiod’s Chaos model, as Aristotle conjectures, or from of the Egyptian void god Huh of the
Hermopolis creation model, which he would have learned in Egypt.
In c.300BC, Epicurus, likewise, after being taught as a youth Hesiod’s Egyptian based creation model,
became dissatisfied with the underlying explanation of chaos, and so therein sought out void based atomic
theory as an upgraded solution:
“Apollodorus, the Epicurean, in the first book of his Life of Epicurus, says that Epicurus turned to
philosophy in disgust at the schoolmasters who could not tell him the meaning of ‘chaos’ in Hesiod.
According to Hermippus, however, he started as a schoolmaster, but on coming across the works of
Democritus turned eagerly to philosophy.”
— Diogenes Laertius (c.230AD), Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (§:X.1)
Shown adjacent, is an overview of Democritus-Epicurean model
of ‘atoms and voids’ being the nature of the structure of the
universe, according to which there existed different types of
atoms: hooked, spiked, smooth, rough, pyramid-shaped, and so
on, that existed in a void of space, from which all things derived.
Empedocles and Democritus, in particular, would go on to
dominate the mind of Aristotle, who in turn dominated the mind
of humanity for the next two millennia; dominate, that is, until
some, in the 16th century, e.g. Jean Fernel (1548), began to take a
stand and question some of the basic tenets of Aristotelianism.
Intermixed in all of this, as discussed in the next chapter, is
Parmenides’ denial of the void and later Otto Guericke’s 1647 to
1663 attempts to demonstratively make a void, which is the starting point of the derivation of the equations
of thermodynamics.

References
1. http://www.eoht.info/page/Egypt
2. Luckhert, Karl. (1991). Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire: Theological and Philosophical Roots of
Christendom in Evolutionary Perspective (pgs. 199-200). SUNY Press.
3. http://www.eoht.info/page/God+character+rescripts
4. http://www.eoht.info/page/Atoms+and+Atum
5.
5. Parmenides (470BC)
“Parmenides’ theory may be described as the first hypothetico-deductive theory of the world. The
atomists took it as such; and they asserted that it was refined by experience, since motion does exist.
Accepting the formal validity of Parmenides’ argument, they inferred from the falsity of his conclusion
the falsity of his premise. But this meant that the nothing — the void, or empty space — existed.
Consequently, there was now no need to assume that ‘what is’ — the full, that which fills some space —
had no parts; for its parts could now be separated by the void.”
— Author (1958), “Back to the Presocratics”

Chapter point: Give overview to the philosophically-confused supposition that a void, vacuum, or empty
space cannot exist, is an impossibility, and or an abhorrence to nature [length: 4-pgs].

I n 495 BCM, Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, commonly known as the ‘flux and fire’ philosopher, the
‘riddler’, as the Stoics called him, or the ‘murky’, in his now-lost On Nature, following his education in
Egypt, posited that fire is the primary element, and from fire, the secondary elements water and earth
are derived; the following is a preserved fragment of his logic:
“The universe, that is the all, is made neither of gods nor men, but ever has been and ever will be an
eternal living fire, kindling and extinguishing in destined measure.”
— Heraclitus (c.495BC), On Nature
In his scheme, these three elements, fire, earth, and water, supposedly, are presumed, according to historical
consensus, although only few extant fragments of his work exist, to be embedded in some type of ‘void’, the
operation of which accrues according to which there exists a universal tension, which ensures that ‘change’
is continual, that everything is in a state of flux, whereby permanence does not exist in the universe, only the
permanent condition is that of ‘change’, as a result of the transformations of fire, or an admixture of flux and
fire.
The unwritten logic of this Heraclitean argument is that the ‘being’ of things, think human being here,
and the concordant idea of ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, is always in a continual state of change, towards
becoming something new. Heraclitus, accordingly, in his philosophy, denied the reality of an ‘unchanging
being’, and is retrospectively classified as a ‘being and becoming’ philosopher. The go-to example of being
and becoming, in human chemical thermodynamics, as will be discussed, is the scenario of the Captain, of
Goethe’s Elective Affinities (1809), ‘becoming’ a Major, and therein being able to respectively to marry
Charlotte, owing to the social standing of his new being.
In 470 BCM, Parmenides, a Greek
philosopher, characterized a ‘monistic
materialist’, similar to Heraclitus, albeit
divergent in views, published a rather peculiar
argument, classically understood as an attack on
Heraclitus, which some have called the most
‘paradoxical and absurd metaphysical
arguments in the history of philosophy’, in
defense of what might be called continuity of being, the gist of which, is that a ‘void’, and concordantly
‘motion’, are impossible, per logic that if a void existed, then ‘being’ could, theoretically, go into ‘non-
being’, which is an ‘absolute impossibility’, according to Parmenides. The following are fragments of
Parmenides’ argument:1
“Therefore, must it either be altogether or be not at all. Nor will the force of truth suffer ought to arise
besides itself from that which is not. Wherefore justice doth not lose her fetters and let anything come
into being or pass away, but holds it fast. Our judgement thereon depends on this: ‘It is or is it not?’
Surely it is adjudged, as it needs must be, that we are to set aside the one way as unthinkable and
54 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

nameless (for it is no true way) and that the other path is real and true. How, then, can what is be going
to be in the future? Or how could it come into being? If it came into being, it is not; nor is it if it is going
to be in the future. Thus, is becoming extinguished and passing away are not to be heard of.”
— Parmenides (c.470BC), The Way of Truth (fragment 8)
Said another way:
“Being is unbegotten, indestructible, whole, eternally one, immovable and infinite. With it there is no
was nor shall be; the whole is forever now, one and continuous.”
— Parmenides (c.470BC), Fragment; cited by: Henry Bray (1910) in The Living Universe (pg. 251)
Parmenides, in sort, believed in one and only one unchanging and immovable ‘being’. As movement and
change, accordingly, would require a ‘void’ to operate, the nature of which would allow for un-being, he
denied both, along with birth and death. The paucity of extant Parmenides fragments and commentary on his
views leaves the mind wanting for elaboration; the following, however, seems to capture the gist of what
Parmenides was so-strongly arguing about:7

The presumed reality of motion, birth, change, and death, according to Parmenides, are illusions, they do not
exist. Parmenides, according to another interpretation, was arguing that it is impossible to form a concept of
no-thing-ness or ‘non-being’, which is what belief in the void amounted to.3 There is, to note, supposedly,
an ongoing controversy, as fragments are lacking detail, as to whether Parmenides was consciously
attempting to refute Heraclitus; the fragments available, however, are too limited to be able to summarize
the matter conclusively. The reader is encouraged to peruse the online Greek philosophy tree, showing the
top 70 Greek philosophers, and how the influences of Heraclitus and Parmenides played out in respect to
influence, wherein we see that Zeno of Elea, Melissus, and Empedocles were the main absorbers of
Parmenides no-void theory, and that the former two influenced and or mentored Leucippus, who in turn
taught Democritus, the famous leader of atomic theory:4
In 455BC, Zeno of Elea, Parmenides’ first main student, defended the views of Parmenides, including
supposedly his belief in denial of the void, in the Athenian tribunal, in the presence of Socrates.5 Also, that
year, give or take, Empedocles, Parmenides second main student, likewise professed a modified
reformulation of his mentor’s void-denying model
“The universe has no space that is empty nor space that is overcrowded.”
— Empedocles (c.455BC), Fragment I19 / DK13
Empedocles, here, similar to Parmenides, seems to deny the void per reason that he finds it inconceivable
that being could come out of non-being:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 55

“It is impossible that there should be coming to be from what is not [void], and that what is [as
being] should be destroyed, is unaccomplishable and unheard of; for it will always be there, wherever
one may push it on any occasion.”
— Empedocles (c.455BC), Fragment I18 / DK12
Empedocles would later state as a matter of fact, according to Theophrastus (De Sensibus, c.340BC), that
‘there is absolutely no void’. The extant fragments of Empedocles, however, to note, are not this explicit.
In 430 BCM, Melissus, Parmenides’ third main student, continued with Parmenides’ anti-void
argument, based on denial of non-being, with explicit void denial:2
“There is absolutely NO void. For void is not-being and the nothing could not exist. And it does not
move. For it cannot move in any direction. But it is full. For if there were void, it would move into that
void, but since there is no void it has nothing to move into.”
— Melissus (c.430BC), Fragment
Zeno and Melissus both, in turn, taught or influenced Leucippus, the purported inventor of atoms and atomic
theory, who in turn taught Democritus, the presumed intellectual father of Epicurus. The latter two,
Democritus and Leucippus, however, broke with the void-denying philosophy of the latter, Zeno and
Melissus.
“The ‘plenum’ [space with atoms] and ‘void’ [space without atoms], according to Democritus, exist, the
one as ‘being’, the other as ‘not being’.”
— Aristotle (350BC), Physics (§1.4)
Specifically, in 460BC, Leucippus, followed by Democritus, in 420BC, decided that the way to solve the
impasse was to accept the existence of the void; this new void-accepting philosophy is summarized as
following:
“Leucippus associated in philosophy with Parmenides, but did not follow the same path as Parmenides
and Xenophanes about what there is, but, it seems, the opposite. For they, Parmenides and Xenophanes,
made the universe consist of one changeless, ungenerated, and bounded thing and did not admit that one
could even think of what is not [void], while Leucippus posited the atoms, an infinite number of
elements in continual motion, and held that they have an infinite number of shapes, since there is no
more reason for them to be one shape than another, and that come to be and change are unceasing
among the things that there are. Further, that which exists no more than that which is not, and both are
alike causes of the things that come to be. For positing the nature of the atoms as solids and a plenum he
said that it is ‘what is’ and that it travels about in a void, which he called ‘what is not’ and said that it
is no less than what is.”
— Simplicius (c.530), Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (28.4-27)
To restate, as summarized cogently by James Partington, in his A Short History of Chemistry (1957), via
citation to Aristotle:6
Eleatic school (Xenocrates, Parmenides, Zeno): Without a vacuum, there is no motion; there is no
vacuum [because being cannot go into non-being], hence there is no motion.
Atomic school (Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus): Without a vacuum, there is no motion; there is
motion [it is observable around us], hence there is a vacuum.
This new ‘atoms and void’ school carried forward, as a matter of fact, into the mind of Epicurus, who
penned an entire book, now lost, entitled Of Atoms and Void (c.290BC), wherein he, supposedly, expounded
on the theory of the existence of atoms moving in a void. The gist of this new atomic theory void-accepting
school of thought, is summarized as follows:
“All of the atomic theorists, i.e. Leucippus, Democritus, Epicurus, and many others, cite the
involvement of the ‘void’ as the cause of the differentiation of the corpuscles, since what is truly
continuous in their view indivisible. Democritus, in particular, says that ‘void’ is not-being and a
privation.”
— Themistius (c.320AD), Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics (123.18-20; 129.8-9)
In. c.390BC, Plato, conversely, who hated the ideas of Democritus, and his school, e.g. he famously
professed a desire to burn all of Democritus’ books, came to find, naturally enough, the idea of a vacuum
56 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

inconceivable. Plato, in turn, passed his views along to Aristotle, who in c.350BC declared the now-famous
dictum horror vacui or ‘nature abhors a vacuum’, on the logic that in a ‘complete vacuum’, infinite speed
would be possible, because motion would encounter no resistance; hence, per reasoning that infinite speed
was impossible, so too is a vacuum.
While the subject of ‘Parmenides vs Heraclitus’ is a seemingly prolonged topic, in and of itself, the
point to note here, is that Parmenides’ denial of the void is an historical anchor point in the history of
thermodynamics. Specifically, as we will shortly discuss, Parmenides’ denial of the void, as it was digested
by the mind of Aristotle, later spurred on the inquisitive mind of Otto Guericke (1647), who decided he
would settle the matter of the vacuum debate, by making a vacuum, experimentally, which thus resulted in
the invention of the piston and cylinder. This invention, led to the later invention of the steam engine, by
Denis Papin (1690), which was transformed into the theoretical Carnot engine, by Sadi Carnot (1824),
which gave birth to the science of thermodynamics by Clausius (1865), which then became the science of
chemical thermodynamics, via of Gibbs (1876), Lewis (1923), and Guggenheim (1933), and from thence
human chemical thermodynamics, as has now very-slowly been developing in the last century.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. Menakie, George T. (2004). Three Traditions of Greek Political Thought: Plato in Dialogue (pgs. 79-80).
Publisher.
2. Algra, Keimpe. (1995). Concepts of Space in Greek Thought (pg. 43). Brill.
3. (a) Anon. (2012). “Introduction to Parmenides” (Ѻ), Academy of Ideas, YouTube, Dec 17.
(b) http://www.eoht.info/page/Nothingness
4. http://www.eoht.info/page/Greek+philosophy
5. Luckhert, Karl. (1991). Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire: Theological and Philosophical Roots of
Christendom in Evolutionary Perspective (pg. 211). SUNY Press.
6. Partington, James. (1957). A Short History of Chemistry (pg. 164). Dover.
7. http://www.eoht.info/page/god+void
8.
6. Aristotle (350BC)
“Did vast, intermediate, and endless space fill me with curiosity and infuse me with a desire to
investigate it. For indeed, what is it? Inasmuch as it contains all things, it serves as a place for ‘being’
and ‘existing’.”
— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 84)

Chapter point: to introduce Aristotle’s discussion of ‘place’, which later would significantly stimulate the
mind of Otto Guericke (1647), the inventor of the vacuum pump, the piston and cylinder, and the
popularization of the premise the power of the vacuum, and its ability to do work. We will also summarize
Aristotle’s model of ‘teleology’, or the destiny of things. [length: 4-pgs]

I
n 350BC, Aristotle, in book one of his Physics treatise, stated that when the objects of an inquiry, in any
department, have principles, causes, or elements, it is through acquaintance with these that knowledge
and understanding is obtained, per the reasoning that we do not think that we ‘know a thing’, until we
are acquainted with its primary causes or first principles, and have carried our analysis as far as its elements.
These principles in question, in Aristotle’s time, were divided between two schools of thought, namely:
those of the philosophical school of Parmenides and Melissus, who adhered to the ‘motionless model’ of all
things, according to which all that exists is one and motionless, and those of the physicists school of
Democritus and Leucippus, the atomists, Heraclitus, the flux and fire philosopher, and Anaximander,
Anaxagoras, and Empedocles, the mixture and segregation of elements thinkers, all of whom adhered to a
‘motion model’ of things. Aristotle, in his Physics, compares and contrasts the logic of these two schools of
thought.
In book four of his Physics, Aristotle jumps from a discussion of motion, to a discussion of ‘place’, in
respect to motion, per his view that motion in its most general and proper sense is change of place; he
explains this as follows:
“The physicist must have a knowledge of ‘place’, too, as well as of the infinite—namely, whether there
is such a thing or not, and the manner of its existence and what it is—both because all suppose that
things which exist are somewhere (the non-existent is nowhere: where is the goat-stag or the sphinx?),
and because motion in its most general form and proper sense is change of place, which we call
locomotion.”
— Aristotle (c.322BC), Physics (§1.4, pgs. 354-55)
The term loco-motion, from the Latin locus + English motion, to clarify, means a change of location, or an
act or power of moving from one place to another place.4 In Aristotle’s theory, his model of place and the
power of moving from one place to another, held at the element scale and the human scale.
Aristotle, then goes into his conceptual model of place, by using the analogy or model of a vessel that is
able to hold water or air:
“The existence of ‘place’ is held to be obvious from the fact of mutual re-place-ment. Where water now
is, there in turn, when the water has gone out as from a vessel, air is present; and at another time,
another body occupies this same place. The place is thought to be different from all bodies which come
to be in it and replace one another. What now contains air formerly contained water, so that clearly the
place or space into which and out of which they passed was something different from both.
Furthermore, the locomotions of the elementary natural bodies, namely: fire, earth and the like, show
not only that ‘place’ is something, but also that it exerts a certain influence.”
— Aristotle (c.322BC), Physics (§1.4, pg. 355)
Here, according to Aristotle, place or space exerts a certain influence. Moreover, and more importantly, i.e.
important to the development of the science of thermodynamics, is that we are being painted a mental
picture of some sort of vessel, cup, vase, or possibly a barrel, or a shape of some sort, defined by a
boundary, into or out of which substances, such as liquids or gases, can pass. Aristotle, in other words, is
beginning to adumbrate what we now refer to as the thermodynamic ‘system’, albeit in very basic and
58 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

rudimentary terms. The adjacent image, form the 2011 Topi.org conference on ‘Changing Places: the
Physics and Metaphysics of Space in Aristotle’, gives a general idea of visual model of Aristotle’s concept
of a ‘vessel’, with a defined boundary, that acts as the container for the ‘place’ or space of something, such
as wine, water, or air.
The following, to clarify further, are a few key quotes
from Aristotle’s chapter on place:
“The ‘plenum’ [space with atoms] and ‘void’ [space
without atoms], according to Democritus, exist, the one as
‘being’, the other as ‘not being’.”
— Aristotle (350BC), Physics (§1.4)
“The theory that the ‘void’ exist, involves the existence of
place, for one would define void as a place bereft of
body.”
— Aristotle (350BC), Physics (§1.4, pg. 355)
Next, following a citation of Hesiod who says: ‘first of all
things, came chaos to being, then broad breasted earth’, which is but a secular rescript of the Egyptian
creation model, Aristotle begins to speak about the supposed ‘power of place’, a forerunner to the later
concept of the power of the vacuum:
“The power of place must be a marvelous thing, and be prior to all other things. For without which
nothing else can exist, while it can exist without the other, must need be firs; for place does not pass
out of existence when the things in it are annihilated.”
— Aristotle (c.322BC), Physics (§1.4, pg. 355)
In the next statement, we move into a difficult conceptual topic of discussion:
“Also, we may ask: of what in ‘things’ is space the cause? None of the four modes of causation can be
ascribed to it. It is neither cause in the sense of the matter of ‘existences’, for nothing is composed of it,
nor as the form and definition of things, nor as end, nor does it move existents.”
— Aristotle (c.322BC), Physics (§1.4, pg. 356)
In the modern view of things, when action such as combustion occurs, the chemical reaction actuates a bond
change, which in turn yields a geometrical change in space or ‘place’ as Aristotle would define things, per
reason that the valence shell electrons of the atoms involved in the reaction migrate into a new more stable
arrangement. This new electron arrangement, in turn, moves the nucleus of each respective atom, according
to which the products have a different space or place than as compared to the reactants. This will be
evidenced in the Da Vinci chapter on the gunpowder combustion engine, wherein the explosion of
gunpowder actuates a vacuum, inside of the place, in da Vinci’s case a cannon barrel, and resulting place or
vacuum does move existents, namely the piston of his cannon barrel, which lifts a weight in the air.
In the chapter on Lawrence Henderson, we will discuss causation in more detail, per reason that
Henderson, in his 1940s Harvard Sociology 23 course, devoted considerable time on discussion of the new
post-thermodynamics era reformulation as causation reinterpreted as change of state, wherein causation
models, to some extent, become obsolete, or at least upgraded, so to say.

6.1 | Teleological Physics

The second main aspect of the work of Aristotle, we need to take note of, in respect to its ongoing residual
implications seen in modern debates on the topic of chemical thermodynamics applied socially, is his
concept of teleology, from the Greek telos ‘end’ + -logia ‘divine origin’, a doctrine holding that matter —
specifically matter of the four elements: earth, air, water, fire — or matter in any its modern formulations,
e.g. sentient matter — has a goal, conceived as its ‘purpose’, which is to go to its natural place, i.e. its ‘end’
or ‘final cause’, its satiated location in the cosmos, in short.
As to where this concept derives, the following statement points to a belief, by Aristotle, in the possible
existence of a partial void, or at least a ratio of solid-to-void existing in nature:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 59

“For any two portions of fire, small or great, will exhibit the same ratio of solid to void; but the
upward movement of the greater is quicker than that of the less, just as the downward movement of a
mass of gold or lead, or any other body endowed with weight, is quicker in proportion to its size.”
On this basis, in Aristotle’s scheme, the universe consisted of four elements: water, earth, fire, and air,
which were said to move according to what he called a ‘teleological principle’, according to which each
element or thing had a certain density, or solid to void ration, the lighter ones, tending to rise, the heavier
one’s tending to sink, such as depicted below:

Here, according to this model, all things in the universe, in Aristotle’s view, were said to seek their natural
place in the universe. The following summaries the gist of Aristotle’s teleological physics, namely how
place exists, how there are elements, and also how an inclination exists working to move things to their
natural place in the cosmos:2
“Place, according to Aristotle, resembles form and is the first limit of the containing body. Hence, the
cosmos is intrinsically directional: ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘front’, and ‘back’ are not just relative to
us but are given in the cosmos itself. Within the cosmos all things, whether made or natural, animate or
inanimate, are made up of the elements, and there is nothing material outside the cosmos. Each element
possesses a specific nature, its ‘inclination’: the active orientation of each element toward its proper
place, e.g., up or down. Consequently, place and inclination work together place constitutes the formal
limit and directionality of the world, the ‘where things are’, while each element is limited and possesses
inclination toward its proper place. As a result of this partnership, natural motion in things, in the
absence of hindrance, is completely regular it exhibits the order of nature and the account of nature as
itself orderly.”
— Helen Lang (1998), The Order of Nature in Aristotle’s Physics: Place and the Elements (pg. 10)
Plato’s conception of soul mates, is the one of the more famous examples of this scheme. In Plato’s model,
humans originally were thought to be formed in pairs, at first mixed together into one formed mass, like a
ball of clay on a potter’s wheel. The divine potter, e.g. the god Zeus, as Plato described things, to the formed
mass, replete with some type of soul substance, and split it in half, and used one chunk of this divine clay to
form the man, the other chunk to form the woman. These male-female pairs, were then set adrift, after
which, many years later, each human spent their days roaming the earth in search of their long lost soul
mate, owing to this natural purported natural inclination of things to find their proper place in the universe.
Plato, in turn, taught some variant of this to Aristotle, his student, some aspects of which we glean in
Aristotle’s inclination theory based teleology model element motion.3
60 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Aristotle, in turn, taught his cosmology to Alexander the Great, his pupil. In the centuries to follow,
through the influence of Alexander, in forming the Greco-Roman empire, Aristotle’s general cosmological
model soon became the standard scientific model of things, for nearly the next two millennia.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. http://www.eoht.info/page/Place
2. Lang, Helen. (1998). The Order of Nature in Aristotle’s Physics: Place and the Elements (pg. 10).
Cambridge, 2007.
3. http://www.eoht.info/page/Soul+mate
4. Merriam‐Webster Collegiate Dictionary (2000).
5.
Engines

I n the following set of chapters, we will be covering the development of the steam engine, from Hero,
to Watt, all of which were subsumed in 1824 by Sadi Carnot, in his abstract Carnot engine.

(add)
62 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism
8. Hero’s Pneumatica (50AD)
“It is said that Ctesibius invented the piston and cylinder before 200BC.”
— Richard Kirby (1956), History of Engineering (pg. 154)

Chapter point: Give the general overview of the Greek to Italy to Europe transmission of ideas about
pneumatics and fire-based steam produced motion, thanks to Hero’s Pneumatic [length: 8-pgs]

I
n 230BC, Ctesibius, pronounced ‘Ta-sib-e-us’, a Greek engineer and mathematician, was noted for a
number of inventions, such as the ‘aeolipile’ (heat engine), piston and cylinder (system), pipe organ
(hydraulics), counterweight adjustable mirrors, a water clock (clepsydra), force pumps (water lifting
device), the principle of the siphon; he published On Pneumatics, now lost on the elasticity of the air.
In 50AD, Hero, a Greek physicist, engineer, and mathematician, in his Pneumatica, compiled all the
wisdom previous to him in respect to pneumatical machinery, particular the work of Ctesibius and the
physics of Strato, and described 78 pneumatical devices, such as automatons, singing birds, and solar-
powered water fountains, among others, that operate via either air pressure differences and or heating
effects.
The following, below right, shows a four-cylinder one-horsepower pump, which, supposedly, is found
in one of Hero's 1589 Pneumatica reprints, which illustrates the transformation of rotary motion, via gears,
to reciprocating motion, in the form of the piston rod going up and down, which works to pump water
upwards, thus doing gravitational work, or weight lifted though a height:

The following shows, at left, Hero’s design for opening temple doors with fire; his aeolipile, center, an early
steam turbine; and, at right his syringe, used for either ejecting things, or for sucking up things:1
64 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

In his description of the syringe, Hero, of note, differing from the standard Aristotle model of things, freely
advocates the existence of the vacuum in his description of the syringe’s operation:
“The instrument called a ‘pyulcus’ [syringe] acts on the same principle. A hollow tube, of some length,
is made, A B; into this another tube, C D, is nicely fitted, to the extremity C of which is fastened a small
plate or piston, and at D is a handle, E, F. Cover the orifice A of the tube A B with a plate in which an
extremely fine tube, G H, is fixed, its bore communicating with A B through the plate. When we desire
to draw forth any pus, we must apply the extreme orifice of the small tube, H, to the part in which the
matter is, and draw the tube C D outwards by means of the handle. As a ‘vacuum’ is thus produced
in A B something else must enter to fill it, and as there is no other passage but through the mouth of the
small tube, we shall of necessity draw up through this any fluid that may be near. Again, when we wish
to inject any liquid, we place it in the tube A B, and, taking hold of E F, depress the tube C D, and force
down the liquid until we think the injection is effected.”
— Hero (50AD), Pneumatica (device #57)
In the 13th century, and nearly every century to follow, Hero’s Pneumatica was translated and reprinted in
nearly all countries, but particularly in Italia at first, where it began to have gradual effect, in the slow, trial
and error, development of many types of air pressure and steam devices and engines, which is difficult to
pin down in any exact way.

8.1 | Engine Pioneers

The following is online engine development table, which gives short historical overview of the
chronological development of the heat engine, Archimedes to Carnot, be it a vacuum engine, heat engine,
steam engine, or combustion engine:2

Person Date Engine Description

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
‐‐‐‐‐

Invented, according to da Vinci (c.1500),

Archimedes a so‐called architronito, or steam‐
(287‐212BC) powered cannon that throws 70lb iron
Architronito
balls, via the action of “great noise and
1. c.235BC (steam
fury”, at the enemy, by the action of
cannon)
heat derived from burning coals;
diagrams of which are found in da
Vinci’s notebooks.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 65

Ctesibius
(c.285‐222BC)
2. c.230BC Aeolipile

Hero
(c.10‐70AD)
3. c.50AD Aeolipile

Da Vinci, according to the arguments of

Ladislao Reti (1969), was the first to:
state that condensed steam makes a
Da Vinci
vacuum, before Gerolamo Cardano
engine [s]
(1550) is blurrily‐cited to have done so;
Leonardo da Vinci first to make a gunpowder engine,
Type:
(1452‐1519) before Christiaan Huygens (1673), Denis
Papin (1674), and Jean Hautefeuille
4. 1508 Gunpowder
(1678); was the “unknown author” cited
engine
by Giovanni Branca (1629), in respect to
Steam
his Hero‐like steam turbine; and that he
cannon
was the true inventor of the steam‐
Steam
powered cannon (Architronito), not
turbine
Archimedes, per argument that
Archimedes only invented an ordinary
gunpowder cannon.
Gerolamo Cardano
(1501‐1576)
5. 1550

Lazarus Ercker
5. (c.1530‐c.1594) 1574

In his Spiritali, following or amid a

French translation of Hero’s steam
machine work, reproduced Hero's
Porta engine aeolipile and his solar boiler device,
Giovanni Porta after which, he added an illustrated
(1535‐1615) Type: modified variant of his own, similar to a
6. c.1601 combination of the above two devices;
Improved as shown below, wherein, a fire is put
Hero under flask a, filled with water, which
fountain makes steam, that enters closed
container b, filled with cold water,
which forces the water to shoot out of
tube c, into the external air.
66 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Cornelis Drebbel
(1572‐1634)
7. 1609

Salomon de Caus
(1576‐1626)
8. 1615 Caus engine

Steam
turbine
Giovanni Branca
9. (1571‐1645) 1629 Type:

Modified
aeolipile
Under the idea influence of de Caus,
Ramsay applied for a patent for a device “To
David Ramsay
engine Raise Water from Lowe Pitts by Fire”;
10. (c.1590‐1653) 1630
(aka fire supposedly, however, there is no
engine) information concerning what he had in
mind or what he did with it.
Galileo Galilei Galileo
(1564‐1642) engine
11. 1632 (vacuum
measuring
device)
Otto Guericke
(1602‐1686) Guericke
engine
12. 1647
(aka vacuum
pump)

His Mathematical Magic (1648)

presented a chapter on the history of
John Wilkins heat engines of various sorts, e.g.
13. (1614‐1672) 1648 aeolipile, Giovanni Branca’s device
(1629), and Cardano's smoke jack, and
Cornelis Drebbel’s sun‐powered
clavichord (1609).
Pneumatical
Robert Hooke engine An improved re‐construction of the
14. (1635‐1703) | #1 1658 (aka Guericke engine, built per order of
machine Robert Boyle.
Boyleana)
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 67

Samuel Morland
(1625‐1695) | #1 Was granted a ‘monopoly’, according to
a warrant of Charles II, for an engine for
15. 1661
raising water out of mines by means of
‘air and powder conjointly’.”

Worcester
Edward Somerset engine
(1603‐1667) (Thurston,
16. 1663 1878)
(aka
Somerset
engine)
Ferdinand Verbiest
(1623‐1688)
Verbiest
17. c.1670
auto‐mobile

Huygens
Christiaan Huygens engine
(1629‐1695)
Type:
18. 1673
Gunpowder
engine;
Piston and
cylinder
Robert Hooke Hooke
(1635‐1703) | #2 engine
19. 1675
Type:
Theoretical
A few years subsequent to Boyle's
discoveries [1662], Papin was installed
in the laboratory at the Parts Academy
of Sciences, and under the directions of
Christiaan Huygens, was employed in
Denis Papin experiments with the pneumatic
(1647‐1712) | #1 engine, after the model of Boyle and
20. 1674
Hooke’s, and the examination of the
force of gunpowder, and also of the
force of water rarefied by fire. An
account of these experiments was
published in 1674, and in the following
year Papin left Paris, and proceeded to
London. [2]
68 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Jean Hautefeuille Hautefeuille

(1647‐1724) engine
21. 1678
Type:
Gunpowder
engine

Denis Papin invented what he called a "digester or

(1647‐1712) | #2 Papin engine for softning bones", aka "bone
22. 1679
digester digester", or Papin's digester as it later
came to be called

Samuel Morland Submitted a project to Louis XIV for

(1625‐1695) | #2 Morland raising water by means of steam,
23. 1683
engine accompanying it with ingenious
calculations and tables.
Denis Papin
(1647‐1712) | #3
Papin engine
1688
(gunpowder)

Papin engine
Denis Papin (steam)
(1647‐1712) | #3
24. 1690 Type:
Theoretical;
Piston and
cylinder
Thomas Savery
(c.1650‐1715) Savery
engine
25. 1698
(aka Miner’s
friend)

Newcomen
Thomas Newcomen engine
26. (1664‐1729) 1705 (improved
Savery
engine)
In two entries of the Royal Society
(1717), he made an improved
Henry Beighton
26. 1717 Newcomen engine (Ѻ); sometime
(1687‐1743)
thereafter he began to associate with
John Desaguliers. (Ѻ)
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 69

John Desaguliers
(1683‐1744)
27. 1718

Made a number of inventions and

James Watt design improvements to the
Watt engine
(1736‐1819) functionality of the steam engine,
(improved
28. 1765 including: separate condenser (1765),
Newcomen
the fly‐ball governor (1788), and the
engine)
definition of "pony power" (or horse
power).
Joshua Rigley
29. c.1768
(c.1710‐1785)
Smeaton
John Smeaton engine
30. (1724‐1792) 1769 (improved
Newcomen
engine)
Nicolas Cugnot Cugnot
31. 1769
(1725‐1804) auto‐mobile
James Pickard
Pickard
32. (c.1735‐1800) 1780
engine

Hornblower
Jonathan Hornblower
engine
33. (1753‐1815) 1781
(compound
engine)
Designed an improved boiler for
Arthur Woolf producing high pressure steam (1803)
34. (1766‐1837) 1803 and invented a compound steam engine
(1804) generally using the expired
patent of Hornblower.
Richard Trevithick
(1771‐1833) Trevithick
35. 1804
locomotive

George Stephenson
36. (1781‐1848) 1814

Sadi Carnot Carnot

(1796‐1832) engine
37. 1824
Type:
Abstract

In this table, firstly we not the over-prevalence of the name Denis Papin, a French super-engine pioneer, so
70 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

to say, who after working with Huygens, on gunpowder engines, the Boyle, the pioneer of vacuum
experimental research, where he built his pressure cooker, then Hooke, who had penned a cyphered heat
engine principle, then on to his own work, eventually resulting in the Papin engine (1690), which eventually
became the Carnot engine (1824), upon which thermodynamics was derived.
Secondly, although we see the piston and cylinder being employed by the Greeks, it was Otto Guericke
who can be credited predominately with the piston and cylinder used to day in cars, and it started from his
use of a syringe-like water squirt gun, typically employed in Germany in the 1640s to put out fires, from
where he made the first piston and cylinder, and showed that by the power of the vacuum, it could lift
several thousand pounds off the ground.
Thirdly, and lastly, the above table compresses a large amount of historical background into a shorthand
version of things. The reader is encouraged to the online version of this table, and at least click through the
names of each hyperlinked engine development pioneer, and read through each of their articles and related
engine development technologies, in overview, before proceeding, to get a general big picture view of
things, in respect to how engine technology developed and evolved over the centuries.2 Herein, in the
following chapters, we will focus in on the main players in this table, in respect to there direct involvement
in the formation of thermodynamics, such as Guericke, Boyle, Huygens, Papin, Savery, Newcomen, and
Watt.
In the chapter to follow, we will see that, of interest to thermodynamics Hero was read by Leonardo da
Vinci, and through his mind, we see the first combustion engine, a general acceptance of the vacuum model
of things, which Hero adhered to, in opposition to the Aristotle denial of the void or vacuum model.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. Hero. (50AD). Pneumatics (translator: Bennet Woodcroft). Taylor, 1851.
2. http://www.eoht.info/page/engine+pioneers
3.
9. Da Vinci Gunpowder Engine (1508)
“European scholars in 1500, still held to the Greek view which did not distinguish steam from air. The
vacuum was not understood; it was still something ‘abhorred by nature’. Girolamo Cardan [c.1560]
suggested that a vacuum might be produced by the condensation of steam. Giovanni Porta, an Italian
philosopher, came close to distinguishing steam from air, but did not make the conception explicit. It
was Solomon de Cans (1576-1630), a French landscape gardener and engineer, who ‘took this decisive
step’, according to Usher (1929): he declared that steam is evaporated water; that upon cooling the
vapor ‘returns to its original condition’.”
— Leslie White (1975), Modern Capitalist Culture

Chapter point: Introduce the da Vinci gunpowder engine (1508), define the thermodynamic ‘system’, and
on this model explain the social thermodynamic ‘system’ [length: 6-pgs]

I
n 1508, Leonardo da Vinci, in his folio 16v of manuscript F, sketched a gunpowder combustion engine,
as shown below (left), which consists of a two-foot by eight-foot cannon barrel, supported in a frame, so
that the barrel remains vertical, constructed such that at the top of barrel sealable lid is affixed, which
has pressure release valve built into it:

The bottom of the barrel has a leather coated, likely wooden, piston, of some sort, inserted into, which is
attached to a weight, which is to be lifted. To operate the device, an amount of gunpowder is placed inside
the cannon. The lid closed and sealed. The gunpowder is ignited by ‘striking the touchhole’, which thus
imparts impacting kinetic energy to the powder, setting it into combustion. Da Vinci described his
gunpowder engine as follows:
“A mechanism to lift heavy weights. To lift a heavy weight with fire, like a cupping glass. And the
vessel should be one braccio [about 2 feet] wide and ten long, and should be strong. It should be lit from
below like a bombard [cannon] and the touchhole rapidly and immediately closed on top. The bottom
[thing], that has a very strong leather [seal], like a bellow, will rise and this is the way to lift any heavy
weight.”
— Leonardo da Vinci (1508), “note on device to lift heavy weight with fire”, Folio 16v of MS F
72 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

His engine consists of a cannon barrel fitted with a closable lid, and an exhaust fumes release valve, on the
top, which operates such that when gunpowder is placed on the piston and ignited, an explosion occurs, the
reactant vapors leave through the release valve, and a vacuum or partial vacuum is made to form inside the
piston and cylinder, thereby acting to make the piston rise in the cylinder, lifting weight, by the force of the
weight of the atmospheric pressure, pushing upward on the bottom of the piston.1 The following, to clarify
terminology, shows the basic components of a standard cannon:

Below left, we see an image reconstruction of the basic components of da Vinci’s gunpowder engine, or
internal combustion engine as we now classify things, widened and shortened for the sake of illustration
clarification, where the cannon barrel is the ‘cylinder’ and his ‘bottom [thing], that has a very strong leather
[seal]’ is the piston:

Above right, we have the same engine, only inverted, and shown labeled with modern thermodynamics
terminology.
The mass of gunpowder, in da Vinci’s engine, together with the mass of air, inside the volumetric region
contained within the piston and cylinder, as indicated by the dotted region above, constitutes the ‘system’ or
‘working body’ (Clausius, 1865), meaning the body that either does work on the surroundings, e.g. if it
pushes its volume outward, or the body that has work done on it by the surroundings, e.g. if the
surroundings compress the volume of the system, the ‘surroundings’ in this case being the weight or mass of
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 73

atmosphere, surrounding the system. The surroundings here, in respect to the system shown, refers to mass
of air surrounding the piston and cylinder that extends 62-miles in height above the surface of the earth,
pressing down on the piston.
Normally, the air in the system balances the pressure of the weight of the atmosphere, and the piston
doesn’t move. When, however, gunpowder explodes in the system, the pressure of the explosion ‘forces’ all
the gases products out of the system, through the release valve. When the gases have escaped, the release
valve automatically closes, leaving a partial vacuum inside the system. With nothing left inside the system,
the weight of the atmosphere, i.e. the surroundings, push down on the piston with strong force or with
enough power to lift mass attached to the rod, as da Vinci has things arranged.

9.1 | Gunpowder Explosion Chemical Reaction

Chemically speaking, the following shows the simplified chemical reaction for the combustion of
gunpowder:

wherein, a ‘solid’ reactant, a mixture of potassium nitrate (KNO3) (75%), charcoal (C) (15%), typically in
the form of partially pyrolyzed cellulose, in which the wood is not completely decomposed, and sulfur (S)
(10%), are ignited, causing an explosion, and yielding the products of potassium sulfide (K2S), the gases
nitrogen (N2) and carbon dioxide (CO2), along with a small amount of water (not shown):
Solid (100%) → solids (56%) + gases (43%) + liquid (1%)
This reaction releases 3 megajoules of energy per kilogram of gunpowder, and contains its own oxidant,
which can be compared to dynamite (4.7 megajoules per kilogram) or gasoline (10.4 megajoules per
kilogram).

9.2 | Social Piston and Cylinder Engine

To help us conceptually understand how the thermodynamic ‘system’ model scales up to the social reaction
level, the following, below left, we see Ingo Muller’s 1994 ‘man in piston’ diagram, with add annotations:

The man, as we note, is shown to be emotionally disturbed, in some way, wrapped in some troubling or
vexing problem, the dots around him meant to represent social heat, the vertical lines, meant to represent
liquid condensate. In respect to ‘heat’, say when comparing the heat given off in the gunpowder explosion,
in the da Vinci engine, as compared the heat released from the burning wood or coal in the so-called ‘Muller
engine’, above, as compared to the say the ‘heat’ of frustration evidenced by the expression of the man in
74 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

piston. One example is social friction heat. The following quote by Werner Stark, in summary of the Henry
Carey’s 1858 Fundamental Forms of Social Thought, seems to well characterize a scenario we might see
occurring between particles 2 through 4, above right:
“In the physical universe, heat is engendered by friction. Consequently, the case must be the same in the
social world. The ‘particles’ must rub together here, as they do there. The rubbing of the human
molecules, which produces warmth, light and forward movement, is the interchange of goods, services,
and ideas.”
— Werner Stark (1962), Fundamental Forms of Social Thought (pg. #)
Here, in the language of Carey, people can either be defined as particles or human molecules, depending on
the discussion or point of view at hand. Now, for larger ‘explosive’ amounts of heat, beyond that of mere
social friction, to be released or absorbed (in some cases), bonds have to form or break, which by definition
means that a chemical reaction has occurred. In the above human particle scenario, human particle one ●1
might escape out of his social system and react with particle two ●2, to form a chemical bond; the reaction
of which being defined as follows:
●1 + ●2 → ●1≡●2
The attachment of particle one and particle two, in the reactants, signifies a chemical bond, and for this to
have occurred, reaction heat would have had to been released or absorbed. To say again, the heat (δQ) of the
fire of the wood or coals, which results from hydrocarbon atoms reacting with the oxygen in the air, and
social heat (δQ) of society, which results from humans reacting with each other, are of the same nature, but
are quantitatively different.
The diagram shown above right, shows the same ‘man in piston’ system, only re-labeled, using a human
particle model, and turned sideways, to help exemplify the fact that social pressure, generally speaking, is a
side-ways acting phenomenon, which can be contrasted with atmospheric pressure, as seen operating in the
da Vinci engine, which has vertical or force normal to the surface of the earth way of operating. Simple to
think of examples included gang turf wars or mob bosses muscling in on territories of the competition.
One famously documented example, quantified in terms of exact measurements, is the 1970 to 1974
Gombe Natural Reserve, Nigeria, ‘chimpanzee war’, which occurred between two rival chimpanzee troops,
and was documented and followed, in step-by-stem mechanistic terms, over its entire course, by Jane
Goodall.6 The following synopsis by Helen Fisher states the main points:
“In the Gombe, wild chimps patrol territories of up to five to eight square miles. Regularly, small
groups of males steal along the border of their range, sniffing the ground for the trace of strangers, and
climbing trees to peer across neighboring territories. When an unfamiliar chimp, all except childless
females, comes too close, they charge, attack, and occasionally severely injure the intruder. In one
instance, an older female was attacked so severely by four males that she died five days later of her
wounds. In 1970, a chimpanzee war began. A splinter group of seven males and three females with their
young split off from their comrades in the north of the reserve and began a group of their own in the
south. For a while, individuals met at the border to solve their differences by loud calling, hurling
branches and mock charges at each other. But in 1974 five males from the original Gombe community
began to roam deep into the southern territory. Within three years, they attacked and murdered all of
the adult males (except two who died of natural causes) and one old female—extinguishing the splinter
enclave and extending their territory to the south.”
— Helen Fisher (1982), The Sex Contract (pgs. 62-63)
The discussion of one troop ‘extending their territory’ here, in chemical thermodynamic terms, refers to one
system pushing outward on their social piston, thereby doing work on the surroundings.
Certainly, to clarify, there are situations where vertical social pressures operate, a simple example being
the pressures associated with planes in the sky and the stressful working conditions of air traffic controllers.
A more quantitative example of vertical social pressures can be seen in skyscraper-lined cities, where
penthouses are the most sought-after real estate properties. In Manhattan, e.g., where the average asking
price in 2018 was $447/sq.ft., penthouses can cost upwards of $10,000/sq.ft.
To continue, similar in concept to the molecules of the atmosphere having a weight or external pressure,
which presses the piston down, when the internal pressure goes to zero, following the gunpowder explosion,
so to in at the social reaction scale, will the human molecules of the surrounding ‘social atmosphere’, so to
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 75

say, push inward on any given sub-system, like the man in his home, as shown above, which is
characterized by an internal pressure PI unique to the system, which in the normal state of affairs balances
the external pressure. The movement of the social piston will indicate a pressure balance disturbance.
The simplest examples, historically, are when two or more adjacent countries go to war with each other,
after which the final territories are different, meaning that someone’s piston pushed one someone else’s
boundary, or the surroundings pushed down on someone’s system.
The da Vinci gunpowder explosion can be compared, in some roundabout sense, to a human chemical
reaction, wherein a man Mx and Woman Fy, fall in love at first ‘sight’, and have an ‘explosive reaction’, the
light in this case equivalent to the spark touching the wick in the gunpowder powder engine explosion, and
in their home (system) reproduce three children, who can be considered equivalent to the gaseous products
that, nearly adulthood, escape through the release valve of the home; this reaction reads as follows:4

where MxFy is the bonded married couple, in the form a new dihumanide molecule, and Bc1, Bc2, Bc3, are
the three baby-children prior to becoming adults. In like manner, after the three gaseous products escape
through the release valves, e.g. college, job, marriage, etc., the formerly occupied house, now ‘empty’,
equivalent to the ‘partial vacuum’ made in the cannon, begins to feel the surrounding social pressure, of a
husband and wife residing in a large empty, say five-bedroom, home, with no children, and instead of the
atmospheric pressure pushing up on the piston, so to contract the volume, the couple sells the home, and
moves to a new smaller, retirement home.
Now, how many joules of energy per weight of family ‘social powder’, so to say, this reaction, on
average releases, has not yet been determined. We do note, however, that whereas most families release
energy, other families, e.g. those on welfare, absorb energy. In addition, through the study of ATP, which is
equivalent to gunpowder, we know that in physiology, energy releasing reactions are ‘coupled’ to energy
absorbing reactions. This will be discussed more when we get to the Lipmann coupling theory (1941)
chapter.

9.3 | Nature allows a Vacuum?

Technically speaking, if da Vinci performed this experiment, which he likely did in some form, this would
have been the first experimental disproof of the ancient Parmenides ‘vacuums are impossible’ turned
Aristotle’s ‘nature hates vacuums’ motto, which held sway in nearly all scientific minds, up into the 1660s,
following the vacuum experiments of Galileo (1632), Gasparo Berti (1639), Evangelista Torricelli (1643),
Blaise Pascal (1648), and Otto Guericke (1854), which settled the matter, decidedly.
Da Vinci, having read of Hero’s Pneumatica, held to a Hero-type view on vacuums, believing that they
one can make vacuums, but with difficulty, e.g. as in when one attempts to pull on a syringe that has the tip
closed with a thumb or something, or when a body moves swiftly through the air, like a horse running,
leaving a vacuum in its wake:
“The motion of the air is seen by the motion of the dust thrown up by the horse’s running and this
motion is as swift in again filling up the ‘vacuum’ left in the air which enclosed the horse, as he is rapid
in passing away the air.”
— Leonardo da Vinci (c.1505), The Literary Works (pg. 304)
The following is da Vinci’s most-quoted statement concerning vacuums, in respect to the history of steam
engines, in that he seems to intuit that condensed steam will make a vacuum:
“When air [steam] is condensed into rain it will produce a vacuum, if the rest of the air does not
prevent this by filling its place, as it does with a violent rush; and this is the wind which rises in the
summer time, accompanied by heavy rain.”
— Leonardo da Vinci (1505), “Of Rainbows and Rain” (#480); MS E (back cover); Reti (1969)
translation2
Hence, in da Vinci’s mind, when the gunpowder exploded in the cannon, the gases would swiftly escape
through release vent, built into the tightly-sealed lid at the top of his cannon, and leave a vacuum in its
wake, like the running horse leaving a void behind it, which the air fills with a whirlwind of dust trail behind
it, as da Vinci described and drew this type of animal action.
76 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

In 1550, Gerolamo Cardano, the inheritor of the da Vinci manuscripts, building on da Vinci, is
purported to have said or stated, in his On the Nature of Things (pg. 25), that condensed steam makes a
vacuum, but the passage is classified by many historians as a famously ‘obscure passage’.
It would not be until the next century, with the theoretical Galileo engine (1632), purported to be able to
measure the ‘strength of the vacuum’, the Berti water column vacuum experiment (1639), the Torricelli
mercury column vacuum experiment (1644), the Pascal atmospheric pressure experiment (1648), all of
which culminating with the 1650s vacuum experiments of Otto Guericke, wherein he evidence the existence
and power of the vacuum in a variety of ways, that people could confidently state that vacuums can indeed
exist in nature.
The inquisitive reader, at this point, should consult the online ‘engine pioneers’ table, which lists,
chronologically, the main 30+ heat engine pioneers behind the formation of the steam engine or gunpowder
engine, up through Sadi Carnot (1834) and the Carnot engine, so to see a working outline of the chapters to
follow.3
The key concluding point, to note here, is that the year 1508, when da Vinci drew up the above plans for
a piston and cylinder internal combustion engine, albeit however crude it was, marks not necessarily the
start of the science of thermodynamics, but certainly a demarcation point, as an independent discipline of
study, concerned with the problem of work done, on or by chemical substances confined to a piston and
cylinder volume, via the action of heat or fire, therein relating the principles of the interaction or relation
between heat and work mediated by changes in vacuums or voids of space.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. http://www.eoht.info/page/Da+Vinci+engine
2. Reti, Ladislao. (1969). “Leonardo da Vinci the Technologist: the Problem of Prime Movers”, in:
Leonardo’s Legacy: and International Symposium (editor: C.D. O’Malley) §4:67‐100; quotes, pgs. 95‐98).
University of California Press.
3. http://www.eoht.info/page/engine+pioneers
4. (a) http://www.eoht.info/page/human+chemical+reaction+theory
(b) http://www.eoht.info/page/Human+molecular+symbols
5. da Vinci, Leonardo. (1519). The Literary Works of Leonardo da Vinci: Compiled and Edited from the
Original Manuscripts, Volume One (editor: Jean Paul) (pg. 239‐40). Publisher, 1883.
6. http://www.eoht.info/page/chimpanzee+war
7.
10. Beeckman | Atmospheric Pressure (1614)
“What is the reason that bodies are moved in any direction, so that a vacuum may not exist in
nature? I answer: it happens that air, after the manner of water, presses, upon things and compresses
them according to the depth of the super-incumbent air. But some things remain undisturbed, and are
not perpetually moved about, because they are everywhere equally compressed by the air above them,
just as our divers are pressed by the water. But things rush towards an empty space with great force, on
account of the immense depth of the super-incumbent air, and in this way the weight of the air arises.
But air must not be said to be heavy, because we walk in it without any pain, as indeed the fishes move
in water, suffering no compression.”
— Isaac Beeckman (1614), Journal Notes

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

I
n the 1620s, Isaac Beeckman, mentor to Descartes, supreme existive philosopher in the mind of Pierre
Gassendi, said to have been influential to Galileo, etc., introduced the so-called first ‘molecular’ theory
of phenomenal matter, according to which all matter is an aggregate of so-called ‘physical homogenea’
of varying stability. In Beeckman’s theory, the homogenea of substances such as metals and medicines are
quite stable, while those of light and sound, for instance, are far less so. Beeckman's homogenea are
supposed to be composed of four kinds of atoms of one and the same prime matter. Beeckman’s theory,
while not entirely correct, was a decisive break with Aristotle, and more importantly, in respect to
thermodynamics, a break with the long-standing opinion that nature abhors a vacuum.
What is important, in respect to Beeckman, much of whose work seems to be in need of translation and
decimation in to English, is that he seems to have been the originator of the premise that air has ‘weight’,
and that it presses down around us like water does on a fish; the following are statements to this effect:
“It cannot be denied that the lower part of water or air is more strongly compressed than the upper part,
since it is compressed by its own weight, as would happen to an immense sponge, its lower part lying on
the earth is packed more tightly than the upper part. But this cannot be of great importance in the case of
air which by its nature cannot easily be over-compressed and which is not very weighty. Nevertheless, it
is necessary to believe that the lower part is as compressed as it could be, by the upper air, and
consequently there exists a greater compression at its base.”
— Isaac Beeckman (1620), Journal; Dec 24; cited by Charles Webster (1965) to argue that this is
where Galileo (1632) derived his ‘sponge’ model of air
“Air is heavy. It presses us from all sides in a uniform way. Things precipitate into an empty space with
great force because of the tremendous height of the air above.”
— Isaac Beeckman (c.1625), Mathematical Physical Mediations (pg. #)
These views, as we will learn, predate the views of Torricelli (1644) and Guericke (1650s), who both
arrived at the same conclusion.

References
1.
2.
78 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism
11. Galileo (1632)
“In dynamics is the science of accelerating or retarding forces, and of the varied motions which they
must produce. This science is wholly due to the moderns, and Galileo is the one who threw or made the
first foundations.”
— Joseph Lagrange (1788), Analytical Mechanics, Volume One (pg. 221)

Chapter point: (add) [length: 4-pgs]

I
N 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus, polish astronomer, published On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres,
wherein the heliocentric theory was established, which marks the start of ‘dynamics’, the root term in
the name thermo-dynamics.
In 1602, Galileo Galilei, Italian physicist, began doing ‘demonstrations’, and developing theorems
therefrom, concerning falling bodies and projectiles.
In Jan 1610, news of Hans Lippershey’s newly-invented so-called ‘Dutch perspective glass’, as it was
then been called, i.e. telescope, reached the ears of Galileo, who then proceeded to make his own version of
what Lippershey had built. The result, was a hand-held tube that allowed one to see things at a resolution
30x that of the eye.
On 13 Mar 1610, Galileo, in his Message on the
Fixed Stars, presented, to the world, the first
published scientific work based on observations
made through a telescope, detailing observations of
the imperfect and mountainous moon, hundreds of
stars that were unable to be seen in either the Milky
Way or certain constellations with the naked eye,
and moons that appeared to be circling Jupiter.
In 1632, Galileo, in his Dialogue Concerning the
Two Chief World Systems, compared the then
controversial ‘Copernican system’ with the
inconsistencies of the older earth-centric ‘Ptolemaic system’, and contains all Galileo had to say on physics;
this is said to mark the point when dynamics, as a science, was founded.
In 1633, Galileo was put on trial for ‘suspicion of heresy’ for his new telescope measurements based
moving earth theory, which contradicts the Bible, which holds that the earth is fixed and cannot move, and
for his support of the heretical ideas of Copernicus.

11.1 | Pump problem

On 27 Jul 1630, Giovanni Baliani, a physicist
and experimenter, wrote to Galileo asking him
why a siphon, made to carry water over a hill,
failed to work if the hill was more than 18
cubits, or about 27 to 32 feet?
The image shown adjacent, is a mock
diagram of the so-called ‘Baliani pump
problem’, showing a siphon pump connected
to a pool of spring water, to the right, that
pumps water over say a 17-cubit foot hill, and
down to a house, below left, on the other side
of the hill. According to the findings of
Baliani, siphon pumps will not work past 18
80 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

cubits? Confused about this, he consulted Galileo.

The following shows a basic siphon pump, below left, as compared to Hero’s syringe, both of which can
be used to suck liquids up a tube:

In the Baliani situation, what they found, was that if the tube of the siphon was filled with water, by means
of a pump, and then the pump was stopped, the water separated high in the tube and flowed out both ends.
Galileo, after ruminating the apparent puzzle, replied back to Baliani, stating to the effect that he thought of
the water column as a ‘rope’ that broke when sucked up past a certain height, the way a rope will break
when the load gets too heavy (or the rope gets too long):
“If hemp or steel cords break under excessive weight, what doubt could we have that a ‘cord of water’
will likewise break? In fact, it will break more easily, insofar as the parts of water, becoming separated
from one another, do not have to overcome resistances other than that of the vacuum that is created at
the moment of division. This is because in the case of iron and other solids, there is a very strong and
tenacious attachment of the parts that is absent in water.”
— Galileo (1630), “Letter to Giovani Baliani”, Aug 6
Galileo, following further rumination on this, put his ideas down into the form of a dialogue.

11.2 | Vacuum Measuring Device

In 1632, Galileo, in his Dialogues on the Two New Sciences, having now ruminated on the Baliani pump
problem for two years, following preliminary dialogue of the possibility of ‘vacuum breaking’, presented a
dialogue on the possibly of vacuum formation or rather the ‘resistance of the vacuum’ made by nature, is
what stopped pumps from working past about 30 feet. His general argument was that bodies such as hemp
rope, or stone or wood columns, as shown below, have a cohesive force that hold their parts together. Water,
similarly, Galileo, had a cohesive force that held its parts together, but a long column of water would break,
past a certain point, like a rope, when the resistance of the vacuum got to the point that the vacuum ‘broke’,
or something along these lines. The main dialogue is as follows:1
Sagredo [Baliani]: “go ahead, Salviati; assume that I admit your conclusion and show us your method
of separating the action of the vacuum from other causes; and by measuring it show us how it is not
sufficient to produce the effect in question.”
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 81

Salviati [Galileo]: “I will tell you how to separate the force of the vacuum from the others, and
afterwards how to measure it. For this purpose, let us consider a continuous substance whose parts lack
all resistance to separation except that derived from a vacuum, such as is the case with water, a fact fully
demonstrated by our Academician in one of his treatises. Whenever a cylinder of water is subjected to a
pull and offers a resistance to the separation of its parts this can be attributed to no other cause than the
resistance of the vacuum. In order to try such an experiment, I have invented a device [engine],
shown below (right), which I can better explain by means of a sketch than by mere words.

Let CABD represent the cross section of a cylinder either of metal or, preferably, of glass, hollow inside
and accurately turned. Into this is introduced a perfectly fitting D cylinder of wood, represented in cross
section by EGHF [piston], and capable of up-and-down motion [see: reciprocating motion]. Through
the middle of this cylinder is bored a hole to receive an iron wire, carrying a hook at the end K, while
the upper end of the wire, I, is provided with a conical head. The wooden cylinder is countersunk at the
top so as to receive, with a perfect fit, the conical head I of the wire, IK, when pulled down by the end
K.
Now insert the wooden cylinder EH in the hollow cylinder AD, so as not to touch the upper end of
the latter but to leave free a space of two or three finger-breadths; this space is to be filled with water
by holding the vessel with the mouth CD upwards, pushing down on the stopper EH, and at the same
time keeping the conical head of the wire, I, away from the hollow portion of the wooden cylinder. The
air is thus allowed to escape alongside the iron wire (which does not make a close fit) as soon as one
presses down on the wooden stopper.
The air having been allowed to escape and the iron wire having been drawn back so that it fits
snugly against the conical depression in the wood, invert the vessel, bringing it mouth downwards, and
hang on the hook K a vessel which can be filled with sand or any heavy material in quantity [weight]
sufficient to finally separate the upper surface of the stopper, EF, from the lower surface of the water to
which it was attached only by the resistance of the vacuum. Next weigh the stopper and wire together
with the attached vessel and its contents; we shall then have the force of the vacuum [forza del vacuo].
If one attaches to a cylinder of marble or glass a weight which, together with the weight of the marble or
glass itself, is just equal to the sum of the weights before mentioned, and if breaking occurs we shall
then be justified in saying that the vacuum alone holds the parts of the marble and glass together; but if
this weight does not suffice and if breaking occurs only after adding, say, four times this weight, we
82 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

shall then be compelled to say that the vacuum furnishes only one fifth of the total resistance
[resistenza].”
Here, then, in sum, believes that one can turn his cylinder upside down, then fill it with water, of a few
inches in height, then put the piston in, then adjust his stopper hook in such a way so to let all the air out, as
one compresses the piston head down, then turn his device over, then start adding weights to the bucket, one
weight at a time, until that moment when the seal breaks, and the piston comes out. This, according to
Galileo, would be he ‘measure of the vacuum’.
In 1638, Galileo’s Dialogues on the Two New Sciences, was finally published, delayed six years owing
to political difficulties related to his trial for supporting the Copernican hypothesis, which taught that the
earth goes around the sun. The immediate effect that Galileo’s Dialogues had, in respect to furthering
thought on the question of the possible existence of vacuums, and moreover the possibly of making a
vacuum experimentally, was felt first in Rome, in the mind of mathematician Gasparo Berti (1639), then in
Germany, in the mind of engineer and philosopher Otto Guericke (1647).

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. Galilei, Galileo. (1632). Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences (translators: Henry Crew and
Alfonso de Salvio). MacMillan, 1914.
12. Berti Water Column Experiment (1639)
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: 12-pgs]

I
n Dec 1638, fifty copies of Galileo’s Dialogues on the Two New Sciences reached Rome, where they
quickly sold out. Two men who were greatly stimulated by this publication, particularly in respect to
Galileo’s vacuum measuring device thought experiment, were Rafael Magiotti, a mathematician and
physicist, and Gasparo Berti, a young man who had a reputation for astronomy, mathematics, and
instrument design. Magiotti, supposedly (Waard, 1938), was the one who thought up the experiment, and
Berti, supposedly (Middleton, 1964), was the one who built the device, which is shown below attached to
the side of Berti’s home:1

Here, AB is a long lead pipe, attached to the side of the house, which has a valve R at the bottom, which sits
in a wooden barrel half-filled with water (note: the side tube at A, shown above left, going to a smaller
vessel in window, is removed from the diagram, above right, as this was used for a second experiment).
84 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Attached to the top of the lead pipe AB, is a large see-through glass bulb, which has an air-tight screw plug
D at the top.
To perform the experiment, valve R is closed, then valve D is opened, and water is poured into, until it
fills the device all the way to the top of the bulb, at location C, at which point the screw plug D is screwed
in, and the device is now completely filled with water. Next is the crucial step: valve R is then opened, and
the experimenters, in this case Berti and Magiotti, watched to observe what happened?
Berti and Magiotti found, when the valve R was opened, that a certain amount of water in the device,
drained out, into the wooden barrel at the bottom, the height of water in the device, falling down to point L
in the lead tube. The observed this height, over the course of a few days and found, supposedly, that height
L stayed constant, and no more water drained out.
Next, they then closed valve R, at the bottom, and then unscrewed the screw plug D, at the top, and
found that air rushed into the bulb at the top with a violent force and loud noise. The details of this part is
recounted by Emmanuel Maignan who was told about the experiment by Berti, via diagrams and verbal
explanation, a week after it was performed:
“At length, when the tap R was opened the water flowed, contrary to the hope of many (e.g. Athanasius
Kircher and Nicolo Zucchi), out of the pipe into the cask EF, to an easily observable height; but not all
of it flowed out, and it soon stood quite still. This was clear, because a mark was made in the cask at the
surface of the water, and next day it was found that the water in it had remained exactly at the mark
although the tap R had been open all the time. Then, when this tap R had been carefully closed again,
the screw D was taken out above. And as soon as it was taken out, behold [!] the air rushed in with a
loud noise, filling the space previously abandoned by the water. Then by lowering a sounding-line, it
was determined how much water was inside, or rather to what height the water stood in the tube, and it
was found to stand about 18 cubits above the level of the water in the cask, at mark L.”
— Emmanuel Maignan (1653), Course on Natural Philosophy
Here, to clarify, we note, after the water fell, that Berti and Magiotti made mark at the new water level in the
wooden tub. Then checked it the next day to to see if it changed over the course of the night. It did not
change. This experiment is Berti-Magiotti water column experiment was performed in the years 1639 to
1641.
Before leaving this section, we note that in later models of the Berti device, a bell M and bell hammer N
were added to the inside of the bulb, so to test to see if sound could be heard in the purported vacuum space.
To make the bell ring, inside the bulb, a magnet was brought to the outside of the bulb, near the bell hammer
N, which caused it to rise, and then fall on the bell. This addition was the brainchild of Athanasius Kircher,
who said it would provide definitive proof or disproof as to the existence of the vacuum (Kircher, himself,
believed that it was not a vacuum).
The bell test was performed and said to have produced slight sound; although it was debated whether
the sound came from vibrations of the mounting parts of the bell to the bulb. Robert Boyle, of note, repeated
this acoustic experiment in a vacuum, but suspended his bell with a thin cord to eliminate this possible
frame vibration effect.

12.1 | Torricelli Mercury Column Experiment (1643)

In 1642, Evangelista Torricelli, an Italian physicist, mathematician, and former student of Galileo,
succeeded Galileo as philosopher and mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. During this transition,
or sometime prior, Galileo had suggested to Torricelli that he carry forward, with possible experimentation,
his thought experiment work on making a device to measuring the vacuum. Prior to this, in the 1638 Leiden
edition of his Discourse on the Two New Sciences, Galileo had suggested that if oil, mercury, or wine, were
used instead of water that the vacuum would break at a different column height. In this period, between
1639 and 1643, Torricelli was also informed by Rafael Magiotti about the Berti water column experiment,
about which Torricelli envisioned the experiment occurring as follows:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 85

Accordingly, Torricelli, knowing that mercury was 14 times heavier than water, which some have said was
suggested to him by Galileo, reasoned that if he used mercury, instead of water, in the Berti experiment, and
used a glass tube, instead of the lead-glass design used by Berti, that he the new scaled down model should
find the mercury column stopping at an L height of about 76 centimeters.
Torricelli then communicated this proposal to his friend Vincenzo Viviani, also another former student
of Galileo, now being a student of Torricelli’s, who then, it is said, made the glass tube, procured the
mercury, and performed the following experiment, supposedly per the instructions of Torricelli:

In conducting this experiment, Viviani filled a glass tube, about 80 centimeters in length, with mercury, all
the way to the top. He then placed his thumb on the top open end of the filled tube, so to make the vessel air
tight. Viviani then upended the tube into a large tub filled half way with mercury, and then released his
thumb. As predicted by Torricelli, the column of mercury fell to
about 76 centimeters or an ‘ell and a quarter and a finger or more’, as
it was originally reported. Torricelli, upon hearing of Viviani’s
experimental success, then went on himself to do the experiment in a
variety of ways.
In Jun 1644, Torricelli, in his now-famous letter to Michelangelo
Ricci, declared that air was an ocean layer on the surface of the earth:
“We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of elementary
air, which is known by incontestable experiments to have weight,
and so much weight, that the heaviest part near the surface of
the earth weighs about one four-hundredth as much as water.”
— Evangelista Torricelli (1644), “Letter to Michelangelo
Ricci”
Torricelli, in this letter, also described how used two tubes of
different volumes, C and D, as shown above middle, yet the height of
the mercury remained the same, therein disproving the conjecture that there was some ‘rarefied stuff’ (e.g.
Cartesian subtle matter) in the top volume (that the level BA remained the same, despite the two volumes,
86 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

disproved the rarefied stuff objection). In a second experiment, Torricelli, explained how he floated a top
layer of water above the mercury, such as shown above left, and that when he raised the tube to the
water/mercury level divide, that water rushed in, with great violence, and filled the voided region, therein
‘proving’ that the top was, in fact, empty, i.e. a vacuum.
Torricelli also, of note tried putting fishes, large flies, and butterflies into the so-called space above the
mercury column, a space now tending to be called the ‘Torricellian space’, so to test whether they could
‘live’, make sounds, or fly in a vacuum? He found, however, that they were too much affected by passage of
going up through the mercury, before entering the Torricelli space, for the experiment to be satisfactory. We
will not shortly that Robert Boyle, who came to hear about these experiments in the mid 1650s, was the one
to first successfully try out this tests.

12.2 | Mersenne (1645)

In 1644, Michelangelo Ricci, Torricelli’s communication conduit, sent Marin Mersenne, a French Cartesian
theologian, philosopher, mathematician, known as Europe’s ‘leading publicist of scientific information’,
extracts of Torricelli’s letters on his vacuum experiments. In 1645, Mersenne visited Florence and attended
a demonstration of the Torricelli experiment, and also visited Rome, where he had discussions with the
major participants in the Italian vacuum researches.
In Mar 1645, Mersenne, upon his return to France, published information on the Torricelli vacuum
experiments, which worked to transmit this new information to England, Holland, and Poland.4
In Oct 1646, Pierre Petit, a French astronomer, physicist, mathematician, and instrument maker,
presumably per influence of the news reports of Mersenne, performed the first Torricelli experiment in
France.4 This event, in turn, sparked a wave of vacuum research in France.

12.3 | Roberval Carp Bladder in Vacuum Experiment (Jun 1648)

In c.1647, Gilles Roberval, a French mathematician, physicist, and
experimentalist, who had been part of ‘Mersenne’s circle’, which included Blaise
Pascal, since 1628, had begun the testing of putting birds and mice into the so-
called Torricellian space or proposed vacuum region above the mercury; the
general theory being based around at the time being that the mercury column
balanced a column of air going up to the top of the atmosphere, as shown
adjacent.
In May to Jun 1648, Roberval performed his publicly astonishing carp swim-
bladder in a vacuum experiment, wherein he took the swim bladder of a carp,
deflated it, tied the opening of it in a knot, then put it into a Torricelli tube,
inverted the tube, wherein the Torricellian space would form, with the bladder in
this space, after which the bladder would begin to expand, to the astonishment of
onlookers. The reason for this being that the few particles of air, in the
previously deflated bladder, when inside of a vacuum, began to expand outward,
having no atmospheric pressure to keep them compressed.4

12.4 | Pascal Atmospheric Pressure Experiment (Sep 1648)

In c.1647, Blaise Pascal, the intellectually precocious physicist, mathematician,
and philosopher, after hearing about Torricelli’s experiment, with the mercury column, from Marian
Mersenne, and Torricelli’s idea that we ‘live submerged at the bottom of an ocean’ of air, became absorbed
into thought about ways to test this new theoretical proposal.
Ruminating on the implications of this new view, based and experiments with this new mercury column
device, particularly that the implication that the atmosphere has weight and that the heaviest parts of this
ocean of air reside near the surface of the earth, Pascal came to the conclusion that someone needs to carry a
Torricelli mercury column to the top of a mountain to evidence this proposition for their own eyes. Pascal,
in short, reasoned that the column of mercury would be lower at the top of the mountain, because the lighter
parts of the atmosphere reside there.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 87

Pascal, accordingly, communicated his proposition to his brother-in-law Florin Perier in the following
letter, with the suggestion that Perier do the climb, per reason that Pascal’s health was too poor to make the
climb himself:
“I have thought of an experiment which will
remove all doubt, if it be executed with
exactness. The experiment should be made in
vacuo several times, in one day, with the same
quicksilver, at the bottom and at the top of
the mountain of Puy, which is near our town
of Clermont. If, as I anticipate, the height of the
quicksilver be less at top than at the base, it will
follow that the weight or pressure of the air is
the cause of this; there certainly is more air to
press at the foot of the mountain than at its
summit, while one cannot say that nature abhors
a vacuum in one place more than in another.”
— Blaise Pascal (1648), “Letter to Florin
Perier”
On 19 Sep 1648, Perier made the climb, a total of
4,800-feet, which is the equivalent of three Sear’s Towers, during which he recorded the height of the
mercury column at first the base and then top of Puy de Dome, finding that the column of mercury fell by 3
inches and 1.5 lines, as predicted by Pascal. Perier described things as follows:
“At eight o'clock, we met in the gardens of the Minim Fathers, which has the lowest elevation in town.
First, I poured 16 pounds of quicksilver into a vessel, then took several glass tubes, each four feet long
and hermetically sealed at one end and opened at the other. Then placed them in the vessel of
quicksilver. I found the quicksilver stood at 26" and 31∕2 lines above the quicksilver in the vessel. I
repeated the experiment two more times while standing in the same spot. They produced the same result
each time. Taking the other tube and a portion of the quicksilver, I walked to the top of Puy-de-Dôme,
about 500 fathoms higher than the monastery, where upon experiment, and found that the quicksilver
reached a height of only 23" and 2 lines. I repeated the experiment five times with care. Each at
different points on the summit, found the same height of quicksilver, in
each case.”
— Florin Perier (1648), “Notes on Puy de Dome Climb
Experiment”, Sep 19
Herein, then, was the definitive proof that the atmosphere has weigh, that
the heavier part or weight of the atmosphere, occurred at the surface of the
earth, and that this pressure or atmospheric pressure decreased with
altitude.

12.5 | Unit of Pressure | Pa = N/m2

The units employed the physical sciences, in the early centuries of their development, tended to vary per
country, leading to much conversion and symbol confusion. In 1960, an international system, or system
international (SI), in French, i.e. an ‘SI unit’ system, was established, and developed over the years, via a
number of international conferences, which is a decimal and metric system, that has seven base units: mass
(kg), length (m), time (s), amount of substance (mol), electric current (A), thermodynamic temperature (K),
and luminous intensity (cd), from which a number of ‘derived units’ exist, with special names. The first of
these derived units, chronologically speaking, in respect to the history of thermodynamics, is the unit of
pressure.
In 1971, during the 14th General Conference on Weights and Measures, name ‘pascal’, in honor of
Pascal and his mountain climbing experiment, was adopted for the SI unit ‘newton per square meter’
(N/m2), a unit thus defined as, with its derived units, as follows:6
88 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

where N is newton, the unit for force, and J is joule, the unit of energy. We will devote short historical
sections, as we have done here for Pascal, for each of the main units and derived units and variables of
chemical thermodynamics, as we progress. The following table, from the 1976 US National Bureau of
Standards, shows relationships between the SI base units and derived units:

Here, in respect to this unit table, it important to remember, that human chemical thermodynamics, i.e.
thermodynamics applied socially, economically, historically, philosophically, etc., that the units one to
defined social phenomena, reactions, and processes HAVE to in base units or derived units or generally
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 89

measurable experimentally based units that can be reformulated into SI base units. SI units applied socially
is a very complex and yet fully worked out subject to say the least. Keep in mind, however, that the aim is to
reduce all of social phenomena into the ten main thermodynamic variables, which combined to yield a
function characteristic of the social system, as shown by the characteristic function notation table in the
preface to this work.
While some of these units applied socially are intuitive and easier to grasp conceptually, others are still
beyond the grasp of full understanding. Take the unit ‘pascal’, for example, or force per unit are, or N/m2.
When in war times or war films we hear the phrase reconnaissance in force, this is defined, according to the
US Department of Defense’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (2005), as ‘an offensive
operation designed to discover and or test the enemy’s strength or to obtain other information’. Here, the
‘force’, in newtons N, consists of the armed troops, ready to employ gunfire. The ‘area’, in square meters
m2, consists of the successive two-dimensional walls, physical or geometrical, that the troops encounter or
must pass through. Given some GPS tracking data and some further thought on this, one can quite readily
formulate military pressures of different locations in SI units of pascals.
We bring this up, at this point, owing to the fact that in the history of top 500 published attempts to
apply thermodynamics socially, economically, or to the humanities generally, there have been some rather
inane attempts to basically throw out the entire SI unit system and invent baseless nonsensical units. Among
these, three types tend to be found.
First, is the letter rhyming derivation system, wherein the author takes a given unit from the SI table,
such as ‘P’ for pressure, ‘V’ for volume, or ‘T’ for temperature, and simply keeps the first letter, and
reinvents the unit, by making it rhyme with some key term from the subject matter in question, e.g. U of
internal energy of thermodynamics becomes the U of utility in economics, simply because they have the
same symbol? In economics, to go through one example, using John Bryant (2010), as a case in point, in
respect to a monetary systems, we find statements such as P is ‘Price’ level of a commodity, V is the
‘Volume’ output of the commodity, and T is the ‘Trading’ level of the commodity in the stock market, and
these can be combined to make an economic ‘ideal gas law’ equation of state, and that this is a
‘thermodynamic approach to economics’.7 This, correctly, however, is NOT a thermodynamic approach.
Second, we sometimes will come across a number of so-called unitless thermodynamics varieties,
wherein authors will attempt to employ thermodynamic units to make some argument, but either will not use
actual units or will invent new terms, which they say are related to thermodynamic variables. One example
being Ivan Kennedy's 2001 version of ‘biothermodynamics’, wherein he introduces the concept of ‘action’,
which he defines as a unitless thermodynamic property related to entropy, resulting from impulses of energy
on matter producing force, based on his blurry conception of the conservation of momentum, and uses this
as so-called unified theory.8 This, likewise, is not a thermodynamic approach.
Thirdly, is the so-called information unit thermodynamics method. This originated via an inside joke. In
1940, Claude Shannon, an electrical engineer, who had never studied thermodynamics, asked John Neuman,
a chemical engineer, who had studied thermodynamics, what name he should give to his new formula for
information transmitted, via 1s and 0s in telegraph wires, which happened to be a formula of the form x = y
log z, stemming from Ralph Hartley’s 1928 paper ‘Transmission of Information’? Shannon at the time was
thinking of calling it the name ‘uncertainty’, thematic to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. He asked
Newman about this, and Neumann laughed and said, knowing that Max Planck in 1901 had formulated a gas
theory model of entropy using a similar type of logarithm, that he should call his new information
transmission formula by the ‘same name’, per reasoning, in Neuman’s mind that ‘nobody knows what
entropy really is’, so that accordingly, ‘you will always win, in any argument, should one arise’.9
Many, accordingly, have confused the two fields of study, computer science and thermodynamics, and
have come to believe that entropy of thermodynamics, which has units of joules per kelvin J/K, has units of
bits. Many become lured into this snare, for some peculiar reason. The apex example of unit confusion in
this area is Arieh Ben-Naim, an Israeli chemist, who actually completed his PhD on ‘Thermodynamics of
Aqueous Solutions of Noble Gases’, who in the last decade or so has published a slew of books, arguing that
the entire SI unit table should be reformulated in terms of binary digits or bits. The subject is so-confused in
this latter area, that students go to PhysicsForums.com and query: ‘Why is there not SI unit for
Information?’ (2017). There is even an entire online journal named Entropy, founded in 2009 by Chinese
chemist Shu-Kun Lin, who was confused about the various so-called ‘types’ of entropy, devoted to a
proliferation of this confusion.
90 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

The concluding point, to keep in mind, here, is that theories and formulations, in regards to chemical
thermodynamics applied to the humanities, are SI unit based, or approaching these units, e.g. mol is difficult
to formulate in social terms, per reason that the human population is below the 1023 molecule level, then one
is off-base, literally speaking, i.e. off base in their base units.

12.6 | Void with a Void Experiment (c.1649)

To continue, one of the more curious vacuum experiments, that arose from these Italian and French
researchers, was the famous ‘vacuum with a vacuum’ or void-within-a-void experiments, where a small
Torricelli barometer was put inside of another larger Torricelli barometer. The general idea here being that if
the weight of the atmosphere was holding up the mercury column, then to test this conjecture, if one could
eliminate this surrounding atmosphere, around the outside of the tube, i.e. by turning it into a void also, then
the column of mercury in the inner tube, should then fall to the same level as in the bottom basin of
mercury.
The actual person who first did or thought up this void in void experiment is a bit inexact, as is the case
with much of the early history and dates of vacuum research. The standing consensus, is that Torricelli, in
his second letter to Ricci, that Mersenne received a copy of, had suggested the vacuum within a vacuum
experiment, and also should be expected if the experiment should be tried.5
Next, it is said that Pascal ‘tried’ this experiment; presumably after he had he had completed his
mountain climbing experiment.5 We also note that Robert Boyle (1659), when he does the vacuum in
vacuum experiment, in his receiver vacuum bulb, credits Pascal as having been the first to perform this
experiment. Thirdly, it is said that Roberval ‘devised’ a vacuum within the vacuum experiment, but never
described the apparatus.5 Lastly, Adrien Auzout, a French astronomer, according to Jean Pecquet, who in his
1651 New Anatomical Experiments, popularized, for the world, all the aforementioned French vacuum
experiments, was the one who gave the ‘first successful’ trial of the vacuum in vacuum experiment, as
diagrammed by Pecquet below right, or as illustrated, in a focused detail, below middle:

This particular experiment would later attract the attention of Robert Boyle (1559), whose work attracted the
attention of Christiaan Huygens (1661) who both repeated this experiment in vacuum receiver bulbs, which
in turn stimulated much philosophical debate, going into the 1670s.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 91

12.7 | Pecquet (1651)

In 1651, Jean Pecquet, in his New Anatomical
Experiments, as touched on, presented a popular summary
of the previously discussed Italian and French vacuum
experiments, such as Roberval carp bladder experiment
and the void-with-in-void experiment, but with the
addition of his ‘experiment #4’, which was either
performed by Pecquet or more likely someone before him,
which shows equal volumes of water E and air B placed
above mercury AE, in a tub of mercury D.
This demonstrates, according to Pecquet, that air
exerts pressure by virtue of its elasticity, whereas water
exerts pressure by its weight. Pecquet’s book was
translated into English in 1653, and therein became one of
the main conduits of knowledge about vacuum
experiments to the English-speaking world, reaching the
minds of Henry Power and Robert Boyle. Pecquet’s
experiment #4 attracted the mind of Power, in whose
mind, it is said, stimulated the experimental derivation of
Boyle’s law (or Power’s law). The vacuum in vacuum and
bladder experiments were later repeated by Boyle.

12.8 | Social Pressure and Barometers

In respect to the Torricelli barometer, the ‘pressure’ that is measured, technically, is the average force per
unit area of the impacts of the kinetically moving air molecules of the atmosphere, which are predominately
the chemical species of nitrogen N2 (78 percent) and oxygen O2 (21 percent), along with another one percent
of rarer gases, as shown adjacent. Moreover, the force per unit area, as Pascal evidenced in his mountain
climb experiment, is greater near the surface of the earth, as compared to higher elevations, such as on the
top of the mountain. In simple verbal descriptive terms:
“The higher we go in the air, the less heavy it is.”
— Giovani Baliani (1630), “Letter to Galileo”
In physics terms, we know the reason behind this observed
effect is that each molecule of air, say one molecule of
nitrogen N2, with mass m2, will attract toward the earth, of
mass m1, with a force of mutual attraction, as defined by the
following formula, called Newton’s law of universal
gravitation:

where r is the radius of separation between the gas particle

and the earth, and G is the universal gravitation constant.
Accordingly, the higher we go up the mountain, the greater the radius r of separation becomes, and hence
the smaller the average force per unit area becomes, whereby the pressure, defined as shown below, or
atmospheric pressure, decreases:

Now, this is all relatively straightforward, as modern basic physics explains this.
92 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

When, however, this very same logic is

scaled up and applied directly to the question
of social force, social force per unit area, and
attempted quantitative measure of social
pressure, is when things become greatly
confused, as cartooned adjacent. The following
quote, will help to put things into clearer
perspective:
“The deeper the liquid is, the more it will
compress the deeper parts; for they are compressed both by the upper parts [vertical pressure] and by
those next to them [lateral pressure].”
— Niccolo Tartaglia (c.1545), Jordanus: a Small Treatise
In this light, we see that humans—differing in some sense from nitrogen N2 or oxygen O2 gas molecules,
which are able to move in three dimensions, or liquid mercury Hg, which basically just flow along the
surface, clinging to itself—are types of powered chemical species, attached to a surface (earth’s surface),
that move laterally, and therein, accordingly, will be compressed both by the ‘upper parts’, the weight of the
atmosphere, to which we are accustomed to by long periods of evolutionary development, but also
compressed by ‘those next to them’, namely those neighboring humans, or human molecules, next to them.
Now, the social pressure, as was introduced, tersely in the Social Piston and Cylinder Engine section
(§7.2), in reference to the view that humans, viewed as particles or molecules, on one side of a given social
piston boundary, e.g. territory boundary, a certain cafeteria table in high school, the boundary of a country,
etc., will bang or collide with that surface, with a force per unit area, or pressure P1. Likewise, the human
particles on the other side of the exact same social piston boundary, in a similar manner, will bang on or
collide with that surface, with a force per unit area, or pressure P2. If one pressure, say P2, is greater than the
other pressure, P1, then the piston will adjust, the social boundary will be moved.
This said, data on social gravitation models are far behind that which is established for universal
gravitation models, to say the least. Nevertheless, we do, however, have a working outline and some general
formulas, based on roundabout data measurement. The following, in this direction, is an oft-cited quote on
the subject of social gravitation:
“The great law of molecular gravitation: man tends of necessity to gravitate toward his fellow man.
Gravitation is here, as everywhere else in the material world, in the direct ratio of the mass and in the
inverse one of the distance. The greater the number collected in a given space, the greater is the
attractive force there exerted, as is seen to have been the case with the great cities of the ancient world,
Niniveh and Babylon, Athens and Rome, and is now seen in regard to Paris and London, Vienna and
Naples, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston..”
— Henry Carey (1858), Principles of Social Science, Volume One (pgs. 42-43)
Likewise, the following compares the Pascal mountain climbing experiment (1648) with the plaster model
of population potentials made by William Warntz, an American demographer, based on equations
formulated by physicist John Q. Stewart:3
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 93

The force Fi of interaction, as measured by things such as number of telephone calls, traffic flows, mail, etc.,
between one city or social mountain, say New York, and another city, say Pittsburg, in the Stewart-Warntz
model (1964), was found, based on demographic data, to be proportional to the product of the populations of
each city, P1 and P2, and the inverse of their distance of separation squared d2.
Here, accordingly, barring prolonged digression into the pros and cons of the Warntz-Stewart model, we
will simply point out, based on this general social gravitation model, that as one climbs the social mountain
of New York, though we presently lack a social barometer able to gauge this type of pressure, the height of
the social ‘mercury-like’ column, if we are to construct one, will rise the closer one gets to the apex of New
York.
In this direction, in respect to proto-models of social barometers, the following shows a packed double
decker bus in Tokyo, below left, as compared to a Torricelli mercury barometer, turned sideways, below
right:

The following, accordingly, shows a draft model of a MTV ‘Real World’ style double-decker bus, rebuilt to
act as a social barometer, able to drive up and down social mountains, and therein gauge a crude measure, at
a first approximation, of social pressure, similar to what Pascal did with atmospheric pressure:
94 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

In its most basic conception, to test this social barometer, one would set up a social experiment, akin to the
MTV’s famous Real World television series, in which a group of college students were recruited to reside or
‘live’ (exist) on double-decker tour bus / mobile home of sorts, under the ‘overt pretext’ that the goal of the
show was to record their goings on, as they visited various cities.
In this manner, the mercury social molecules would be made to cohere, like actual mercury atoms in
liquid mercury, per some type of pre-arraigned lucrative financial binding agreement. In the public double-
decker scenario, the mercury like social molecules on the packed buss would, invariably be exchanging into
and out of the society, which is thus not a true Torricelli barometer.
The bus would be equipped with all the basic amenities of a home, e.g. bed, kitchen, study room,
recreation room, tables, seats, etc., arranged in such a way that the far-most back section of the bus, when
not occupied with the participants or chemical species, would signify the size of ‘social vacuum’, and the
where the activity space, where people are actually found, varying per city, represented by h1 + h2 above,
would represent the height of the social mercury column or quantitative measure of the social barometer.
One should find, just as predicted by Pascal, that the closed end, i.e. social vacuum space, of the U-
shaped social system, would decrease as the U-shaped social system was moved towards large mountainous
cities, e.g. New York or Tokyo, meaning the force of the social pressure of these large central cities would
work to move more of the mercury-like humans farther up or back into the bus, on average, the big cities
being akin to the earth in the Pascal scenario. Secondly, one should find that the size of the social vacuum
should increase as one moved away from New York, e.g. towards small towns, with little populations; or
equivalently the hypothetical height h of the U-shaped social system would be found to decrease as one
climbed away from New York, because there would be less social mass pushing on the mercury like social
system.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. (a) De Waard, Cornelis. (1936). The Barometric Experience: its Background and Explanations – Historical
Study (L’experience Barometrique: Ses Antecedents et ses Explications. Etude Historique). Publisher.
(b) Middleton, William E. (1964). The History of the Barometer (pgs. 10‐17). Publisher.
2. http://www.eoht.info/page/Pascal+atmospheric+pressure+experiment
3. http://www.eoht.info/page/Scale+of+existence+of+things
4. Webster, Charles. (1965). “The Discovery of Boyle’s Law, and the Concept of Elasticity of Air in the
Seventeenth Century” (communicator: J. Ravetz) (abs) (pdf), Archive for the History of Exact Sciences,
2(5):441‐502.
5. Middleton, William E. (1964). The History of the Barometer (pgs. 48‐51). Publisher.
6. http://www.eoht.info/page/SI+unit+geniuses
7. http://www.eoht.info/page/Letter+rhyming+derivation+method
8. http://www.eoht.info/page/unitless+thermodynamics
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 95

9. http://www.eoht.info/page/Shannon+bandwagon
10.
96 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism
13. Guericke (1647)
“Void means an absence of things.”
— Giordano Bruno (1584), On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (pg. 10)

Chapter point: To introduce the peculiar mind of Otto Guericke, who is the anchor genius, in
thermodynamics, in respect to the question of vacuums, piston and cylinder volumes or spaces, and the
ability or power of the vacuum, such as to lift several thousand pounds in the air [length: 12-pgs]

I n 1608, Hans Lippershey, a German-born Dutch spectacle maker, after observing one of his customers
one day looking through two lens, one convex the other concave, one in front of each other, as shown
below, took two such lenses, in the weeks to follow, and arranged them inside of a tube, and therein
invented the telescope, or device for ‘seeing things far away as if they were nearby’, as he put it in his
patent, which he applied for in Oct of that year:

By Jan 1610, news of Lippershey’s new so-called ‘Dutch perspective glass’, as it was then been called,
reached the ears of Galileo, as we have mentioned, who then proceeded to make his own version of what
Lippershey had built. The result, shown in the photo above, was a hand-held tube that allowed one to see
things at a resolution 30x that of the eye. On 13 Mar 1610, Galileo, in his Message on the Fixed Stars,
presented to the world, the first published scientific work based on observations made through a telescope,
detailing observations of the imperfect and mountainous moon, hundreds of stars that were unable to be seen
in either the Milky Way or certain constellations with the naked eye, and moons that appeared to be circling
Jupiter.
In 1611, Johannes Kepler, having, like Galileo, built his own telescope, penned Dioptrice, a treatise on
the principles of telescopes. In the decades to follow, telescopes were being built and used, throughout the
world. An immediate repercussion of this new instrument, was its impact on philosophy.
In 1640s, in Germany, the invention of the telescope, had transformed the previous Copernican model
(1543) of the universe, made via naked eye measurements, as shown below left, wherein the so-called ‘fixed
stars’ are all presumed to be fixed as points in space on an immobile sphere or vessel boundary, as Aristotle
would have it, to that wherein the previous fixed stars, were no longer so fixed, and seemed, per the new
telescope date, to be separated from each other and from the earth and the sun, by seemingly great distances,
as shown below right, in the new Guericke model (1647) of the universe, as juxtaposed by Otto Guericke, a
German engineer, physicist, natural philosopher, mayor, and diplomat, in the opening chapter ‘The System
98 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

of the World, According to the More common Philosophical Theories’, of his 1672 magnum opus New
Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space:5

Here, in comparing these two respective cosmologies, left, pre-telescope cosmology, right, post-telescope
cosmology, that the previous sphere or circle of ‘fixed stars’, namely the seventy ring, with the star asterisks
placed on it, has been usurped by a scattering of stars, of various sized, placed at various distances from the
sun. This new view of things, in the mind of Guericke, opened up an entirely new consortium of
philosophical questions, in respect to the previously purported ‘void’ or vacuum of space or place, said by
Aristotle, to be the vessel of the solar system?
In retrospect reflection on this new mind-sweeping view of things, Guericke, in his chapter section
‘How the Author was Led to Investigate the Vacuum’, says the following:
“Since I had deliberated on these questions for a long time and likewise been engaged in active study of
the structure of the world, not only did the great mass of these world bodies and their enormous
distances lead me to doubt that human intelligence cold comprehend them, but also, and most
particularly of all, did vast, intermediate, and endless space fill me with curiosity and infuse me with a
desire to investigate it. For indeed, what is it? Inasmuch as it contains all things, it serves as a place for
‘being’ and ‘existing’. Is by change some fiery heavenly matter? Is it solid, as the Aristotelians assert?
Is it fluid, as Copernicus and Tycho Brahe believe? Is it some sort of tenuous fifth essence? Or, is space
completely devoid of all matter, a ‘vacuum’, as it were.”
— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 84)
Guericke, following this telling quote, wherein he references ‘desire’, the most powerful agent in the human
sphere of operation, goes on, in his chapter two: ‘Space and Time’, to an historical digression on Aristotle’s
ideas on ‘place’. Firstly:
“Because philosophers commonly state that a ‘vacuum’ is a place in which there is nothing, it will be
necessary to say something about place. What, indeed, is it?”
— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 84)
Next, the established Aristotelean definition:
“Aristotle defines the concept of ‘place’ as a kind of ‘immobile container or receptacle which holds
another body’, or ‘bounds of that which is contained and is in contact with it’, or the ‘outermost bounds
of that which is contained’.”
— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 84)
Said another way:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 99

“We usually locate everything in some ‘πόυ’ (where), i.e., in a particular ‘region’ or within some
boundary. This is what we call place.”
— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 85)
Here, to pause, we see the term ‘boundary’, one of the top, albeit greatly confused, terms in the arsenal of
the modern chemical thermodynamicist. The idiot thermodynamicist, as has so-often been regurgitated, will
simply tell like to proclaim that there are three boundaries: open, closed, and isolated.

Guericke, then jumps to his chapter on ‘Empty Space’, wherein he tells us, via a great deal of learned via
experience wisdom:
“An empty place or vacuum is the cause of a very great effect in nature.”
— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 86)
This overly-accurate and discerning statement cannot be overemphasized enough. He continues:
“Experiments, described in subsequent chapters, visually demonstrate an exaggeration of this
characteristic, when air or water, enters evacuated glass vessels, surging in with great force, contrary to
the usual course of nature.”
— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. 86-87)
Here, to pause, will be digressed on repeatedly and pointedly, in the chapters to follow, we seen, the outline
of experimental evidence, contrary to the ‘usual course of nature’, subtle, but revolutionary notice, so to say,
of new vacuum-based view, that what one, historically, has considered as ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’, or good
and bad, in anthropomorphic religio-mythology speak, is no longer a matter of black and white, or
something divined by prophets, but rather something measurable by experiment. The following quotes, all
anchored to the preface (pg. xvii) of Guericke’s New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space, are
testimony to this new experimental-based reality:
“A thousand Demosthenes, a thousand Aristotles can be laid prostrate by a single man of mediocre
talent who has seized upon a better way to find the truth. Such a hope, therefore, must be removed: for
indeed, men, more learned and superior to us in book-learning, will be found who, to the same of nature
itself, can make that which is, in fact, false, true.”
— Galileo (c.1635), Dialogues on the Cosmos (pg. 35)
“Theories which are demonstrated by experiment and visual perception must be preferred to those
derived from reasoning, however probable and plausible, for many things seem true in speculation and
discussion, which in actual fact defy reality.”
— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. xvii)
“It follows from this that all science is empty, deceptive, and pointless unless it is supported by
experiment. What inconsistencies otherwise successful and perceptive scholars bring forth without its
help! It is experimentation that dissolves all doubts, reconciles difficulties, is a unique teacher of the
truth, furnishes a torch in darkness and instructs us how to determine the true causes of things by
disentangling knotty problems.”
— Athanasius (1631), Magnetic Art (pg. 570)
In 1647, Guericke, in the context of this ingrained discerning curiosity, took a typical German fire
extinguisher or water squirt gun, called ‘Messingen Feuersprutz’, or brass fire spray gun, and reconfigured it
into a suction device, aka ‘vacuum pump’, and with this newly-invented device, attempted to withdraw the
water from a fully water-filled wooden barrel, shown below right, so to, in effect, experimentally produce a
vacuum, inside of the water-evacuated barrel:
100 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Above left, by comparison, we see the wooden piston and cylinder, vacuum measuring device, filled with
water, thought up by Galileo (1632), and published in print form (1638), with which one is supposed to pull
down on the handle K, by increments of weight, so to see how much force is required to ‘break’ the vacuum,
as Galileo conceptualized things.
The overlapping similarity, of these two experiments is striking. They both are water filled. Both are
wooden systems. Both are experiments aiming to either ‘measure’ or ‘make’ a vacuum. Both involve pulling
a handle, with great force, in order to affect the vacuum. The former Italian device, is dated nine-years
before the latter German device. Here, conjecturally, either this could be what Thomas Kuhn calls
‘paradigm change’, in respect to independent discovery, or Guericke was inspired by Galileo’s device, in the
construction of his own device?
We will leave this question open, as it has been debated back and forth, for over a century.3 It will be
presumed, however, that experiments of this kind were ‘in the air’, similar to how the invention of the
telescope, was ‘in the air’, for nearly a century, e.g. da Vinci (c.1500) to Porta (1589), prior to one actually
being built and patented, with intention to sell, via the initiatives of Hans Lippershey (1608).6 Whatever the
case, the following is Guericke’s singularly-invented vacuum pump, a device that would change the face of
science, over the next four centuries:

The following, in his own words, explains from where this vacuum pump invention and beer keg fluid
evacuation experiment came from:
“When I came to consider the immensity of space and the necessity of its presence everywhere, the
above experiment came to mind.”
— Otto Guericke (1672), New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum of Space (pg. #)
In this so-categorized ‘first Guericke vacuum experiment’ (as he had many), we see a keg, previously
used to store wine or beer, filled to maximal volume with water. Attached to the bunghole or aperture of the
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 101

keg, is affixed, a suction, as shown above (with parts a, b, c), or ‘Messingen Feuersprutz’ (brass fire spray),
as was called in his day, a common device used for putting out fires, which he adapted or modified so that it
could admit and discharge water, connected via a four-lugged iron ring e. The rod f or c and piston head g of
the suction pump device is shown to the right of the barrel. This device, as he says, was carefully tooled so
that no air or light could enter or leave around the sides of the cylinder. It was also fitted with two leather
flaps or valves: one, a or d, inside the cover of the pump, adapted for ‘admitting’ water, the other, b, being
external, used for ‘discharging’ water.
Guericke, independence questions aside, in performing this experiment, had strong insatiable desire to
make a ‘vacuum’, as we have cited above, so to disprove, conclusively, Aristotelian cosmology, regarding
space and matter. The following quote captured Guericke’s mindset, for some years:
“All the natural philosophers form Thales to Plato rejected a vacuum. Empedocles says that there is
nothing of a vacuity in nature, nor anything superabundant. Leucippus, Democritus, Demetrius,
Metrodorus, and Epicurus say that the atoms are in number infinite; and that a vacuum is infinite in
magnitude. The stoics say that within the compass of the world there is no vacuum, but beyond it the
vacuum is infinite. Aristotle says that the vacuum beyond the world is so great that the heaven has
liberty to breath into it, for the heaven is fiery.”
— Pseudo Plutarch (c.150AD), The Opinions of the Philosophers (§1.18: Of a Vacuum); cited by
Guericke (1663) in The New Magdeburg Vacuum Experiments (§: Empty Space)
Of note, in the first experimental attempt to make a vacuum, the connection between the pump and the
barrel broke, before they could get all of the water out of the keg.
In his second attempt, after using stronger connection screws, Guericke found that it took three hardy
men, pulling on the piston of the pump, to get the water evacuated from the keg, through the upper valve b.
At the point when all the water had been evacuated, Guericke recorded that a noise was heard throughout
the keg like that of vigorously boiling water, which continued until the keg was filled with air, which
replaced the water that had been drawn out, indicating, therefore, that air had passed though the wood.
In his so-categorized ‘second Guericke vacuum experiment’, in an attempt to remedy this air leaking
through the wood problem, Guericke made a ‘barrel within a barrel’ design, wherein he put a small barrel,
filled with water, inside of a larger barrel, which he filled with water, designed so that the suction pump
connected to the smaller barrel, through an aperture in the outer barrel, but in a way that it was sealed and
air tight at both barrel bungholes, as shown below:

Guericke then had his assistants suck the water out of the small inside barrel, after which, as he claimed, he
had made a ‘void’, which undoubtedly remained. At the end of the day, however, when all the work was
finished and all the ‘murmuring and roaring had ceased’, as he says, there remained a different sound,
roaring intermittently, like the soft twittering of a song-bird, which continued for almost three whole day.
102 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Guericke then opened the bunghole of the smaller keg, at which point air rushed in, meaning a partial
vacuum, accordingly, had existed for three days; he also found, however, the keg to be partially filled with
water, meaning he still had ‘sealing’ issues. Guericke then repeated this same experiment a number of times,
eventually concluding that the porosity of the wood was hindering the achievement of a complete vacuum.
To remedy this issue, in his so-classified ‘third Guericke vacuum experiment’, having realized that he
needed find a more air-tight variant of a wooden keg, built a new container, shown below, figure II, with a
60 to 70 Magdeburg quart sized copper globe, sealed at the seam with some kind of grease mixture, to
which he fitted a stop-cock B, or air-release valve, at the top, and attached the suction pump to the bottom:

With this air-tight setup, using the same methods as before, he sealed the globe, by closing valve B, leaving
only air in the globe, and had two strong men attempt to suck all the ‘air’ out of the globe. At first, as he
reports, it was easy to move the piston, but gradually this action became more and more difficult, until they
were barely able to draw the rod out. Eventually, the two men began to feel confident that they had
essentially extracted all the air. At this point, however, suddenly, to the terror of all, with a loud report or
sound, the copper globe collapsed like a cloth crushed in one’s hand or as if the globe had been hurled from
a tall tower and had crashed with great force into a pancake.
This, to note, was one of the first historical demonstrations, of the immense weight of the atmosphere
pressing down onto the surface of the earth. Guericke summarized this as follows:
“The weight of air on the earth’s surface is as great as the weight of water about 20 Magdeburg cubits
deep. In other words, if water should rise 20 cubits above the earth surface, the pressure it would exert
on all things beneath is the same as the pressure of the air.”
— Otto Guericke (1672), The New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum (pg. 113)
Guericke attributed this result to a flawed design in the spheres, reasoning that if the spheres were perfect,
then their parts would equally support each other, and no crushing action would result. Thus, he had is
craftsman make a perfect sphere copper globe. This remedy fixed the issue. He repeated the procedure, the
sphere held, and he concluded: ‘thus a vacuum was produced for a second time’!
Afterwards, when the stopcock B was opened, he reported that air rushed into the copper globe with
such force that a man standing in front seemed to be ‘drawn to it’, and, moreover, that if he moved his face
sufficiently close, his breath was taken away. Keep this quote in mind when we get to his 1654
confrontation with the ‘Prince of Auerberg’, discussed below.
Guericke also noted that a person could not extend his hand over the stopcock without risk of being
violently drawn to it. Guericke, in this design, noted that after a day or two, air was found to have leaked
into the sphere around the sides of the pump’s piston, as well as through the valve and stopcock.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 103

13.1 | Second Generation Vacuum Pump

In c.1653-54, Guericke had made an ‘improved vacuum pump’, as shown below, which he was
demonstrating to people, e.g. at the 1654 Imperial Assembly held at Regensburg:

The following, from the Gaspar Schott (1658) review of this device, shows a putto pumping the above
device, which is submerged in a tub of water, water employed to effect sealing solution, so to make a
vacuum in the glass globe in the top:

Now, at some point, during the famed 1654 Imperial Diet convention at Regensburg, Guericke commented
the following to the ‘Prince of Auerberg’, Auerberg being then a small province in Bavaria, Germany:
“In regard to these [vacuum] experiments, if a man should breath into the aforementioned receiver [bulb
C, shown above], he would breath out his life at the same time.”
— Otto Guericke (1654), ‘Comment to Prince of Auerberg’, Imperial Diet convention, Regensburg;
cited by Guericke (1672) in The New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum (pg. 169)
104 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Guericke, goes on to state, that the good Prince, ‘could not be persuaded to accept my oral account, until he
had seen with his own eyes, what had taken place in the glass receiver’.
In late 1654 to c.1655, Guericke, following the Prince’s questioning his vacuum experiments,
proceeded, as he says, to ‘undertake a certain new experiment, to prove and confirm’ his theory. The
following diagram, a veritable linchpin in the history of thermodynamics, was the result:

Guericke, in order to silence the objections of Prince Auerberg, whoever he was, built the above apparatus,
so to evidence, that while no one, obviously, will be willing to risk their ‘last breath’ to test Guericke’s
conjecture, about the power of the vacuum, the equivalent conclusion that the vacuum bulb, has not only the
power to suck one person’s last breath, but the power to yank some 20 to 30 men in the air; in his own
words:
“I proceeded to undertake a certain new experiment, to prove and confirm my theory, namely that this
glass vessel can pull along more than 20 or 30, nay, if you prefer, 50 or 100 men and, if they do not
cease this activity, lay them out on the ground.”
— Otto Guericke (1672), The New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum (pg. 169)
In other words, in order to prove, to Prince Auerberg, that his new vacuum bulb could indeed suck the ‘last
breath’ out of a person, Guericke built the above piston and cylinder vacuum demonstration device, which
was able to evidence, before the eyes, how the power of a little vacuum, held in the hands of a boy, above
left, is equivalent to the power of 100 men, able to either jerk them forward, or equivalently, able to lift
several thousand pounds of weight vertically, as shown above (middle); the engineering model of the now
standard ‘piston’, piston ‘rod’, and ‘cylinder’, detailed above (right).
Of note, in respect to the exact dating of this tug-of-war experiment, wherein Guericke takes ‘the breath
away’ of 20 to 30 men, Ditmar Schneider (1986), a noted Guericke historian of sorts, thinks this experiment,
which he refers to as ‘gas test with piston and cylinder’, occurred in c.1659.8 This late date, however, seems
doubtful, being that the entire arraignment was devised just to spoof or rebut the Prince’s 1654 laughter.
Irritation of this sort would not have taken Guericke five years to remedy; hence we date these ‘take one’s
breath away’ and ‘gas test with piston and cylinder experiments’ to within one year (or at most two years)
after the prince’s laughter, i.e. 1654-1656, at the latest.
All of this, now-standard thermodynamic logic, was published and disseminated throughout Europe, in
the three decades to follow. The veiled history, of how the above pictured so-called Guericke engine
(c.1659), transformed into Huygens engine (1673), then the Papin engine (1690), then the Savery engine
(1698), then the Newcomen engine (1712), then the Watt engine (1796), to its culmination in the abstract
model of the Carnot engine (1824), which we now base the entire operation of the universe on, upon which
the increase of the ‘equivalence-value of all un-compensated transformations’, per heat engine cycle, is
based, otherwise known as ‘entropy increase’, in colloquial dumbspeak, aka the second law of
thermodynamics, is based, is like a Russian doll. We can spend much time, reading, and research,
attempting to get to the doll within the doll, but, in the end, there are lacking historical details, which block
exact understanding. Nevertheless, there are determinate points of historical understanding, as we will
discuss.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 105

13.2 | Third Generation Vacuum Pump

In c. 1658 to 1663, Guericke, in upgrade to the pervious suction, built what he called a ‘special apparatus for
producing a vacuum’, according to which the vacuum was made via cranking up and down a mechanical
arm, as shown below:

Guericke referred to this as his ‘travel model’ vacuum pump. This crank arm model, of note, supposedly,
was made after Hooke made his rack and pinion vacuum pump, which Guericke became informed about in
c.1660. These specifics, however, are but interesting historical details. What matter, is that Guericke showed
to the world, via visual demonstration, the ‘power of the vacuum’, actuated in a piston and cylinder, aka a
system with a boundary.
We will but note, in conclusion of this section, that Guericke, made his receiver, or vacuum bulb L,
larger, so that he could test larger things inside the vacuum, such as: birds, fish, mice, clocks, bells, candles,
along with the preservation of grapes over long periods, to name a few of his experiments done in a vacuum,
most of which resonated in history like footnotes in encyclopedias.

13.3 | Fourth Generation Vacuum Pump

In c.1663, Guericke, had begun to have so many visitors come to his home, curious to see what he was
doing with his vacuum experiments, that he had to build an audience room, with a large vacuum bulb to
display to an audience, on one floor, replete with rows of sitting benches for viewers, and on the floor
below, the vacuum bulb was connected to a large vacuum pump operated by two men. A recounting of this
is as follows:
“So many were the visitors that crowded to Guericke's house to witness his marvelous performances,
that he had a large pump erected in his cellar, with tubes ascending into an upper room, and connected
with suitable apparatus. At great receptions, the pump was driven all day by two men, who kept
emptying a very large copper globe of air. When an experiment was to be made, a communication was
opened be-tween this globe and the interior of much smaller vessels, the air contained in which was
immediately greatly rarefied, and their cavities left nearly vacuous.”
— Charles Weld (1849), ‘A History of the Royal Society: Robert Boyle’
This Guericke ‘fourth generation vacuum pump’, built into two floors, is shown below:
106 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

In 1662, Guericke wrote Schott telling him that news of Boyle’s book had reached Magdeburg, though
Guericke had not yet read it, and so told Schott about plans for a new two-story pump design, according to
which the above design would likely have been completed that year.

13.4 | Water Column Barometer

In c.1665, Guericke, did his own water column experiment, as shown attached to his house, similar to what
Berti had done previous, but with the addition of a little floating ‘wooden man’, placed at the top of the
column of water, shown next to little marks, so to indicate daily changes in atmospheric pressure:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 107

Had Berti and Magiotti placed marks on their device, and also studied their level L over the course of many
days, and noticed variations, it would then technically been classified as the invention of the barometer, a
device to measure pressure by increments.
The credit for the invention of the barometer, historically, as generally understood, went to Evangelista
Torricelli who, as discussed, repeated the Berti-Magiotti experiment, albeit with the use of mercury instead
of water, so to thereby make a smaller version of the device. Guericke, either being influenced, or
independently, did the same experiment, with marked gradation, and used these readings to make future
predictions about the weather.

13.5 | Unit of Volume | m3

The assignment of the origin of the ‘unit of volume’, in respect to a historical curator of this concept, as far
as we are aware, has never been assigned. Here, we will assign this honor to Guericke to the year 1654 when
the Prince of Auerberg laughed at Guericke’s statement that if a man should place his mouth over an
evacuated receiver, he would ‘breath out his last breath’ at the same time:
“In regard to these [vacuum] experiments, if a man should breath into the aforementioned receiver [bulb
C, shown above], he would breath out his life at the same time.”
— Otto Guericke (1654), ‘Comment to Prince of Auerberg’, Imperial Diet convention, Regensburg;
cited by Guericke (1672) in The New Magdeburg Experiments on the Vacuum (pg. 169)
After which, Guericke devised the following 20-30 man rope pulling demonstration so to appease the
laughter of the Prince, wherein a single vacuum bulb or receiver, when attached to a piston and cylinder,
with the piston in the raised position, would jerk forward 20 to 30 men, with little effort. This resulting
experiment is shown below:
108 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Here, accordingly whenever one attempts to theorize or think about ‘volume’ in the context of chemical
thermodynamics applied to human reactions scenarios, the above visual should come to mind, as a basic
model of understanding.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. (a) Krafft, Fritz. (1978). Otto von Guericke (date “1647”, pgs. 55‐57; refute Descartes, pgs. 29, 51‐55).
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
(b) Helden, Anne. (1991). “The Age of the Air‐Pump” (date “1647”, pg. 151), Tractrix: Yearbook for the
History of Science, Medicine, Technology, and Mathematics, 3:149‐72.
(c) Conlon, Thomas. (2011). Thinking About Nothing: Otto von Guericke and the Magdeburg Experiments
on the Vacuum (date “1647”, pg. 43). Saint Austin Press/LuLu.
2. http://www.eoht.info/page/Beer+keg+vacuum+experiment
3. http://www.eoht.info/page/Otto%20Guericke
4. http://www.eoht.info/page/Hans+Schimank
5. Guericke, Otto. (1663). New Magdeburg Experiments: on the Vacuum of Space (Ottonis de Guericke
Experimenta Nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de Vacuo Spatio) (translator and preface: Margaret Ames)
(Copernican model, pg. 13; Guericke model, pg. 38). Publisher, 1672; Kluwer, 1994; Springer, 2012.
6. http://www.eoht.info/page/telescope
7. (a) Helden, Anne. (1991). “The Age of the Air‐Pump” (pdf) (Papin vacuum pump, pg. 164), Tractrix:
Yearbook for the History of Science, Medicine, Technology, and Mathematics, 3:149‐72.
(b) http://www.eoht.info/page/Anne+Helden
8. http://www.eoht.info/page/Ditmar+Schneider
9.
14. Boyle’s Spring of the Air (1659)
“The information of sense assisted and highlighted by ‘instruments’ are usually preferable to those of
sense alone.”
— Robert Boyle (c.1675), ‘Propositions on Sense, Reason, and Authority’

Chapter point: (add) [length: 12-pgs]

I
n 1657, Gaspar Schott, a German mathematical physicist, residing in Wurzburg, Germany, whose name
we saw on the previous air pump development timeline map, in his Pneumatico-Mechanical Hydraulics,
originally published in Latin, dedicated a 47-page appendix section, entitled ‘New Magdeburg
Experiments’, to Otto Guericke’s vacuum experiments, with a few illustrations. News of the appendix,
describing the ‘German vacuum engine’, began to spread into England as follows:1

The version described in Schott’s appendix was Guericke’s ‘second generation’ vacuum pump, as shown
below, with the vacuum-making device submersed in water, to make the seals airtight, along with
Guericke’s second-generation vacuum pump, with its two openings, through one of them the air is
introduced, and through the other it is expelled:
110 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

The first to be intellectually awoken by news of Guericke’s vacuum experiments was Robert Boyle, a
wealth English physicist, chemist, and natural philosopher, residing in London. Boyle, from some years
prior, at least since 1655 or before, had encountered reports from the so-called Marin Mersenne
‘communication network’, which included Evangelista Torricelli, Pierre Gassendi, Gilles Roberval, and
others, who had been doing vacuum testing experiments by putting things, like animals, bells, fish bladders,
inside of large Torricelli vacuum tubes, including a vacuum-in-vacuum experiment. Boyle, hearing about
these Italian and French vacuum experiments, had attempted Torricelli and or Berti like vacuum tests of his
own, but with limited success.
In late 1657, Boyle was already so-excited by news of Guericke’s vacuum work, that in letters of
communication he had conceptualized Guericke’s vacuum pump to be of no ordinary beauty:
“You speak still of the ‘German vacuum’ as of no ordinary beauty; but Virgil says ‘uritque videndo
fæmina’.”
— Samuel Hartlib (1658), ‘Letter to Robert Boyle’, Jan 7
At this point, we note that Boyle did not actually have a copy of Schott’s book, but only heard various
descriptions of it and its operation; Boyle recounts this, in a letter to his nephew, as follows:
“You may be pleased to remember, that a while before our separation in England, I told you of a ‘book’
[Mechanics of Gas Hydraulics, 1657], that I had heard of, but not perused, published by the industrious
Jesuit Schottus; wherein, it was said, he related how that ingenious gentleman, Otto Guericke, consul of
Magdeburg, had lately practiced in Germany a way of emptying glass vessels, by sucking, out the air
at the mouth of the vessel, plunged under water. And you may also perhaps remember, that I
expressed myself much delighted with this experiment, since thereby the great force of the external air,
either ruining in at the opened orifice of the emptied vessel, or violently forcing up the water into it, was
rendered more obvious and conspicuous than in any experiment that I had formerly seen. And though it
may appear by some of those writings I sometimes showed you, that I had been solicitous to try things
upon the same ground; yet in regard this gentleman was beforehand with me in producing such
considerable effects by means of the exsuction of air, I think myself obliged to acknowledge the
assistance and encouragement the report of his performances hath afforded me.”
— Robert Boyle (1659), ‘Letter to nephew, Lord Dungarvan’, Dec 20
Subsequently, Boyle, in 1658, greatly piqued by news of Guericke’s ‘way of emptying glass vessels’, which
he was referring to at this time as a ‘German engine’, without, at this point, supposedly, having read
Schott’s appendix summary, decided that he was going to make a ‘vacuum pump + air pump’ combined
device.
The so-called ‘practical disadvantages’ of Guericke’s second generation design, in Boyle’s mind, based
on the reports he had heard, were firstly it needed to be immersed in a large tub of water, second that it was
a solid vessel, such that experimental apparatuses could not be inserted into the vacuum bulb, which is
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 111

something Boyle had tried to do with a specially-made glove sometime prior, and third it was extremely
difficult to operate, requiring the continual labor of two strong men for several hours to evacuate the bulb.1
Hence, in 1648, Boyle, powered by his considerable financial wealth, contacted Ralph Greatorex, a
London instrument maker, who was then reputed to be the leading pumping engineer in England, and
known to have made a considerable sum for draining the Fens, a marshy coastal plain in eastern England.
Greatorex, resultantly, built some sort of prototype device for Boyle, but it was not serviceable or did not
work, or something to this effect.
Boyle then assigned Robert Hooke, a then 23-year-old, who for the last year had been working as his
assistant, to build him an improved Guericke air pump. Hooke, with this new task in hand, went to visit
Greatorex, to see what sort of progress he had made, reporting back that ‘it was too gross to perform any
great matter.’ Hooke than went to London to get barrel and some other parts he could not get made in
Oxford. By the end of 1658 or early 1659, Hooke had built Boyle an improved air pump. Hooke reflected on
his completion of Boyle’s air pump, retrospectively, as follows:
“In 1658 or 1659, I contrived and perfected the ‘air-pump’ for Boyle, having first seen a contrivance
for that purpose made for Boyle by Gratorix [Greatorex], which was too gross to perform any great
matter.”
— Robert Hooke (c.1670), Posthumous Works (pg. iii-iv)
The machine that Hooke resultantly built for Boyle is shown below; left being a reconstructive sketch of
Hooke and Boyle, right being a reconstructed Boyle vacuum pump:

Hooke referred to this machine as an ‘air-pump’, Boyle called it ‘pneumatical engine’, other names include:
Boyle’s air pump (or Boyle’s first air pump), machine Boyleana, rarefying engine, vacuum machine, and
Boyle-Hooke air pump, Boyle’s vacuum pump, among others. An annotated diagram of this vacuum pump
is shown below, along with various experimental accessories.
This device consisted of had a large glass bulb A, that was about 30 quarts (8 gallons or 28 liters) in
volume. The glass bulb itself was called a ‘receiver’, by the glassmakers. At the top of the receiver, was an
aperture BC of about 4 inches diameter, that could be opened to allow experimental things inside, e.g.
candles, bells, pendulum, barometers (mercury and water), animals such as birds, fish, mice, etc., to test
classical doctrines about what can and cannot occur in a vacuum.2 This 4-inch top opening idea, to note, was
Boyle’s per reason that several years back he had attempted some type of vacuum experiment, likely an
inverted mercury or water column of some design, where he said that he had to use a special glove, with a
hole in it, to put things in this earlier vacuum experiment. Hence, this new 4-inch design, allows, as he says
in is letter to his nephew, for a man’s arm to be inserted, to place or configure different experimental
devices.3
112 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Fitted into this 4-inch aperture, was air-tight stopcock pin K, which as shown separately, below top at right,
has a small hole HI in it through which a string 8,9,10 fitted, which allows for the experimenter to move or
pull things inside the vacuum, e.g. ring the bell or do his ‘separation of two plane surfaces’ experiment, in
vacuo. For experimental devices that were longer than the size of the receiver, such as the device of figure
16, specially-made sealed fittings were made to fit into section opening BC.
The bottom of the receiver narrowed to fit into a brass fitting device N that contained a stopcock S, kind
of the connecter between the receiver and the cylinder. This, in turn, was fitted, at point O, into the top of a
brass cylinder 3, at opening QP. At the lip or top of the cylinder is valve R, that when turned will either let
air out, or let air in.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 113

Inside the cylinder is a wooden piston, or ‘sucker’ as they called it, wrapped in ‘tanned shoe leather’,
which is shown in the dotted line location 4. The piston was worked up and down by a rack-and-pinion
system, made of rack 5 and pinion 7. The entire machine rested on frame I. The top part, in sum, is called
the ‘receiver’; the bottom part called the ‘air pump’, at first, then later a ‘sucking pump’. To make the entire
machine air-tight, the poured salad oil into the bottom of the receiver, into the cylinder and piston area, and
around the various valves.
To operate this vacuum making machine, i.e. to remove or evacuate air from the receiver, firstly the
piston is cranked up to the top position, so that no ‘space’ or air remains in the cylinder and piston. Next the
receiver is inserted into the cylinder at the neck portion O, into mouth QP. The stopcock or plug R closed
and the stopcock S is opened. The piston is then cranked down to the bottom position, which works to pull
some of the air out of the receiver. When the piston gets to the bottom position, the stopcock S is closed,
thus sealing off the receiver. Next the plug R is removed or turned, which thus allows the now partially
evacuated air, contained in the cylinder, to connect with the air of the atmosphere. The piston is then
cranked up to the top position, and the process is repeated. Boyle explains this operation process as follows:
“All things being thus fitted, and the lower shank O of the stopcock being put into the upper orifice of
the cylinder, and into which it was exactly ground; the experimenter is first, by turning the handle, to
force the sucker to the top of the cylinder, that there may be no air left in the upper part of it. Then,
shutting the valve with the plug, and turning the other way, he is to draw down the sucker to the bottom
of the cylinder; by which motion of the sucker, the air that was formerly in the cylinder being thrust out,
and none being permitted to succeed in its room, it is manifest, that the cavity of the cylinder must be
empty in reference to the air. So that if thereupon the key of the stopcock be so turned, as that through
the perforation of it a free passage be opened betwixt the cylinder and the receiver, part of the air
formerly contained in the receiver will nimbly descend into the cylinder. And this air being, by the
turning back of the key, hindered from the returning into the receiver, may, by the opening of the valve
and forcing up of the sucker to the top of the cylinder again, be driven out into the open air. And thus
buy the repetition of the motion of the sucker upward and downward, and by opportunely turning the
key, and stopping the valve, as occasion requires, more or less air may be sucked out of the receiver,
according to the exigency of the experiment, and the intention of him that makes it.”
— Robert Boyle (1659), ‘Letter to nephew, Lord Dungarvan’, Dec 20
Each ‘exsuction’, as Boyle referred to it, required progressively more force as the amount of air remaining
in the receiver became more and more rarefied and diminished, wherein, during each exsuction, magnitude
of the vacuum increased, inside the receiver bulb. This was in fact the finding of is very first experiment,
which he recounts, notice the peculiar way he explains things, as follows:
“And, therefore, upon shutting the receiver by returning the key, if you open the valve, and force up the
sucker again, you will find, that after this first exsuction you will drive out almost a whole cylinder full
of air: but at the following exsuctions, you will draw less and less of air out of the receiver itself; and
consequently, the particles of the remaining air, having more room to ‘extend themselves’ in, will less
press out one another.”
— Robert Boyle (1659), ‘Letter to nephew, Lord Dungarvan’ (pg. 8), Dec 20
Boyle then explains how, in this first experiment, he was able to ‘gauge’ the level of the vacuum, following
a series of exsuctions, by the point reached when the atmospheric pressure had the ability, on its own, to
spin the rack-and-pinion handle, and raise up the piston:
“This you will easily perceive, by finding, that you still force less and less air out of the cylinder; so that
when the receiver is almost exhausted, you may force up the sucker almost to the top of the cylinder,
before you will need to unstop the valve to let out any air. An if at such time, the valve being shut, you
let go the handle of the pump, you will find the sucker forcibly carried up to the top of the cylinder,
by the protrusion of the external air; which, being mush less rarified than that within the cylinder, must
have a more forcible pressure upon the sucker, than the internal is able to resist: and by this means you
may know how far you have emptied the receiver.”
— Robert Boyle (1659), ‘Letter to nephew, Lord Dungarvan’ (pgs. 7-8), Dec 20
To explain this peculiar finding, Boyle introduces his ‘spring of the air’, according to which the particles are
envisioned to be like little watch springs, that when compressed, like in the weight of the atmosphere, are
114 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

forced together, but when allowed into evacuated spaces, move such that their ‘springs’ are allowed to
expand, or something along these lines; Boyle explains it thusly:
“There is a ‘spring’ or elastic power in the air we live in. By which ‘έλατηρ’ or ‘spring of the air’, that
which I mean is this: that our air either consists of, or at least, abounds with, parts of such a nature, that
in the case they be being or compressed by the weight of the incumbent part of the atmosphere, or by
any other, body, the do endeavour, as much as in them lieth, to free themselves from that pressure, by
bearing against the contiguous bodies that keep them bent; and, as soon as those bodies are removed, or
reduced to give them way, by presently unbending and stretching out themselves, either quite, or so far
forth as the contiguous bodies that resist them will permit, and thereby expanding the whole parcel of
air, these elastical bodies compose.”
— Robert Boyle (1659), ‘Letter to nephew, Lord Dungarvan’ (pgs. 8), Dec 20
On 20 Dec 1659, Boyle dispatched the first public details of his experiments, such as experiment #1, via a
letter, quoted above frequently, to his nephew Lord Dungarvan, which was kind of his ‘public notice’ of
what he was doing.
In 1660, Boyle letter was published as New Experiments: Physico-Mechanical, Touching the Spring of
the Air, and its Effects: Made, for the most part, in a New Pneumatical Engine, wherein he detailed 43
experiments he had performed inside of his vacuum receiver. These include repeats those done previously
by the Italian and French physicists, such as the bladder in vacuum experiment (#4), done previously by
Gilles Roberval (1648); an expansion of air by heat volume measurement (36), discussed previous by
Marian Mersenne; the void-in-void mercury experiment (#17) and void-in-void water experiment (#19),
done first by Blaise Pascal, but reported by Jean Pecquet (1651), the sound in vacuum experiment, using a
watch instead of a bell, as first suggested by Athanasius Kircher during the Berti vacuum experiments
(c.1639); the separation of two plane surfaces (#31), first employed by Lucretius (60BC) as evidence of the
existence of a vacuum; an attempt at air weighing, done previous by Guericke (c.1650s); a fly, bee, butterfly
(#40), lark, and mouse (#41) in a vacuum; done previously by Roberval (c.1647).

14.1 | Vacuum Lifts a Weight

In experiment #32, shown below right, Boyle realized Galileo’s 1632 (published 1638) vacuum measuring
thought experiment, shown below left. Specifically, Boyle evacuated the receiver, then sealed it, then
attached a specially made stopper to the bottom end of the receiver at section O. The then opened the
receiver, therein making a vacuum connect to the stopper, mean the weight of the atmosphere pressed up
and around the stopper, and then began to add one ounce weight, incrementally, to the attached tray, to see
how much weight it would take to break the vacuum, eventually getting up to 10 pounds of weight in tray:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 115

In experiment #33, shown below right, Boyle, unknowingly repeated the same experiment performed earlier
by Goethe, below left, both of which amounting to attaching an evacuated receiver bulb to a piston,
extended back to the open-ended side of the cylinder, to its farthest back position, then, with certain
incremental amounts of weight being added to a tray, which attaches to the rod of the piston, the receiver
valve is opened, and one tests to see just how much an evacuated receiver can lift:

Boyle, in his passing experiment, tested up to a lifting capacity of 28 pounds. Guericke, by comparison,
being engrossed in these vacuum experiments for more than two decades, managed to get his vacuum bulb
to lift up to 2,686 pounds of weight.
Here, to pause, in respect to the ‘history of thermodynamics’, generally, with particular respect to the
invention of the heat engine, secondarily, above we see the pure operational aspects of thermodynamics. It
takes us, as intellectually growing CHNOPS+ things, another 215-years of thought to go from the above
basically straight-forward diagrams to a standard textbook model explaining the operation of these vacuum
engines, as penned in Clausius’ 1875 second edition of Mechanical Theory of Heat. Moreover, at the present
penning of this treatise, we’re are pushing 360+ years past the above vacuum engine experiments, and we
still do yet even a standing basic treatise on how social vacuums can lift weight or do work?
The ‘work’ of a man cranking the pump arm of the Guericke pump, or turning the rack-and-pinion arm
of the Boyle pump, gets converted into stored potential energy in the receiver bulb, which as Guericke
showed is a potential or energy that can be stored for several months. This stored vacuum energy, when
needed, e.g. for an experiment in Boyle’s case, or a public demonstration in Guericke’s case, can then be
attached to the valve of raised cylinder engine, and therein employed in the ‘work’ of lifting a weight
through vertical distance in height.
In this case we have, in modern speak, the photosynthetic ‘heat’ content of plants, which gets converted
into the ‘energy’ of the meat of animals, both of which being consumed by humans, to yield the muscular
116 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

‘work’ of the mechanical operation of the pump arm, which gets transformed into the stored potential
‘energy’ of the vacuum, which gets converted into the, lifting weight against the force of gravity ‘work’
energy seen in the raising of the weights, through unit distance.
At this point, all one needs, is to figure out, in a clever way, how to make the vacuum with heat or fire
directly, thus circumventing or ‘skip’ the three energy transformations of solar energy becoming plant
tissue, then animal tissue, then human muscular energy, and thus realize a great engine in nature.
The ancient Greeks, from Ctesibius to Hero, as we have touched on, were in the neighbor hood of this
principle, and Da Vinci, likewise, clearly had the principle worked out, but like most of his designs never
took the idea or prototype to the operation realization stage. Over the course of the next 40-years, following
directly from this 1660 New Experiments publication of Boyle’s, the push of this general ‘heat makes
vacuum which raises weight’ principle, was realized.
It was in fact Boyle’s assistant Robert Hooke who first put this weight raising ‘principle’ to paper,
specifically in his ‘future invention #9’, of his 1675 Description of Helioscopes and Other Instruments,
wherein he but boasted, in his usually style, that the following encrypted Latin cypher: ‘Pondere premit aer
vacuum quod ab igne relictum est’, contains the secret for a ‘New Invention in Mechanics of Prodigious
Use, Exceeding the Chimera’s of Perpetual Motions for Several Uses’, the coded message, the cypher key
for which he did not divulge publicly until a decade or two later, reading as follows:

“The vacuum left by fire lifts a weight.”

— Robert Hooke (1675), Description of Helioscopes and Other Instruments (pg. #)
It would be Christiaan Huygens, as we will discuss shortly, who actually was the first to attempt to tackle
with problem, via his gunpowder engine experiments, and to attempt to construct a working realization of
this so-called vacuum left by fire lifts a weight principle. Moreover, it was Denis Papin, Huygens assistant,
who later became assistants to both Boyle and Hooke, that in 1690 pulled all this testing and idea stage
logic, into a draft entitled ‘A New Method for Obtaining Very Great Motive Powers at Small Cost’ for a
basic operational heat engine.
Papin’s New Method was translated into English and published in the Royal Society notes of 1695. This
was read by Thomas Savery, as has been logically deduced, based on circumstantial evidence, who in Jul
1698 patented so-called Savery engine, and in 1699 presented a working model to the Royal Society.
Savery’s engine was then improved upon by Thomas Newcomen, one of Savery’s neighbors, who it is said
might have had a working Papin-style steam engine model operational before Savery, as some have
conjectured, who, of note, had connections to Hooke and Papin, and the rest is simple steam engine history.
In respect to the soon to be commonplace theological implications of what was actuating here, in these
weight raised by vacuum experiments, which amounts to motion reduced to mechanical definition, Henry
More, an English philosopher, attempting to reconcile Plato, Christianity, and the new vacuum-proposing
mechanical philosophy, in his 1653 Anecdote Against Atheism, devoted an entire philosophical section to an
attack on Boyle’s vacuum work, with focus on experiments #32 and #33; this has been summarized as
follows:
“More appealed to Boyle’s experiments #32 and #33 in which large weights were lifted by the sucker
[piston] reascending into the cylinder. More claimed that these trials showed the limited applicability of
any mechanical law of gravity, and that there ‘is a principle transcending the nature and power of matter
that does umpire and rule all.”
— Steven Shapin (1985), Leviathan and the Air Pump (pg. 212)
(add)

14.2 | Second Generation Vacuum Pump

In 1662, Boyle built a second-generation vacuum pump, wherein the piston and cylinder were submerged
under water, and the receiver was attached on a side board, and was made such receiver bulbs if different
sizes could be used, fit to different types of experiments.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 117

The following are illustrations of some of Boyle’s vacuum experiments:

Left, we see his ‘bell in vacuum’ experiment, to test if sound could be heard. Center left, we see the famous
painting of his ‘bird in vacuum’ experiment, wherein Boyle, later ‘froze’ a bird inside of a ‘vacuum’, done
to disprove Thomas Hobbes ‘wind theory of cold’, according to which things can only freeze when wind
118 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

blows on them. At right, we see Boyle’s ‘fish in vacuum’ (or originally ell in vacuum as discussed in
experiment #41), and ‘mouse in vacuum’ experiments.
We will also point out that some of these vacuum experiments were conducted over long periods of
time, in attempts to ascertain things such as the growth of plants in a vacuum and the ‘preservation of
animals and other bodies’ in a vacuum. Here, we will note that Denis Papin, the person behind Papin engine,
the engine model behind the Carnot engine, who we will meet shortly, in 1699 was completing his MD
degree doing work on the preservation of foodstuffs in a vacuum.4 Hence, it would seem plausible that
Papin new of Boyle’s vacuum work before this.

14.3 | Power-Boyle Law

In 1653, Henry Power, an English physician, along with his associate Robert Towneley, a scientist, whose
family Power was the physician for, both having presumably read Jean Pecquet’s 1651 New Anatomical
Experiments, which was translated into English in 1653, and in which all the Italian and French vacuum
experiments were summarized, began doing Pascal-themed vacuum mountain climbing experiments.
On 6 May 1653, Power and Towneley carried a
Torricelli barometer to the top of Halifax Hill, to a
height of 1,000 feet. They also inverted a Torricelli
tube with different volumes of air inside to test for
air volume change with various tube lengths; as
tabulated in the adjacent table.5
All of these experiments, were generally
inconclusive, but digging in the right direction, in
respect to attempting to find a quantitative relation
between pressure and volume. Over the next seven
or so years, Power and Towneley never published
anything and went onto different subjects. When,
however, Boyle published his New Experiments in 1660, they were then again drawn into doing more
experimental work.
On 27 Apr 1661, Power and Townley combined the effects of two previous experiments by enclosing a
volume of air above mercury and measuring its change at two atmospheric pressures, at the foot and apex of
Pendle Hill in Lancashire, which has an elevation of 1,827 feet. They repeated the experiment using a tube
of different length, and measured the pressure at each volume with a standard Torricelli tube containing 29
inches of mercury. They then compared the pressure exerted on the enclosed air P1 and its consequent
volume V1, with the same measurements at the different pressure P2 and volume V2. They called these four
figures ‘proportionals’, concluding thusly:
“Here are now four proportionals, and by any three given, you may strike out the fourth, and by
conversion, transposition, and division of them. So that by these analogies, you my prognosticate the
effect, which follow in all mercurial experiments, and predemonstrate them, by calculation, before the
senses give an experimental eviction thereof.”
— Henry Power (1663), Experimental Philosophy (pg. 130)
Hence, according to Charles Webster (1963), who did his MS degree on Power and Boyle’s Law, this yield
the following relation:6

which yields the following:

Then, supposing or assigning P2V2 to be a constant, yields this:

Human Chemical Thermodynamics 119

which, without subscripts, the general pressure is inversely proportional to volume equation:

Power then wrote an ‘unsigned’ letter to Boyle, about their new pressure-volume experiments, titled
‘Additional Experiments made at Townley Hall, in the years 1660 and 1661, by the advice and assistance of
that heroic and worthy gentleman Richard Townley, and those ingenious gentleman John Townley, Charles
Townley, and George Kemp’, about their findings. Power, however, supposedly forgot to add his name to
the article, being its author. Boyle, therefore mistakenly came to refer to this new pressure volume inverse
relation as Towneley’s hypothesis.
In 1662, Boyle, in the second edition of New
Experiments, Boyle, in chapters 4 and 5 of Part 2 of the
appendix, which was concerned with a rebuttal to the
objections of Franciscus Linus, a Jesuit Aristotelian scientist
who objected to his work on theological grounds, referred to
‘Townley’s hypothesis’ or ‘Townley’s supposition’, which
Boyle says is the proposition that ‘air loses of is spring by
dilation’. Boyle also says that he told Hooke about this, and
Hooke responded that he had thought along the same lines, a
year ago, saying that he concurred with ‘Townley’s theory’.
In any event, in the appendix chapter 5: ‘Two new
Experiments touching the measure of the Force of the
Spring of the Air, Compressed and Dilated’, Boyle explains
how he tested Townley’ hypothesis, i.e. Power’s hypothesis,
correctly speaking, by a J-tube, 48-inches no the long side,
12-inches on the short side, and sealed on the short side,
shown adjacent. They then started with the mercury line the
same in both tubes, then inch by inch adding in more
mercury, to the long tube, and measure the compression in
volume of air in the short tube.
The results are shown in the adjacent table, where
second A column is the height of the column of air in the
short tube, and B is the height of the mercury in the long
tube. Column D is there calculated pressure of the air volume, in the short tube, and where column E is, as
Boyle famously puts it:
“What that pressure should be according to the [Power-Townley] hypothesis, that supposes the
pressures and expansions to be in reciprocal proportion.”
— Robert Boyle (1662), New Experiments (§A5, point E, pg. 101)
This statement that ‘pressure and volume expansions are reciprocal in proportion’ is commonly now
known as ‘Boyle’s law’, whereas correctly it should be ‘Power’ law’, as Henry Power seems to have been
the lead experimenter, who had Richard Townley as his funder, and Townley’s family members, John and
Charles, along with George Kemp, as experimental assistants. Boyle, at the end of this appendix chapter
says the following:
“Now although we deny not, but that in our table some particulars do not exactly answer to what our
formerly mentioned hypothesis might perchance invite the reader to expect; yet the variations are not so
considerable, but that they may probably enough be ascribed to some such want of exactness as in such
nice experiments is scares avoidable. But for all that, till further trial hath more clearly informed me, I
shall not venture to determine, whether or not, the intimated theory will hold universally and
precisely, either in condensation of air, or rarefaction.”
— Robert Boyle (1662), New Experiments (§A5, pgs. 101-02)
In any event, here we see Boyle suggesting a possible ‘universal law’ of pneumatics, which, while not itself
universal, i.e. the Power-Boyle law of pressure and volume varying inversely only tends to hold in ideal gas
type situations, it is the first quantitative law in universal science of thermodynamics.
120 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

In 1686, Isaac Newton, in his Principia (book 2, section 5, proposition 23, theorem 18), as summarized by
Partington (1937), ‘deduced’ the Power-Boyle law, by assuming that a gas is composed of particles
repelling one another with a force varying inversely as the distance, and using the decrease in volume of a
rectangular cube, as a geometrical basis of argument.
In 1893, Walther Nernst, his 1893 Theoretical Chemistry from the Standpoint of Avogadro’s Rule and
Thermodynamics, skipping about 235-years of gas law theory development, we get the modern version of
the ideal gas law, as shown below, wherein the product of the pressure P and volume V are equal to the
product of the particle count n, ideal gas constant R, and absolute temperature T:

The various precursory gas laws themselves, such as Amontons law (1702) or Charles Law (1778), whose
names tended to vary per continent, e.g. in France they referred to Boyle’s law as ‘Mariotte’s law’, that went
into the finalized formation of the ideal gas law, to note, is a long and convoluted historical subject in and of
itself. There have been, in fact, more than 60-equations or ‘equations of state’ suggested to express the
complete behavior of a substance over the whole range of measured P, V, and T values, per reason that it is
‘impossible’, as Mark Zemansky (1979) puts things, to do this with one single equation.9
We will touch later on various attempts at social ideal gas laws, but with respect to our subject matter,
people are surface attached molecules, not gas molecules. To repeat: ‘humans are not gas molecules’ that
move about chaotically with so-called ‘uncorrelated velocities’. This important point has been frequently
confused and abused, particular in the newly-growing fields of sociophysics or econophysics.
The important point to keep in mind, here, is that all of this vacuum work, undertaken by Boyle, was
carried forward by Christiaan Huygens in France, as we will discuss shortly; and that in 1673, Huygens took
on a new assistant named Denis Papin; who became Boyle’s assistant in 1675 and then Hooke’s amanuensis
in 1679; all of which worked to stimulate the theoretical Papin engine (1690), which led to the Carnot
engine (1824), which led to the Clausius engine (1865), wherein thermodynamics was founded.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. (a) Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon. (1985). Leviathan and the Air‐Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the
Experimental Life (disadvantages, pg. 26; operation, pg. 28; map, pg. 228). Princeton University Press,
2011.
(b) http://www.eoht.info/page/Steven+Shapin
2. http://www.eoht.info/page/Receiver
3. Boyle, Robert. (1774). The Works of the Honorable Robert Boyle, Volume One (editor: Thomas Birch) (§:
New Experiments Physico‐Mechanical, pgs. #‐#). A. Millar.
4. McConnell, Anita. (2007). “Denis Papin”, OxfordDNB.com.
5. Webster, Charles. (1965). “The Discovery of Boyle’s Law, and the Concept of Elasticity of Air in the
Seventeenth Century” (communicator: J. Ravetz) (abs) (pdf), Archive for the History of Exact Sciences,
2(5):441‐502.
6. Webster, Charles. (1963). “Richard Towneley and Boyle's Law” (pdf), Nature, 197:226‐28, Jan 19.
7. Boyle, Robert. (1662). New Experiments (Appendix §: A Defense of the Doctrine Touching the Spring and
Weight of the Air, chapter V, entitled "Two new experiments touching the measure of the force of the
spring of the air compressed and dilated"). Publisher.
8. Partington, James. (1937). A Short History of Chemistry (pg. 166). Dover, 1957.
9. Zemansky, Mark; Dittman, Richard. (1979). Heat and Thermodynamics (pg. 33). McGraw‐Hill.
10.
15. Huygens
“Huygens, after observing Boyle’s air pump, in 1661, then replicated and modified this instrument in
Holland in 1662, and then again for the Montmor Academy in Paris in 1663, and finally for the Royal
Academy in 1668.”
— Luciano Boschiero (2010), ‘Translation, Experiments and the Spring of the Air’ (pg. 70)

Chapter point: (add) [length: 8-pgs]

I
n Oct 1660 to Mar 1661, Christiaan Huygens, pronounced or ‘high-gens’ or ‘ho-oue-gen’, a Dutch
physicist, inventor, astronomer, and mathematician, visited Paris, rubbing shoulders with the intellectual
elite, such as Gilles Roberval and Blaise Pascal. Here, Huygens spent a good deal of time at the
Montmor Academy, which was an intellectual salon, hosted in the home of wealth Henri Montmor, that ran
from 1657 to 1664, prior to its falling out, thereafter becoming the forerunner to the Royal Academy of
Sciences, the French equivalent of the English Royal Society. The Montmor group, which had weekly
meetings every Tuesday, which Huygens attended, included: Pierre Gassendi, who prior to its formation
donated Galileo’s telescope to the group, which he had been given by Galileo, Pierre Huet, a noted early
religio-mythology scholar, the vacuum experimenters: Pierre Petit, Gilles Roberval, and Adrien Auzout,
along with Blaise Pascal in some connective sense.
The following is a key journal entry, of note, made by Huygens during this period, in that we hear talk
of cannon barrels, steam, and flying:
“Saw Chapelain, Conrart, Roberval. Didn’t find Carcavy. The duc de Roannez came to see me, and
Pascal later. Talked about the force of steam in their cannon and about flying. I showed them my
telescopes.”
— Christiaan Huygens (1660), Journal Entry, Dec 13
The person Huygens talked to specifically about the ‘force of water rarefied in cannons’, has been
conjectured to have been Pascal, whom in Dec 1660 Huygens met at the house of Duc de Roannes, and also
Pascal, along with the Duke, eight days later, visited Huygens at his lodgings in rue Sainte Marguerite; this
conjecture is summarized as follows:
“There is a possibility that Huygens had considered some kind of atmospheric engine as early as 1660
when he talked with Pascal about the ‘force of water rarefied in cannons’. In these experiments of 1673,
we can see the forerunner of Papin's atmospheric engine, which did in fact employ steam in place of
gunpowder.”
— Arthur Bell (1947), Christiaan Huygens (pgs. 43-44, 74)
Pascal, however, was sick at this time, and semi-retired from academic affairs; as Bell points out, he was
‘dead less than a year later’, as Bell points out. Hence, it remains a potentially open question, as to who
exactly Huygens was discussing the force of rarefied steam in cannons with?
In Apr 1661, Huygens moved to London to visit and meet with the scientists of the Royal Society,
during which time Robert Boyle explained his vacuum experimental work to him, pointing out the device’s
many experimental possibilities. Huygens was particularly interested in Boyle’s experiment #17, the so-
called ‘void within a void’, previously done by the French, wherein Boyle had put a Torricelli barometer
inside of his vacuum tube, and then pumped out the air, as he watched the height of the mercury column fall,
until it was the same as the height as the mercury in the bottom tub, thus proving that it is the ‘weight’ of the
atmosphere that holds up the mercury in the column of the Torricelli barometer.
In autumn 1661, Huygens, after returned to Holland, had built his own vacuum pump, shown below
adjacent middle and right, generally based on Boyle’s design, below left. Huygens, with his own air pump,
repeated Boyle’s experiment #17, but this time he used water to make the barometer instead of a mercury
barometer. Namely, as shown above right, he filled the bulb-shaped tube A with water, then inverted it into
cup B also filled with water, at which point some of the water would drain out into the cup, but not all the
way, stopping at the dotted line level in the bulb. He then, like Boyle, pumped the air out of the receiver,
122 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

and found, like Boyle found with mercury, the level in the bulb A to fall until it became the same level as
the water in the dish:

Next, Huygens, noticing, like Boyle, that when was is ‘exsuctioned’, as Boyle would say, that bubbles
appear in the water. Huygens, therefore, thinking that possibly ‘air’ was in the water, might be left behind in
the so-called ‘Torricellian space’, i.e. the purportedly empty region left at the top of the barometer bulb,
after it was inverted, which was said by the vacuist camp, i.e. new thinkers like Torricelli, Guericke, Boyle,
to be devoid of all things, but said by the plenist camp, e.g. followers of Aristotle and Descartes, to not be a
complete void or have something inside of it, like ‘subtle matter’ as Descartes claimed, decided that he
would repeat the experiment, albeit this time using so-called ‘purged’ water, the exact details of which are
wonting, but generally Huygens, as generally understood, put a cup of standard water in an evacuated
receiver, for several days, so to let the bubbles out. This, supposedly, was thus purged air.
Huygens then repeated the vacuum in
vacuum experiment, but this time with purged
air. He found, strangely, that the boiled water,
with no air bubbles in it, in the inside tube B,
did NOT fall in height, when the outer receiver
became evacuate?
Now, to pause, before explaining this, and
repeat again, the reason why there was such
intense focus on what was or was not in the so-
called Torricellian space, is that if there was
indeed a vacuum in the Torricellian ‘space’,
then it would be possible, ontologically
speaking for ‘being’ to go into ‘non-being’; or
as Aristotle said the plenum is ‘being’, the void
is ‘not being’:
“The ‘plenum’ [space with atoms] and ‘void’ [space without atoms], according to Democritus, exist, the
one as ‘being’, the other as ‘not being’.”
— Aristotle (350BC), Physics (§1.4)
Hence, for over 2,000-years, prior to these Boyle-Hooke vacuum within vacuum tests, the plenists were
philosophically ensnared with the vacuists, and for most of these years, the plenist, having the church on
their side, held the lead. In a sense, at least as per the then-current Parmenidean-based Aristotelean-
Cartesian themed model in vogue, when you ceased to exist, i.e. ‘died’ in colloquial speak, what defined
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 123

‘you’, as a human being, at the exact moment of cessation, in the grand picture of things, would no longer
exist; the theory of continuity of being would, in short, become dissolved or disproved; hence, the we
witness the acute and peculiar focus on the Torricellian space.
Much of this ‘hidden issue’, so to say, was not always spoken about so openly, as they seem to have
done in the days of Parmenides and Aristotle. One noted exception, however, was the famous collision
between Descartes, who believed there was a ‘subtle matter’ in the space, Pascal, who was indecisive, but
who, the following year (19 Sep 1648), as we have covered, orchestrated the mercury barometer mountain
climbing test, and Gilles Roberval, a French mathematician, who had a standing grudge against Descartes,
and who believed Torricellian space was indeed empty, but that height of the mercury column depended on
the limit of the natural abhorrence of vacuums; the following is a summary of this ‘collision of geniuses’, as
reported by Pascal’s sister:
“They began to discuss the problem of the vacuum. Descartes became particularly serious on the
subject. The others explained a recent experiment to him and asked him what he thought entered into the
space of the emptied tube. He said that it was his ‘subtle matter’. My brother [Blaise Pascal] responded
to this theory as best he could. Believing that my brother was having some difficulty expressing himself,
Roberval took on Descartes with not a little passion, although he remained civil. Descartes responded
rather bitterly that he could speak to my brother as long as he desired because my brother spoke
reasonably but that he wouldn't continue to talk with Roberval, because the latter spoke out of too many
prejudices. With that, he glanced at his watch and saw that it was noon. He stood up, because he had a
dinner date in the Faubourg Saint-Germain.”
— Jacqueline Pascal (1647), ‘Letter to [Name]’, Sep 15
So, in other words, the question of what was or was not in the Torricellian space, was the one question on
the minds of all the biggest thinkers of the era. Hence, when Huygens used ‘boiled water’, in his barometer,
for his second void-in-void experiment, he was looking to solve, definitively, this ongoing two-millennia
long debate.
Subsequently, when Huygens found that the water column, made of purged water, did NOT fall, like
normal water, or like mercury, he reported his findings back to Boyle, Boyle initially denied the effect
because he could not reproduce it with his own air pump. Boyle also suggested that Huygens pump could
not evacuate sufficiently. Huygens, in turn, believed that Boyle’s pump was defective.
The demonstration of ‘anomalous suspension’ was finally demonstrated in London, in 1663, in front of
the Royal Society, debates about what was occurring here ran through various scientific circles, into the
1670s, eventually came to a sort of unresolved issue; the standing view being that it has something to so
with extra molecular adhesion in the airless water and bubbles forming in the normal tap water, which rose
during successive evacuation pumps.2

15.1 | Second generation

vacuum pump
In 1662, Huygens made ‘second
generation’ vacuum pump, as shown
below, which shows the vacuum in
vacuum test of the receiver
containing the barometer, seen in the
previous diagram. This new design
also has an inverted piston and
cylinder, which was filled with water
on the backside of the piston, which
has a drip tray F, shown below,
thereby, in theory, making a better
seal.
In this new design, the tube A
connect the side of the cylinder to the
receiver or vacuum bulb at points C
124 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

and E, and the receiver is removable, so that different sized bulbs could be employed for different
experiments.
In 1663, Huygens got the Montmor group, to build a vacuum pump using this design, so that the
vacuists there could begin conducting their own vacuum experimentation research program. Huygens
continued his vacuum research using this device until at least 1668.

15.2 | Gunpowder Engine (1673)

Huygens, as we have mentioned, in 1660, had begun discussing, with the Montmor group, while in Paris,
speculative ideas about using a cannon and the force of steam to make some sort of engine, possibly. We
also know that in 1661, he had mentioned the possibility of using a cannon, steam, and heat, to raise a
weight. Two years later, however, after learning about Boyle’s model of making the vacuum space of a
piston and cylinder engine raise a weight, he gleaned on the idea that he could use gunpowder to make a
vacuum inside of a piston and cylinder, so to raise a weight.
In Feb 1673, Huygens reported that he had ‘constructed an engine’, built using a small cylinder,
according to which by means of gunpowder, he was able to obtain a new motive power, i.e. to lift a weight
in a vertical distance:
“I have constructed an engine for obtaining a new motive power by means of gunpowder and the
pressure of air.”
— Christiaan Huygens (1673), Oeuvres, Volume 22 (pg. 241), Feb 10; cited by Joseph Needham
(1987) in Science and Civilization in China: Volume 5, Part 7 (pg. 556-57)
Another take on this new Feb 1673 engine, is as follows:
“Huygens calculated that a single pound of gunpowder could raise 3,000 pounds a distance of thirty
feet. In a 1673 experiment he managed to lift a weight using a small cylinder.”
— Jack Kelly (2009), Gunpowder (pg. 118)
Said another way, Huygens calculated, supposedly, that a single pound of gunpowder possessed enough
energy to raise 3,000lbs 30 feet and that a 3ft diameter cylinder would give upwards of 40 horse power
(HP), according to Joseph Needham’s footnoted translations; although, to note, ‘HP’ or horsepower was not
yet an invented unit in this century. The following are three different draft sketches for Huygens’
gunpowder based new motive power machine, which he was circulating, in his 1673 communications and
publications:3

Here, we see that Huygens, independently, employing the cannon barrel explosion, with one-way ‘out
valves’, that Da Vinci employed in 1508.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 125

To operate, one places gunpowder inside the cannon, lights or detonates the gunpowder, it explodes, the
solid gunpowder transforms into gaseous products, the product gasses escape through the vents, such as the
left tube, above left, the two ports F, above middle, or vent B, above right. Once the gases have escaped, the
inside volume of the cannon, e.g. region A and A, above right, becomes a partial vacuum, in respect to the
surroundings, or pressure of the atmosphere. The piston, B, above left, D, middle, or C, right, accordingly,
is ‘forced’ down, by the pressing weight of 62-miles of air molecules above its surface, in respect to the few
remaining molecules inside the cannon. When the piston descends, a rope attached to a pull, lifts a weight,
or does ‘work’ in modern parlance. Heat engine theory 101, as we might say. Huygens commented on this
new invention:
“The force of cannon powder [gunpowder] has served hitherto only for very violent effects such as
mining, and blasting of rocks, and although people have long hoped that one could moderate this great
speed and impetuosity to apply it to other uses, no one, so far as I know, has succeeded in this, or at any
rate no notice of such an invention has appeared..”
— Christiaan Huygens (1673), Publication; cited by Joseph Needham (1987) in Science and
Civilization in China: Volume 5 (pg. 557)
In 1678 to 1682, Huygens had progressed into the following modified working model of gunpowder engine
designs:

Above right we see that the explosion of the gunpowder, in the cylinder, creates a vacuum inside the
enclosed region or ‘system’ of the volume contained within the piston and cylinder; this forces the piston A
down, and lifts 5-men into the air. Guericke commented on this:
“I have seen some surprising effects in raising weights and men pulling the rope. If we could well see
the air it would be much more.”
— Name (c.1675), Publication (pg. #)
At this point, we can now compare the Guericke 1654-1655 vacuum-effected rope pulling demonstration,
with the 1682 Huygens vacuum-effected rope pulling demonstration; as shown below:
126 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

In respect to the similarity of these two publicly-popular experimental demonstrations, we do know that in
1659, Huygens had received a copy of Gaspar Schott’s Mechanical Hydraulico-Pneumatics (1657), which
contained an appendix 45-page summary of Guericke’s early vacuum experiments.5 The only actual image
this book contains, in reference to Guericke, is his second generation vacuum pump. Moreover, the text is in
Latin, and in need of English translation, so it is difficult to if Schott talks about Guericke’s 20-man rope
pulling demonstration. The actual illustrated Guericke rope pulling experiment, aka ‘take your breath away’
experiment, shown above left, was published in the 1672 New Magdeburg Experiments: on the Vacuum of
Space. Either through this latter publication, or via word of mouth, it is likely that Huygens had learned
about Guericke’s early rope-pulling demonstration, and wanted to repeat the experiment, and show that the
same effect could be obtained via gunpowder.

15.3 | Papin as Huygens’ Assistant / Papin vacuum pump

In 1673, Denis Papin, a French intellectual, and newly-minted MD, aged 26, born in 1647, the year, as some
have pointed out, when Guericke invented his vacuum pump, then interested in the possibility of preserving
food stuff in a vacuum, became Huygens assistant. Papin, as we will shortly see is a peculiar figure, who
plays out significantly in the theoretical development and eventual construction of the piston and cylinder
heat engine, the forerunner to the Carnot theoretical heat engine, and hence thermodynamics.
Both Huygens and Papin, to keep readers into the context of the cultural atmosphere at the time, were
French Huguenots, namely French Protestants who held to the reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of
Protestantism. The Huguenots had coexisted with French Catholics since the Edict of Nantes (1598) had
certified their freedom of religious practice. But, after a rapid buildup of anti-Protestant sentiment, Louis
XIV repealed the Edict in 1685, after which some four-hundred-thousand Huguenots were expelled from
France. They had to move off into Germany, England, Canada, and American, e.g. Alexander Hamilton and
Paul Revere ended up in Massachusetts. Papin, as we shall see, in the wake of the Edict of Nantes, ended up
in Germany, where the first prototype to the Carnot engine was constructed and demonstrated.
Over the course of the year, Papin built a redesigned vacuum pump, as shown below left, which was
basically the same as Huygens’s first-generation vacuum pump, albeit with the additions of having two
pistons on one rod, the lower piston carrying a quantity of water that sealed off leaks in the top piston, and
the piston rod was connected to a ‘stirrup’ I, designed to be worked with one's foot, so to make the task of
pumping less tiring, thus also leaving one hand free to operate the cock. The cock itself being a special
three-way-cock, with a combined inlet valve and outlet valve, which was easier to handle than a separate
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 127

inlet-cock and stopper. Also shown, below right, we see a statute of Papin, as found on the second story
ledge of the Louvre Museum, among statues of great French thinkers -- Descartes, Diderot, Voltaire,
wherein Papin is shown holding a sectioned piston and cylinder, namely a cylinder, cut away to expose a
piston and rod within it:

This vacuum pump design of Papin's, is largely a reconstruction of Huygens’ first vacuum pump design, but
had the additions that it was also able to work as a compressor, an air pump and vacuum pump combination.
We also see, in this illustration, in figure 3, or the receiver bulb at the top of the device, Papin doing some
type of a plant in a vacuum test, which seems to have been a great interest of his during this decade; which,
as we see, is something he carried forward in his work with Boyle from 1676 1o 1680.
In 1674, Papin, under Huygens supervision, published New Experiments on the Void (Nouvelles
Experiences de Vuide), a summary of the vacuum experiments he had observed, learned about, and did, such
as with this new vacuum pump, under his apprenticeship with Huygens, which included Huygens’ designs
of vacuum pumping machines, including tests and animals and plants inside the vacuum, and the barometer
inside the vacuum, which was printed in French in Paris.
In 1675, Huygens and Papin jointly five papers in the Philosophical Transactions, on Huygens’ vacuum
research.
In Jun 1675, Huygens received a printing of Boyle’s collected papers, and in return, the following
month, Huygens sent Papin to England with his own air pump to engage with Boyle directly. Papin carried a
letter of introduction from Huygens to Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society, declaring
Papin’s interest to learn what the English experimenters were doing:
“Papin carries with him our book Nouvelles Experiences de Vuide (1674), and his wish is to ‘see what is
being done in your country, even with the plan of establishing himself there if he can find the
opportunity. I beg of you kindly to grant him your favour and protection, and that by your means he
may be known by your illustrious friends, above all Mr. Boyle and Lord Brouncker’.”
— Christiaan Huygens (1675), “Letter to Henry Oldenburg”
128 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Oldenburg gave Huygens a starter job as a tutor. Huygens, after spending a few months learning English,
shortly thereafter became Boyle’s assistant, Boyle first employing him to make a translation of a theological
treatise, then later making him curator of his experiments, under whose tutorage he remained over the next
four years.4

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. Helden, Anne. (1991). “The Age of the Air‐Pump” (anomalous suspension, pg. 153), Tractrix: Yearbook
for the History of Science, Medicine, Technology, and Mathematics, 3:149‐72.
2. http://www.eoht.info/page/Anomalous+suspension
3. http://www.eoht.info/page/Gunpowder+engine
4. Boschiero, Luciano. (2009). “Translation, Experimentation and the Spring of the Air: Richard Waller’s
Essayes on Natural Experiments”, Notes and Records, Royal Society, Oct 14.
5. Bell, Arthur. (1947). Christiaan Huygens: and the Development of Science in the Seventeenth Century
(cannons, pgs. 43‐44, 74; Schott's 1659 book, pg. 44)). Read Books, 2012.
6.
16. Papin
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: 11-pgs]

I
n Jul 1675, Denis Papin, after apprenticing under Christiaan Huygens, for the previous two years,
working on and writing about gunpowder engine testing and vacuum pump experimentation, travelled to
England, with his own vacuum pump and letter of introduction from Huygens, and was received by
Henry Oldenburg, the Royal Society secretary, who gave him a job as tutor.
By Autumn 1675, Papin, after spending several months learning English, began to resume his previous
work with the vacuum pump, so to acquire Boyle’s attention. To facilitate this connection, Papin and
Huygens, as mentioned, published a series of five papers in the Philosophical Transactions, wherein they
narrated some of the vacuum experiments covered in Papin’s New Experiments on the Void (1674), with the
underlying aim to awaken the Royal Society to the work they had done in Paris, and more importantly to
alert Boyle to Papin’s presence.1
In Feb 1676, the last of these papers went to print, and Oldenburg read an account of Huygens’ and
Papin’s experiments at a meeting of the Royal Society, where some of their experiments were replicated.
The ruse worked, and Boyle, shortly thereafter offered Papin a job as his assistant; at first to do a translation
of a theological treatise, then later as Boyle’s new experimental curator.
Boyle, who recalls first meeting Papin ‘seven or eight years’ after the publication of his Continuation of
New Experiments (1669), i.e. in the years 1676 to 1677, later reflected on his first meeting with Papin as
follows:
“At which time it happened very opportunely, That a certain tract [Nouvelles Experiences de Vuide,
1664] written in French, small in bulk, but very ingenious, containing sundry experiments concerning
the preservation of fruits, and some other tracts of a different nature, was brought unto me by monsieur
Papin, who had joined his pains with the eminent monsieur Christian Hugenius, in making the said
experiments.”
— Robert Boyle (c.1685), Collected Works (pg. #)
Over the course of the next four years, 1676 to 1680, Boyle employed Papin as his chief curator of
experiments, and together they conducted further experiments on the vacuum.
In these years, Boyle was interested no longer on vacuums, via expansion of air, but on the study of
compression of air, the reverse of the former. Papin, however, was interested in the preservation of food
stuff, such as plants and animals, in a vacuum, so the research that ensued was a combination of both of
these, vacuum research and compression research.
In 1680, Boyle, having been forced to rest because of an illness, had Papin write up a summary of the
new vacuum experiments that they had been conducting, which was first written in French, Papin’s native
language, then printed that year in Latin, and translated into English in 1682, entitled A Continuation of New
Experiments Physico-mechanical, Touching the Spring and Weight of the Air, and Their Effects: Wherein
are Contained Divers Experiments: Together with a Description of the Engines Wherein They Were Made.
The Second Part, which details various experiments conducted by Papin under the direction of Boyle, some
of which including the preservation of grapes and bread, to check for air release over the course of many
days. Many of the experiments are dated to the day.

16.1 | Papin as Boyle’s Assistant / Compressing Engine

The following diagram, from this this Boyle-directed, Papin-written A Continuation of New Experiments
Physico-Mechanical, The Second Part, shows Boyle’s compressing engine, below left, designed to increase
pressure in the receiver bulb, an example of which as shown below right, in which, shown by figure
ABCDE is Boyle’s new mercury pressure gauge. The pressure gauge, consists of glass tube AB, which is
open at A. This tube is connected, at location B, to a u-shaped tube BCD, which contains mercury, which in
130 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

turn is connected to tube ED, which is sealed at the top at E. The figure the long tube HI is an inverted
mercury column into cup of mercury, i.e. a Torricelli barometer. Both of these devices are sealed into
receiver bulb G, which rests on plate LM, below which is a valve that pumps air into the receiver, so to
increase the pressure. The pressure in the receiver is measured by change in the ‘spring of the air’, or
volume change of tube ED, the applied pressure:

Boyle uses this new device to make the force (or pressure) vs volume diagram, shown above. Here, A
represents a certain quantity of air, in tube ED and F is one unit of ‘compressing force’, supposedly being
one compression stroke of his pump. If the force is doubled to ‘F + G’, then the volume of the air is halved
to B. If the force is increased to ‘F + G + H’, the volume is reduced to a quarter of A, shown by curve C.
Thus, Boyle, or more correctly Papin, summarizes this as follows:
“The remaining space will be in the same proportion to the total space, as the first pressure is to the total
pressure. It is evident, from the experiments long since published by Mr. Boyle, in his answer to Linus,
that the space possesses by the air, is diminished in the same proportion, as the compressing force, and
vice versa.”
— Denis Papin (1680), A Continuation of New Experiments, The Second Part (pg. 101)
Here, of course, as we have covered this is Power’s law (1661) or Power-Boyle law as we named it. Boyle
here, accordingly, has devised an experimental way to measure these changes in pressure with volume
incrementally, using an experimental device.
In 1679, Edme Mariotte, of related note, working at the Royal Academy in Paris, published in his
Discourse on the Nature of Air, wherein he referred to the finding that pressure is inversely proportional to
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 131

volume, as a ‘law of nature’; hence, one can occasionally find references to this law as the Boyle-Mariotte
law.

16.2 | Double Barrel Vacuum Pump (1677)

In 1677, Papin built a double barrel vacuum pump, as shown below, as described in A Continuation of New
Experiments, The Second Part, made a double barrel air pump, which had ‘self-acting valves’, unlike the
early Boyle model, where the operator had to turn the inlet-outlet ever exsuction, that were operated by
turning a wheel, the use of two barrels employed so that the time to achieve a vacuum was reduced:2

In this new vacuum pump design, A and A are two ‘pumps made of brass’; presumably the cylinders. Part B
and B are ‘two plugs hollow within, and open below’; presumably these are the pistons. C and C are ‘two
holes in the upper part of the plugs, with valves opening outwardly, that they may afford passage to the air
to go out, and hinder it from coming in’. The cords DD and DD are ‘iron rods serving to move the plugs,
and annexed to them, by means of gnomons FF’. The rectangle shapes E and E are ‘two flat iron stirrups at
the top of the rods DD, on which the operator must stand to set a work on the engine’. Here, we see this is a
continuation of Papin’s first generation vacuum pump, wherein he employed one stirrup.
The rope GGG is a cord joining the two stirrups, which encompass a pully H. At the bottom of the
cylinders are two valves L and L, that open inwardly, for the ‘admission of the air out of the tube MM’. This
tube MM connects to tube PQ, which connects to a plate OO, and through a small hole to the receiver bulb,
such as R, as shown, which is removable.
This pump is then fitted into the wooden frame, shown at right, labeled as figure two. Then to operate
this engine, water is first poured through the hole Q in the plate OO into the pumps, as is ‘sufficient to fill
the cavities of the plugs, and a little more’. Then someone must stand on the two iron stirrups EE and
alternately depress and elevate them, like one of those ladder-climbing exercise machines in modern gyms.
132 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Doing this, skipping a few details, eventually works to evacuate the air from the receiver, making a vacuum
therein.

16.3 | Digestor (May 1679)

In 1678 or early 1679, Papin was experimenting with food again, only this time in respect to the
compression of food stuff in steamed volume. He seemingly was aiming to make a pressure cooker of some
sort. Early attempts at this new device resulted in explosion, owing to the extreme pressures. He fixed this
problem by adding on steam release valve.
On 22 May 1679, Papin had finished building a ‘digestor’, or apparatus for boiling food under pressure
cooker, which was able to liquify bones or rather turn bones and horns into a soft cheese like substance,
which he then presented to the Royal Society; the following are two variations of this so-called Papin
digestor:

In 1680, Papin printed a fifty-page booklet entitled A New Digester or Engine for Softening Bones:
Containing the Description of Its Make and Use in These Particulars: viz, Cookery, Voyages at Sea,
Confectionary, Making of Drinks, Chymistry, and Dying, which include an overview the design, specifically
the above left design, and operation of his new pressure cooker; commenting the following:
“I may besides say, that this was no hard matter; for everyone knows that compact bodies, if hot, will
burn more powerfully than those of a more rare contexture: that red-hot iron, for example will do more
than coals: so there was no question but that water being heated enough for boiling, and shut up so as
not to be able to expand itself, as by ebullition it doth, such water, I say, would effect much more than if
permitted to its ordinary boiling expansions. For my part, as soon as this came to my mind by making
some experiments about compression for Mr. Boyle, I thought it so certain, that I made no question to
undertake a trial: yet though the thing was so easy, no body, that I know of, had any thoughts of it: many
learned men have don and do still things of much more difficulty, but nobody can see all things.
Therefore, we must confess, that there may still remain discoveries to be made by small as well as great
capacities.”
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 133

— Denis Papin (1680), A New Digester or Engine for Softening Bones (§: Preface)
Papin, in this booklet, devotes sections to ‘how to know the degree of heat’; ‘experiments made upon
bones’, ‘how to boil beef’, ‘horn turned like parmesan cheese’, and ‘how to make tortoise shell soft for a
great while’, among others.
To give a quick overview of the operation of Papin’s ‘bone softening engine’, the following is a more
detailed illustration of his device, which he covers in detail in his A New Digester or Engine for Softening
Bones. In short, he takes a large outer cylinder, sealed at one end, into which he puts a smaller cylinder, in
the shape of an elongated piston of sorts, which is tightly fitted to the outer cylinder. To this smaller
cylinder, he fixes two screws F and F, which when turned work to compress or push the smaller cylinder
into the bigger cylinder. The food stuff, along with water, is place inside of another glass cylinder shaped
vessel, which fits into these to cylinders, in some way. Fire is then started around the device, flames rising
up to the level of the device resting arm C and C.

To keep track of the pressure inside the device, a small tap hole is drilled at location H, which shoots a small
amount of pressurized steam onto the pressure-measuring arm LM, according to which the location of the
balancing weight N along arm LM gives a reading of the pressure.
Papin, of note, in commentary on how in many early versions of this engine and or attempts at cooking,
sometimes meat would be taken out too soon, or left in too long and burn, makes recourse to Boyle’s
compression experiments to make a calculation of the heat and the pressure inside of the digestor. He
explains his pressure measuring device as follows:
“It was therefore necessary to find out some way how to know the quantity of ‘inward pressure’, and the
‘degree of heat’. To know the quantity of inward pressure, you must have a little pipe open at both ends,
as HH: this being soldered to a hole in the cover BB, is to be stopped at the top with a little valve P
exactly ground to it, and fitted also with a paper between. Now, according to the physico-mechanical
experiments of Mr. Boyle, the ordinary pressure of air against a hole one 1 inch over is about 12 pounds,
and therefore it is about 2 pounds against the aperture of said pipe HH. the rod LM is 12 inches long,
and the distance from L to P is 1 inch; so that 1 pound weight hanging at M, presses as much upon the
valve P as 12 pounds could do, if directly laid upon the said valve; and so it cannot be lifted up, unless
the inward pressure be six times stronger than the ordinary pressure of air. Therefore, when there is one
pound weight hanging in M, and yet the water gets out under the valve, one may conclude that the
inward pressure is about eight times stronger than the ordinary pressure of air.”
134 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

— Denis Papin (1680), A New Digester or Engine for Softening Bones (pgs. 2-3)
He explains his heat measuring device as follows:
“To know the degree of heat. I wish I had been able to make a thermometer divided as it should be, to
shew precisely by how much the heat is increased or diminished: and l believe by that means ,
comparing the several degrees of heat with the quantity of the effect thereby produced, one might
discover several things about the ‘nature both of heat and of the materials wrought upon’: but for want
of time and other necessaries for that design, I have instead of it used another very easy, and yet exact
enough for all the uses here spoken of. I hang a weight to a thread about three feet long, so that every
swing makes about a second , and l let fall a drop of water into a little cavity made for that purpose at
the top of it, and I tell how many times the hanging weight will move to and fro before the drop of water
is quite evaporated: and l take care that the place where l put the drop may be clean, because a little
grease will considerably hinder its evaporation.”
— Denis Papin (1680), A New Digester or Engine for Softening Bones (pgs. 4)
Papin concludes by saying that ‘so being able to know the degrees both of heat and pressure in the engine,
one may easily order it so as to do the effect just as desired.
By 1682, some of the Royal Society's dinners were famously being cooked in Papin's digestor, the
flavors digested bones in food, becoming legendary; the following being one take on these meals:
“I went this afternoon with several of the Royal Society to a supper which was all dressed, both fish and
flesh, in Monsieur Papin’s digestors, by which the hardest bones of beef itself, and mutton, were made
as soft as cheese.”
— John Evelyn (1682), Diary Note, Apr 12
Now, of importance with respect to the development of thermodynamics, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier,
in his 1787 Elements of Chemistry, in his opening pages, cites what he refers to as ‘Boerhaave’s law’,
namely the c.1730 purported axiom professed by Herman Boerhaave, during his chemistry lectures at
Leyden University, that all bodies are expanded by heat and contracted by cold, and Papin's digester as
experimental proof of Boerhaave’s law, in the sense that that ‘stones may be turned to vapor’, as Lavoisier
sees things:
“That ‘every body, whether solid or fluid, is augmented in all its dimensions by any increase of its
sensible heat’, was long ago fully established as a physical axiom, or universal proposition, by the
celebrated Boerhaave. It is easy to perceive that separation of particles by heat is constant and general
law of nature.”
— Antoine Lavoisier (1787), Elements of Chemistry (pgs. 1-2)
In other words, in modern terms, Lavoisier summarizes the model that heat can be used to actuate or bring
about phase change, thus credits Boerhaave and Papin as establishing principle of the augmentation of the
dimension of bodies by heat as a universe rule. It is upon this Lavoisier-Boerhaave-Papin principle of heat
expansion and contraction of bodies that, as we will see, Sadi Carnot, in 1824, formulated the Carnot cycle.

16.4 | Papin as Hooke’s Amanuensis (Jul 1679)

In Jul to Dec 1679, Papin, in the months just after having invented his digestor, was employed as Robert
Hooke’s amanuensis, meaning he was a literary or artistic assistant, who took dictation or copied
manuscripts. The specifics of what exactly Papin did for Hooke at this point are wanting. The point in
introducing this section, at this point, is that, as mentioned, four years earlier Hooke had published the
following so-called secret principle of nature, albeit in the form of a coded anagram, for him to unveil in the
future should anybody ‘claim discovery’ of a principle he had already thought up, which is a reoccurring
theme throughout Hooke’s career:

“The vacuum left by fire lifts a weight.”

— Robert Hooke (1675), Description of Helioscopes and Other Instruments (pg. #)
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 135

So, although we can only speculate, it would seem likely that Papin during his interaction, as assistant for
Hooke, would have either probed him with questions, and or possibly have had some of Hooke’s passing
remarks or comments rub off on him? The following is one take on this interaction:
“In 1679, Hooke worked closely with Papin on this topic. In May that year Hooke gained permission for
Papin, not yet a Fellow, to perform an experiment at a meeting of the Society, with his newly invented
food digester. During the following months, Papin and Hooke spent a great deal of time together testing
the Boyle–Mariotte law. A relationship therefore emerged between Papin and Hooke on the basis of
their shared interests in pneumatics.”
— Luciano Boschiero (2009), ‘Translation, Experimentation, and the Spring of the Air’ (pg. 74)
Whatever the case, most of which owes to Hooke’s tiresome secrecy, it would be Papin, who, fifteen years
later, brought this ‘vacuum left by fire lifts a weight’ so-called Hookean vacuum principle into the
realization stage.
In 1681, Papin, after becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society, owing to his work with Boyle and Hooke,
and contributions to experimental research at the society, e.g. his famous digestor, left from England to
assist in the formation of a scientific academy in Venice.

16.5 | Papin Heat Engine (1690)

In 1685, the Edict of Nantes was revoked, and all the Huguenots were expelled from France. Papin, being a
Huguenot, traveled to Germany, whereat, from 1688 to 1695, he was associated with the University of
Marburg. The following illustration shows Papin giving a demonstration, at the University of Marburg,
Germany, of what seems to be Huygens-style gunpowder engine, able to ‘lift a weight’:3

During this period, specifically in 1685, Papin proposed a machine that would use the power of water from a
river, as diagrammed below, from his published description (1688), that would turn a water wheel, which
would turn a crank arm, that would work two suction pumps, that were connected to more suction like
piston and cylinder devices below in the mine, which would turn a wheel, so to lift weight; these we might
classify as struggling efforts, but important efforts, none the less:
136 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

In 1687 or 1688, Papin, then occupying a chair in Marburg, building on his previous gunpowder engine
design work, such as his study of the Huygens gunpowder engine, below left, built an upgraded gunpowder
engine, shown below right, where C is the attachment of the piston to the cord, D is the ventilator for the
gases, F the edge of ventilator, HP the gunpowder holder, which fits to tube GG at the base of the cylinder,
so that successive charges could be introduced, MNO is a safety valve lever weighted at N, LL is cord
connected to a weight, and TT are pulleys:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 137

Here, Papin at this stage in his thinking, seems to have made a cross between Huygens’ 1673 gunpowder
engine and his 1680 steam digestor, a half breed, or crossover, so to say.
The chief difference in this new design, was that the piston was fitted with a “spring valve” that was
closed by atmospheric pressure when the gases left, after which it was allows to make a powerful
downstroke. One problem remained, namely: that a fifth or sixth part of the air and gases remained, leaving
an imperfect vacuum (less powerful), similar to the issues Huygens faced with his engine.
In 1690, Papin, as described in his A New Method to Obtain Very Great Motive Powers at Small Cost,
after letting this problem ruminate in his mind, two years later, he arrived at the solution of using water,
heated and cooled, instead of gunpowder, ignited, to make a working engine able to lift things via heat; the
following being his abstract of his idea:
“Since it is a property of water that a small quantity of it, turned into vapour by heat, has an elastic force
like that of air, but upon cold supervening is again resolved into water, so that no trace of the said elastic
force remains, I readily concluded that machines could be constructed wherein water, by the help of no
very intense heat, and at little cost, could produce that perfect vacuum which could by no means be
obtained by the aid of gunpowder..”
— Denis Papin (1690), A New Method to Obtain Very Great Motive Powers at Small Cost (pg. 137)
Shown below, we see the basic diagram of this engine which provides for a new method to obtain very great
motive power from fire:
138 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

To operate this device, one first puts a few inches of water, the body of water defined, in the later 1865
thermodynamic terminology of Rudolf Clausius, as the so-called ‘working body’, into the volumetric space
of the enclosed region confined by the adjustable piston B and cylinder A. One then pushes the piston down
to the top layer of the water, letting the air escape through a small escape hole L, located in the piston head,
which can be open and closed by rod M. When the piston is thus flush with the water surface, and all the air
inside the piston and cylinder has escaped, the hole L is then closed using rod M.
In the second main step, one puts fire, called the ‘hot body’ in Clausius speak, to the outside of the
cylinder. The water, accordingly, turns to steam and expands or pushes upward on the piston. When the
piston reaches its top most position, a spring G pushes rod E into slot H, which thus holds the piston, and
hence the system, in its place. Papin describes this step as follows:
“A moderate fire being applied, the tube A, being made of thin metal, soon grows warm, and the water
within it, being turned to steam, exerts a pressure so powerful as to overcome the weight of the
atmosphere and force up the piston B, till the grove H of the handle D appears above the lid I, and the
rod E is forced, with some noise, into the said groove by the spring G.”
— Denis Papin (1690), A New Method to Obtain Very Great Motive Powers at Small Cost (pg. 139)
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 139

In the third main step, the fire is moved away from the outside of the cylinder, or conversely the cylinder is
moved away from the fire, which causes the steam to contact into contact with the colder air, outside the
cylinder, which thereby resolves the steam back into water, making partial vacuum inside the volume of the
piston and cylinder. Here, the air surrounding the piston and cylinder is ‘cold’ in respect to the steam, and is
referred to as the ‘cold body’ in Clausius speak. It would not be, to note, until the development of the Savery
engine, the followup to the Papin engine, built in 1696 to 1701, as will be discussed, that cold water,
sprayed on the outer surface of the cylinder, instead of cold air, began to be employed as the cold body.
In the final step, of the Papin engine, one attaches some amount of weight, to be raised, placed inside of
a bucket, which is connected to the piston rod H by a rope and pull arrangement. To raise the weight, one
turns the anchor arm E, releasing the piston from its locked position, after which the piston descends, and
the weight is raised, owing to the force of the atmosphere pressing down on the piston head, facing little
opposition from partial vacuum within the piston and cylinder. Papin describes this step as follows:
“Next, the rod E being turned round so far as to come out of the groove H, and allow the handle D to
descend, the piston B is forthwith pressed down by the whole weight of the atmosphere, and causes the
intended movement; which is of an energy great in proportion to the size of the tube.”
— Denis Papin (1690), A New Method to Obtain Very Great Motive Powers at Small Cost (pg. 139)
Papin stated, in his experiments, with this engine, that he used a 2.5-inch cylinder, or ‘tube’ as he called it,
that was about two or three feet in height, which was able to raise 60-pounds, and that he had performed this
operation ‘alternately for a number of times’, i.e. cyclically in modern thermodynamic speak.
This experimental demonstration, of fire employed to lift a weight, to bring things full circle, is the
realization of the famous 1675 Robert Hooke proclamation that the ‘vacuum made by fire lifts a weight’, as
he had penned fifteen years previous, in is secret new engine principle cypher. While Papin, as discussed,
was at one point, Hooke’s assistant, he was also Huygens’ assistant and Boyle’s assistant. No doubt Papin
was influenced by the minds of all three.
These simplified truncated steps, as we will come to see, in this so-called ‘one-stroke Papin engine’
(1690), are the basics behind the operation of the Carnot engine (1824), the ‘icon’ of thermodynamics, so to
say.
Now, although it may seem trivial, at this point, the jump from Papin (1690) to Carnot (1824), let alone
Clausius (1865), was not so simple, as thermodynamics students, historically, have been obliviously taught.
In the first place, to make the expansion phase, one has to ‘move’ a pile of fire or coal under the said piston,
or alternatively move the cylinder into contact with fire. Next, to make the contraction phase, one has to
‘move’ the fire away from the piston and cylinder, or, alternatively, move the piston and cylinder away from
the fire. In terms of the actual engineering technology that needed to be developed to make this movement
process automated and realized, so that a more practical multiple-stroke engine could be made workable, the
details to this are many, and would require the combined minds of Thomas Savery, Thomas Newcomen, and
James Watt, in short, and at a minimum, to actualize this proposed Papin heat engine.
Jumping ahead a bit, as per social systems are concerned, we need not worry about these ‘engineering
technologies’ required, at this point, although we will cover them shortly, we will note that owing to the
daily rotation of the earth, 12-hours facing the sun (hot body), 12-hours facing the night sky (cold body), the
surface of the earth, or rather its systems formed thereupon are so-called Papin engine working bodies:
140 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

The term ‘working body’, to clarify, does not become a term, until Clausius, but it is so dominate, that we
will employ it here.

16.6 | Papin engine → Savery, Newcomen, and Watt

The ‘draft stage’ Papin engine, in print, over the next century, transformed into the working realization
models of the Savery engine (1698), Newcomen engine (1705), and Watt engine (1765), as follows:

In 1824, as we will cover, Sadi Carnot, a French military engineer, unified or combined these four main
designs, along with all other heat engine designs built in this period, and introduced the theoretical Carnot
engine and Carnot heat cycle, which are to centerpieces and anchor points of thermodynamics.
One point that we will mentioned at this point, that is rarely discussed, is that in the original Papin
design, the ‘system’ was a closed system, meaning that it was ‘closed’ to material flow across the boundary,
but it could let heat in or out, and also let work in or out, via the moveable piston head, but more
importantly, in terms of the conception of the system, all of the working body, i.e. the body of water/steam
in this model, was contained within the volumetric region of the piston and cylinder, easy to see and
conceptualized. When we begin to look at where exactly the ‘system’ is, in the Savery, Newcomen, and
Watt engine, not to mention the various combustion engines, and other varieties of steam engines
developed, in the period of Papin to Clausius, the actual working body or system, which in each of these
cases is a body of water, moves around in the various parts of each respective engine, more difficult to
follow and define where exactly the boundary is, and this system is not necessarily so ‘closed’ as in the
simple Papin engine. Basically, in short, the system moves from the boiler to the receiver (or condenser);
and in the Newcomen and Watt examples, cold water is actually added to the system, when the so-called
‘condensing jet’ is added or sprayed inside the piston and cylinder. Hence, we have mass, heat, and work,
moving across the boundary of a system that is itself moving.
At this point, we have amassed the history of focused heat and vacuum engine theory germane to the
inception of thermodynamics, which accrues, as we will cover shortly, via the minds of Carnot (1824),
Clapeyron (1834), Thomson (1848), and Clausius (1865).
One point of so-called gray area connectivity that exists, at this point, to be frank about things, is the
jump from Papin’s 1690 heat engine design, to the 1698 patenting of same basic engine, eight years later, by
Thomas Savery, discussed in the next chapter, both of whom being connected to the Royal Society of
England. Little is known about Savery, or the background his engine. Whatever may be the case, as we will
attempt, shortly, to unfurl, Savery’s engine design was quickly modified by Thomas Newcomen, whose
model, shortly thereafter, was made efficient by James Watt; all of which as pictured above.
We will attempt to attempt to patch together this historical disjunct in the following chapter. But,
quickly, at the time of Savery’s patient, filed with the Royal Society, Papin was a Royal Society member,
had performed experiments, e.g. with his digestor in front of the Royal Society, and many of his papers on
vacuum and heat engines were read in front of the Royal Society. Moreover, Newcomen, who knew Papin
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 141

and his work, via Hooke, was a neighbor of Savery, by 15-miles. Some have conjectured that Newcomen, in
fact had a working model of a steam engine, before Savery.
In short, by in large, in probability, Savery, read Papin’s draft theory work on steam engines, and used
this outline to make a working model. The overlap between the two is unmistakable: where as Papin says to
put the water firs in contact with fire, Savery has a Boiler; whereas Papin says to put the steam in contact
with a cold body, Savery has jet of cold water going over his ‘condensing chamber’ figure B. We will
presume, herein, barring further years and decades of needed of historical research in this eight-year gray
window of history, that Savery knew of Papin, and used his models, along with his own unique ideas, to
make his Savery engine.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. Boschiero, Luciano. (2009). “Translation, Experimentation and the Spring of the Air: Richard Waller’s
Essayes on Natural Experiments”, Notes and Records, Royal Society, Oct 14.
2. (a) Boyle, Robert. (1680). A Continuation of New Experiments Physico‐mechanical, Touching the Spring
and Weight of the Air, and Their Effects: Wherein are Contained Divers Experiments: Together with a
Description of the Engines Wherein They Were Made. The Second Part (Experimentorum novorum physico‐
mechanicorum continuatio secunda) (assistant writer: Denis Papin). English edition, 1682.
(b) Boyle, Robert. (1774). The Works of the Honorable Robert Boyle, Volume Four (editor: Thomas Birch) (§:
A Continuation of New Experiments Physico‐Mechanical, The Second Part (London, 1682) (author: Denis
Papin), pgs. 96‐159; §: Iconisme II: the Description of the Mercurial Gage, pgs. 100‐102; §: Iconisme II: a
Description of the Engine to Compress the Air, pgs. 102‐; pressure vs force diagram, figure 2, pg. 101;
images, pg. end matter) . A. Millar.
3. Figuier, Louis. (1868). The Wonders of Science, or Popular Description of Modern Inventions: Steam
Engine (Les merveilles de la science, ou Description populaire des inventions modernes: Machine a vapeur)
(Papin, 51+ pgs; Germany demonstration image, pg. 49; discussion, pg. 51). Publisher.
4.
5.
142 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism
17. Savery
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: 6-pgs]

I
n 1696, Thomas Savery, age 46, an English military engineer, having been well-educated, stemming
from prominent and wealthy family in Devon, England, had begun constructing some type of engine for
the ‘raising of water by means of fire’ or ‘Miner’s friend’ as he later came to call it.
The location of Devon, England, as shown below, is affixed somewhat midway between London, home
of the Royal Society, where Savery would eventually seek a patient for his device, and Cornwall, where the
problem of the flooded mines was prominent, wherein miners, tempted to go deeper for richer ores, were
being hampered by water
floods, which had progressed
to the point that they were
carrying water out by a
combination of human-
carried buckets and horse-
powered pumping devices, of
the Ctesibius kind.1
Savery, prior to this, had
been an inventor of sorts, e.g.
making a clock for
timekeeping, that the family
used in their home or castle, and also building a human-powered paddle wheel boat, wherein men turned a
capstan, or spindle, which turned the paddle wheels. Savery exhibited his paddle wheel boat or yacht, on the
Thames, to the admiral of the English Navy, but it was turned down. After this, Savery turned his attention
to the problem of flooded minds in Cornwall.
On 25 Jul 1698, Savery patented a design for a steam engine to be employed for pumping water out of
mines. In 1699, Savery submitted a working model of his engine to the Royal Society, during which time
successful experiments were made with it. On 14 Jun 1699, Savery demonstrated a small working model of
his steam engine at Gresham College before an audience where it was approved of; supposedly, something
akin to the following design:
144 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

The basic operation of this engine, for ‘raising water by means of fire’ was that a man would fill the boiler
with water, then light a fire below the boiler, then by means of two hand-operated valves, shown above left,
would first let stem move from the boiler to the receiver. The receiver being connected, via a bottom pipe, to
a lower reservoir of water, such as a tub of water, a river, or a flooded mine. The operator would then shut
the boiler valve off. The receiver, having its own valve to the connecting reservoir of water, at this point
shut off, is left to cool with the surrounding air of the atmosphere. Given time, eventually a vacuum thus
forms, inside of the receiver.
Once the vacuum has formed, the operator turns the receiver valve, thus opening a connection between
the receiver and the lower reservoir of water. Because, as Aristotle would say, nature ‘abhors a vacuum’, or
correctly the weight of the atmosphere, pushes down the top surface of the lower reservoir, and forces water,
from below, up past a non-return clack-valve, up into the empty space of the receiver. Once the formerly
empty, or semi-evacuated, receiver is full of water, the operator opens the boiler or steam valve, which
works to expel the water in the receiver, through a second one-way clack-valve, shown above right, upwards
through the ‘delivery pipe’ or expulsion pipe. Savery’s engine, at this point could only effect the raising of
water by about 24-feet.
In a later model, Savery, to quicken the condensation part of his engine, began to spray cold water, i.e.
the ‘cold body’ in Clausius speak, onto the outside of the condenser or condensing chamber B, as shown
below (middle) or as a double condensing chamber below (right). Savery refers to pipe F as the condensing
pipe and pipe D as the forcing pipe:

These modified Savery engine (c.1700) variants, middle and right, basically, are a working realization of the
Papin engine (1690), at left. There is, however, no extant connection, in this window of years, that Savery
knew of Papin; we are only able to conjecture. The following gives us a general compass, as to point of
invention:
“Before 1696 he had constructed several steam pumping engines to mines in Cornwall, and he
described these as already working in his book entitled The Miners' Friend. He took with him a model to
London and exhibited it to William III in 1698, and the King promoted Savery's application for a patent,
which was secured in July, 1698, and an Act was passed confirming it in the ensuing year.”
— Sabine Gould (1908), Devonshire Characters and Strange Events (pg. 492)
What has been reported, however, as to the origin of this ‘Savery engine’, comes from three anecdotal
reports. Firstly, Stephen Switzer, in his Introduction to a System of Hydrostatics and Hydraulics (1719),
who was said to have been ‘intimate’ with Savery, reported that the discovery came from a tabaco pipe,
which Savery was smoking, who, to cool the pipe, plunged it into some cold water, and observed a stream of
water to squirt out one of the ends of the pipe.
Secondly, are two reports by John Desaguliers, from his 1735 lectures on a Course in Experimental
Philosophy, who says that in c.1705 he met Savery and observed one of his engines working, and who also
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 145

in 1728 build a Papin-modified Savery engine. The first anecdote, reported by Desaguliers, is that Savery
was drinking a flask of wine in a Tavern, then, when it was almost finished, but the flask into the fire, for
whatever reason, and then called for a basin of water, so to wash his hands; when the basin of water arrived,
he plunged the flask, the contents of which being now in a steam state, into the basin of water, at which
point the ‘water of the basin was immediately driven up into the flask by the pressure of the air’.
The third anecdote, being the second report from Desaguliers, which he says he heard from a friend of
Savery, was that someone had commented to Savery the suggestion or accusation that he had derived his
engine from a reading of Edward Somerset’s 1663 A Century of Inventions, penned in 1654, wherein
Somerset reported, in very few words, how he had built some sort fire-based water raising device, which he
had built into the side of his Castle, some marks of which exist to this day. Desaguliers, as he recounts
things, says that Savery, upon hearing this accusation, firstly denied the conjecture, and afterwards went
around all the bookstores in the area, and bought every copy of Somerset’s book, and burned them.
In sum, either Savery invented his engine, via a smoking pipe, a wine flask, Somerset’s book, Papin,
independently, or by some other means. The following is a more detailed sketch of the Savery engine:

The reader is encouraged to go online to read the specifics of the operation of this engine.4

17.1 | Papin Connection?

Given the above, on one hand, we might readily concede that Savery was ‘independent’, as his published
writing give us no indication, as to origin of idea. Possibly, Savery had no historical knowledge of attempted
and or theoretical fire engine like devices before him, and either watched a wine flask in a fire or a tabaco
pipe in water, and therein ‘invented’ the steam engine.
146 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

This presumed independence, in respect to Savery, as regards to Papin, who had published prior to him
in the Royal Society, the same society that Savery patented the above engine, is equivalent to the
supposition that Savery had never heard of Hero, which was the bulk thematical content of Somerset’s book;
Savery’s round ‘boiler’, e.g., being nearly a duplicate of the Hero aeolipile design.
Retrospectively speaking, the period from 1690 to 1720, is a bit lacking in historical detail. What we do
know, however, is that in c.1705 Hooke had suggested to Thomas Newcomen, the followup engineer to
Savery, as we will discuss, to employ the piston and cylinder design of Papin, and also that in in 1718, John
Desaguliers had made a Savery style engine, with the addition of Papin safety valve P, shown adjacent, as
was introduced by Papin in his digestor.
To point out a few things, in regard to the Somerset, Papin,
Savery, Newcomen, Hooke, Desaguliers connection, firstly, we
will point out all of Papin's engine designs were openly-
published for others to read about and work on, such as the
German periodical Acts of Erudite (1688 and 1690); in the form
of a book in French entitled Collection of Various Pieces
Touching Some New Machines; and most importantly that
summarizes of his engine models were read to the Royal Society
in 1686 and 1687, which both Savery and Newcomen were
connected with.
Secondly, Papin, from 1675 to 1679, was an experimental
assistant of the Royal Society, working under Robert Boyle and
Robert Hooke, and at one point was the curator of experiments
of the Royal Society, as we have amply digressed upon. We also
note that in 1682, some of the Royal Society's dinners were
being cooked in Papin's digestor. Thirdly, although little
discussed historically, we also know that Savery and Newcomen,
who we will discuss in the next chapter, resided 15-miles from
each other.
This so-called unresolved connection between Savery and
Papin, is near, in the irritation level, to the yet unresolved
connection between Guericke and Galileo; or Galileo and
Beekman, for that matter. Either there was a direct connection,
or these general ideas were just ‘in the air’, of this period, as they
say, or we may have to pass on this issue and call it a ‘paradigm
change’, as Thomas Kuhn refers to the dozen thinkers that, in his
mind, independently, arrived at the mechanical equivalent of
heat, which we have not yet digressed upon.
As we will see, as we progress through the history of
chemical thermodynamics, there are several of these two-sided coins. Whatever the flip of these coins, it is
repeatable experiment that decides things, in the long run. Hence, baring prolonged over-digression on this
chapter, knowing that Papin published multiple summaries of his engine theory work, in multiple languages,
in the years 1686 to 1690, we will let the following quotes summarize the general or predominate consensus
in respect to the presumed jump from deeper work of Papin to the more trivial, albeit important, mechanical
realization work of Savery:
“I find it almost impossible to believe that Newcomen never knew of Papin’s steam engine
cylinder, at least by hearsay. Papin published sever other papers (3,4,5) and maybe there was someone
at Dartmouth, one of the gentry perhaps, who could read French, if not Latin, and gave Newcomen
access to Papin’s work.”
— Joseph Needham (1987), Science and Civilization in China, Volume Seven (pg. 559)
“The similarities between Newcomen's steam engine design and Papin's first piston-and-cylinder engine
also suggest that Newcomen might have seen Papin's articles published by the Royal Society.”
— Anon (2012), Engineers: From the Great Pyramids to the Pioneers of Space Travel (§: Denis
Papin, pgs. 106-107)
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 147

These conjectures aside, we will but note that, in Papin had come to learn about Savery, either by seeing his
paddle wheel boat demonstration on the Thames, by seeing his steam engine exhibited at the Royal Society,
by reading his 1702 Miner’s Friend publications, or by word of mouth. However Papin learned of Savery,
by 1707, Papin had built some sort of engine able to turn a paddle wheel on a boat; he wrote about this as
follows:
“It is important that my new construction of vessel should be put to the proof in a seaport like London,
where there is depth enough to apply the new invention, which, by means of fire, will render one or two
men capable of producing more effect than some hundreds of rowers.”
— Denis Papin (1707), ‘Letter to Gottfried Leibniz’, Jul 7
The boat Papin built and intended to send, from Germany to London, supposedly, was destroyed by some
watermen who feared that this new invention might interfere with their trade.1

17.2 | Horsepower
In 1702, Papin, published a summary of his engine and its practical uses, in his The Miner’s Friend: or an
Engine to Raise Water by Fire, in which he gave the first outline of the concept of horsepower; the
following is the main quote of interest:
“Water, in its fall from any determinate height, has simply a force answerable and equal to the force that
raises it. So that an engine which will raise as much water as two horses working together at one time in
such a work can do, and for which there must be constantly kept ten or twelve horses for doing the
same, then, I say, such an engine will do the work or labor of ten or twelve horses; and whereas this
engine may be made large enough to do the work required in employing eight, ten, fifteen, or twenty
horses to be constantly maintained and kept for doing such a work, it will be improper to stint or confine
its uses and operation in respect of water-mills.”
— Thomas Savery (1702), The Miner’s Friend (pg. 26)
In 1783, as we will discuss, the unit of ‘horsepower’ became standardized via the testing and measurements
of James Watt and Matthew Boulton.

17.3 | Engine Difficulties

In the years following, Savery began to face several growing problems, the first of which being that his
engine could only raise water to about 25-feet to 80-feet, depending on citation, and many of the Cornwell
mines were flooded 300-feet deep. Therefore, if a mine owner wanted to employ Savery’s engine, he would
have to purchase several Savery engines, and install them at various levels, incrementally.
Second, when Savery tried to make is engine more powerful, so as to make one engine raise weight to a
higher level, he began to find that the higher temperature and pressures needed to actuate this, would melt
his rivets. Not to mention, the various explosions of his engines, that occurred. The high cost of fuel needed
to operate several engines and the number of attendants needed to operate them, slowly grinded Savery’s
engine productions to a halt.
The adventurous reader is encouraged, before proceeding, to firstly, go online and read the Hmolpedia
summarized article on the Savery engine, its variations over the years, and in particular the verbal details of
its operation, so as to get some background in respect to the origin, in this particular engine, of the ‘system’,
as modern thermodynamics defines things. Secondly, to go to the ‘history of the steam engine’ online
article, and read at least several of the 18+ steam engine history books listed, Robert Thurston (1878), as a
starting point.2
We will but mention, by name and summary, the following engine pioneers, as previously listed in the
Hero engine pioneer table, that we have skipped over at this point: Gerolamo Cardano (1550), the inheritor
of da Vinci’s works, who is said to have ‘devised a machine using the vacuum from condensed steam’;
Lazarus Ercker (1574), who ‘his Sub-Terrarium Classroom gives an illustration of metallurgists using
aeolipile to produce a blast of steam in smelting ores’; Giovanni Porta (1601), who made an improved Hero
fountain to shoot water upwards; Cornelis Drebbel (1609), who produced some type of solar-powered
musical instrument; Salomon Caus (1615), who gave a summary of the historical devices employed to raise
water by the aid of fire; Giovanni Branca (1629), who took a Hero aeolipile and made a steam turbine;
148 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

David Ramsay (1630), who, building on Caus, applied for a patent for a device to raise water from the Lowe
Pitts by fire; John Wilkins (1648), who, in his Mathematical Magic, devoted a chapter to heat devices of
Branca, Cardano, and Drebbel; Samuel Moreland (1661), who attempted to improve on Somerset’s design,
with limited success; Ferdinand Verbiest (1670), who made a Hero-Branca style turbine powered toy
automobile; or Jean Hautefeuille (1678), who claimed to have invented a gunpowder engine independent of
Huygens.3 The reader is encouraged to go online to peruse these thinkers; as seemingly many of their idea
contributions have influenced the inception of the steam engine, in subtle ways, not fully able to be
understood or summarized no paper.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. Gould, Sabine. (1908). Devonshire Characters and Strange Events (§: Savery and Newcomen, Inventors,
pgs. 487‐501) (WS). John Lane.
2. (a) http://www.eoht.info/page/Savery+engine
(b) http://www.eoht.info/page/History+of+the+steam+engine
3. http://www.eoht.info/page/engine+pioneers
4. http://www.eoht.info/page/Savery+engine
5.
18. Newcomen
“Newcomen was as early in his invention as Savery was in his; only, the latter being nearer the court,
had obtained the patent before the other knew it, on which account Newcomen was glad to come in as a
partner to it.”
— Stephen Switzer (1729), Introduction to Hydrostatics and Hydraulics (pg. 342)

Chapter point: (add) [length: 3-pgs]

N
ext in line, following Thomas Savery, is Thomas Newcomen, who, being 14-years younger than the
former, and coming from a wealth English family like Savery, and residing 15-miles from Savery,
and having been said to have been working on his own engine to raise water by fire design, for three
years in secret, is said to have arrived at a heat engine design ‘as early as Savery’, as reported by Stephen
Switzer (1729), who knew both Savery and Newcomen.1 There are some reports that Newcomen might have
visited Savery. Whatever the details, Newcomen combined the ideas of Papin with those of Savery, as
shown below, to make a more practical steam engine, which went through several design modifications over
the course of its development:

Firstly, Newcomen, having seen the insurmountable difficulties of the Savery design, plus having been
directly knowledgeable about the Papin engine design, via his communications with Robert Hooke, took the
piston and cylinder design of Papin, and the separate boiler and external condenser model of Savery, along
with Savery’s model of spraying the condensing chamber from above, such as shown in Newcomen model
A, above right, and added to these a ‘rocker-arm’ that connected to the piston rod to a pump rod, that drew
water out of a flooded mine.

18.1 | Rocker arm

The first major change enacted by Newcomen, aside from the use of the piston and cylinder, was the
introduction of the rocker arm. The rocker arm was in effect a large wooden seesaw, according to which as
the piston went up, during the expansion stroke, when the steam valve was opened to the piston and
cylinder, the pump rod went down. Then, during the condensation stroke, cold water was sprayed on the
‘outside’ of the piston and cylinder, as seen in Newcomen engine model A, which, as the cold body (cold
water) was put in contact with the hot body (the steam inside the piston and cylinder), heat was thus
withdrawn from the system to the surroundings, during which a partial vacuum was created in the volume of
the piston and cylinder, after which the weight of the atmosphere would push down on the piston, forcing it
to the bottom of the cylinder, i.e. work was done ‘on the system’ by the surroundings, in thermodynamic
150 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

speak, and hence the pump rod, at the other side of the rocker arm, was raised, bringing water, from the
flooded mine, up with it as it rose. The basic operation of this rocker arm design is shown below:
:

Here, to note, in technical terms, we see the origin of the ‘reciprocating motion’, i.e. up-and-down or
forward-and-back motion, engine. It would not be until James Watt that we are able to couple or transform
reciprocating motion into ‘rotative motion’, which as a beg key to industrial revolution, most of whose
machines needed a rotation mechanism to work.

18.2 | Internal spray cooling

The next modification made by Newcomen was the switch from spraying the cold
water, during the condensation stroke, on the outside of the piston and cylinder, engine
model A, to spraying the cold water directly inside of the piston and cylinder, so to
cool the steam direct, without cool through the wall of the cylinder, before the steam
could be cooled, thus speeding up the condensation phase, and hence increasing the
number of strokes per minute. How this switch occurred is another anecdote of in the
history of steam engine theory.
Specifically, in Newcomen model A, his original design, he put water above the
piston, as diagrammed adjacent, so as to make a better air tight seal, similar to what
Huygens, Boyle, and Guericke had done previously. Hence, one day, during the early trial or testing periods
of the engine, they were watching the engine go as normal, say at a rate of about 5-strokes per minute, but
then to their surprise, all of a sudden, they saw the engine make several rapid strokes. Confused about this,
they took the engine apart, and found that the piston had a hole or was leaking along the side, and thus
‘spraying’ cold water into the piston. This gave Newcomen the idea to switch from outside spray cooling, to
inside or internal spray cooling, as shown in Newcomen engine model B, above.
At this point, the thermodynamic ‘system’ model becomes a bit confused. The system is now ‘open’ to
flow of matter, i.e. cold water, across its boundary. Carnot would later re-simplify all of this model, and all
of the various models to follow, back to the basics of the Papin engine model, i.e. one ‘closed’ to the flow of
matter across the boundary, in his famous Carnot cycle, which gets quite confusing, which we will learn
about. This open system aspect of the Newcomen engine, simply, is a point to keep in mind.
To summarize we have seen two cycle types, the Papin engine cycle, where in a hot body and cold body
are applied alternately to the piston and cylinder, thus making the piston rod go up and down, and now we
have seen the Newcomen engine cycle, which is basically the same cycle, only the cold body (cold water
spray) mixes with the working body (steam from boiler), and in both cases the hot body (fire) is but in
contact with the working body, through metal wall of the cylinder in the Papin arrangement and through the
metal wall of the boiler in the Newcomen design.

18.3 | Scoggan
The third major change introduced by Newcomen was the ‘automation’. Specifically, in the Savery engine
model, a worker had to stay of the engine constantly and work the two valves, one for the steam inlet, the
other for the cold-water inlet, which had to be opened and closed alternatively. How this occurred is another
anecdote.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 151

Specifically, the origin of this automation invention, is attributed to a boy named Humphry Potter, who
was assigned to work the two valves, such as shown above left. Potter, so the story goes, found this
excessively tedious and monotonous work, and so invented a device he called a ‘scoggan’, wherein he took
some rope, likely two pieces, tying one end of the rope to a location midway down the rocker arm, and the
other end of each rope connected to each of the valves, one to the hot water valve, the other to the cold
water valve, tied or timed in such a way, so that the work of turning the handles back and forth was done
automatically. Eventually the rope was changed to metal rods, as shown below right:

The following is gist summary of Newcomen’s general engine improvements, up to this point:2
“Savery had created his vacuum by the condensation of steam in a closed vessel by dashing cold water
against it. Papin had created his vacuum by exhausting the air in a cylinder, fitted with a piston, by
means of an air pump. What Newcomen did was to combine both systems. Instead of employing
Savery's closed vessel, he made use of Papin's cylinder fitted with a piston, but worked by the
condensation of steam, still employing the clumsy system of dashing cold water against the cylinder.”
— Sabine Gould (1908), Devonshire Characters and Strange Events (pg. 497)
In 1712, Newcomen had erected an engine at Wolverhampton. Next, two engines were erected at Newcastle,
a fourth was put up in Leeds in 1714. The fifth one was built in 1720 at Cornwall at Wheal Fortune, which
had a four-foot diameter cylinder, making fifteen-strokes per minute, drawing up one hogsheads of water
per stroke, from a depth of 180 feet; a 900 hogsheads of water per hour pumping capacity engine, in short.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. Switzer, Stephen. (1729). Introduction to a System of Hydrostatics and Hydraulics (pg. 324). Publisher.
2. Gould, Sabine. (1908). Devonshire Characters and Strange Events (§: Savery and Newcomen, Inventors,
pgs. 487‐501) (WS). John Lane.
3.
4.
152 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism
19. Watt
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: Digress on the improvements and additions James Watt made to the Newcomen engine,
with heightened focus on his introduction of the indicator diagram, which became the Clapeyron pressure-
volume diagram (1834), a graphical description of of the Carnot cycle (1824), which gave way to the three-
dimensional so-called ‘graphical methods of thermodynamics’ of Willard Gibbs (1883) [length: #-pgs]

I
n 1763, James Watt, age 27, a Scottish student at the Glasgow University, whereat the chemist Joseph
Black, the famous latent heat theory discoverer was a professor, was given the job to repair a small-scale
classroom version of Newcomen engine, as shown below, left. Watt, in commentary on this Newcomen
design, noted that the 1711 version of Newcomen’s engine had been able to replace a team of 500 horses,
previously employed to power a wheel to pump out a mine, and that in the previous 50-years, few details
had changed in respect to the basic design. Watt, from there forward, took it as his duty to actuate the
needed ‘changes’, as he envisioned in his mind.

19.1 | Separate Condenser (1765)

In 1765, Watt built, below right, a first-draft laboratory sized version of his steam engine with a separate
condenser, section G and K, where A is the boiler, C and D are the piston and cylinder. The ‘separate
condenser’, consisted of two pipes of thin tin plate, 10 or 12 inches long and 1/6th of an inch in diameter,
which was connected to K an air pump used as a ‘snifting valve’, the entirety of which being set in a cistern
of cold water, the machine being able to lift an 18-pound weight E.

The original separate condenser, basically, was employed in the Savery engine. What, however, states that
he conceived of the separate condenser, per the visualization of the amount of wasted heat required to heat
up and cool down the cylinder and piston, during each cycle, as seen in Newcomen engine version B.
Whatever the case, at this point we have the piston and cylinder containing the ‘working body’, steam or
water in this case, the ‘hot body’, namely the fire, and the ‘cold body’, namely the cold water that cools the
154 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

steam in the Watt condensing device. The Papin engine realized, in short. The Carnot engine, in basics, in
preliminary historical context.

19.2 | Sun and Planet Gear (1781)

In 1781, Watt’s investors wanted his engine to be able to actuate rotary motion, so to be applicable to
factories, then currently operating via water wheels; the result was the invention of the sun and planet gear,
shown below, left:

(add)

19.3 | Horsepower (1783)

In 1782, Watt found, via experiment, that a ‘brewery horse’ was able to produce 32,400 foot-pounds per
minute, i.e. raise 32,400 pounds in one foot height in one minute:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 155

In 1783, Watt and his partner-assistant Matthew Boulton, working together, standardized the figure of one
‘horsepower’ at 33,000 foot-pounds per minute, in order to classify their engines for sale, and by 1809, this
was generally accepted as equivalent of 1 horsepower, as it is today. This meaning that this was the amount
of mechanical effect that the average ‘brewery horse’ could produce in one minute, aka 'mechanical
equivalent of heat'. In other words, through experiment, it was determined that one horse, on average, could
work a rotational device, such to turn gears, resulting in the lifting of 33,000 pounds of water out of a mine
in one minute.

19.4 | Centrifugal Governor (1788)

In 1788, Watt invented the so-called ‘fly and ball wheel’ governor for controlling the steam throttle and thus
the speed of his engine, by adapting the centrifugal or flyball governor from the flour mills, where it was
used to regulate the ‘distance from the top millstone from the bed stone’, for use in his Watt engine; the gist
of which is shown below:

In this design, as the engine began to increase in speed, the two fly ‘balls’ would begin to rise in height, as
they spun, owing to rotative force, balanced by the force of the weight of gravity pushing down on the balls.
An optimal engine operation rate, could thus be set by the level of the eight of the two balls.

19.5 | Indicator Diagram (1796)

In 1764, Watt, puzzled by the breakdown in the so-called ‘law of mixtures’ in respect to calculating the
efficiency of steam engines, based on four datum points, shown left, by circle dots, made the following
pressure temperature graph or PT graph:
156 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Here, in the calculative work of Watt, at least in respect to correlations of pressure and temperature in a
steam engine, we are beginning to see some of the first roots of what would eventually become the highly
complex subject of graphical thermodynamics or phase thermodynamics, wherein thermodynamic states of
existence of phases, would become explained in terms of famous energy, volume, entropy, or USV graphs,
showing a 3D representation of the state of the system, such as made by James Maxwell (1874) which he
sent to Willard Gibbs as a gift. Each point on this 3D surface being a phase point. The goal, herein, will be
to obtain a glimpse of the state of our existence, on the following graph:

Here, will recall the following famous statement by Henry Adams, who, after studying the science of
graphical thermodynamics, had this vision:
“On the physico-chemical law of development and dynamics, our society has reached what is called the
critical point where it is near a new phase or equilibrium. I have run my head hard up against a form of
mathematics that grinds my brains out. I flounder like a sculpin in the mud. It is called the ‘law of
phases’, and was invented at Yale [by Gibbs]. No one shall persuade me that I am not a phase.”
— Henry Adams (1908/09), ‘Letters to Charles Gaskell and Elizabeth Cameron’
Who among us modern readers can convince themselves, so matter-of-factly, as Adams did, that they and or
society is phase point, or location point on a Maxwell or Gibbs 3D USV graph? Here, we can only realize
how backwards we are, intellectually?
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 157

In 1781, Jonathan Hornblower, a British engineer, invented a ‘compound steam engine’, which had two
cylinders instead of one single acting cylinder. His engine design, however, was blocked by one or more of
Watt’s patients. The matter went to court.
In 1792, Hornblower, in court, had employed the Davies Gilbert, an English mathematician, to prove,
via the integral calculus methods, specifically, the method fluents and fluxions, invented by Isaac Newton in
1665, at the age of 22, in some way or another, that Hornblower’s engine was better than Watt’s engine, or
something along these lines, and that it need patient exception; Watt reported the following on this court
case to assistant John Southern:
“They have brought Mr. Giddy [Gilbert], the high sheriff of Cornwall, and Oxford boy, to prove by
fluxions, the superiority of their [Hornblower] engine, perhaps we shall be obliged to call upon you to
come up Thursday to face his fluxions by common sense.”
— James Watt (1792), ‘Letter to John Southern’, Apr 12
In 1796, John Southern, four years later, spurred on by this Gilbert boasting that Hornblower’s engine was
superior, owing to his fluxions and fluents analysis of its operation, combined Watt’s previous pressure-
volume graphical ideas, with Watt’s engine pressure gauge, and made a sideways-sliding volume gauge,
which he attached to a board, with a sheet of paper on it, so to obtain a pressure-volume graph diagram of
the engine, as shown blow:1

A more focused and detailed closeup depiction of this so-called Watt-Southern indicator diagram is shown
below, according to which see that Watt our Southern is employing a spring to counterbalance the pressure
of the steam, internal to the cylinder, so go gauge or give a scaled graphical representation of pressure on the
vertical axis:
158 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

In respect to the how Watt and Southern gauged the volume of the system, on the horizontal axis, they
affixed as so-called ‘reducing mechanism’, to the crosshead of the rod of the piston, comprised of a
connecting, pendulum lever, pin, and a drum cord, which connected to indicator diagram board, moving it
from side to side, proportional to the motion of the piston head, as shown below:1

The following are photos of what the actual indicator, i.e. pressure gauge and volume gauge, and indicator
diagram, i.e. graph produced from the indicator, actually looked like, the left image from taken by the author
while visiting the science museum in London:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 159

The following is a synopsis of Watt’s indicator diagram:

“From manuscript (#) in the Royal Institution in Truro it is apparent that Gilbert had obtained a
mathematical expression for the expansive power of steam that was formally similar to that of Daniel
Bernoulli. This would, therefore, have been the first time it had been realized that in the case of an
actual, expansively operated steam engine the work done (in this case Gilbert denotes this as the
‘efficiency’) is given by the area under the pressure/volume curve: in other words, the area under the
indicator diagram. The modern symbol for this, of course, is: ∫ PdV = W. In fact, this involved
integration [fluents] and not differentiation [fluxions], so Watt should have referred to ‘fluents’ rather
than ‘fluxions’, but this is technical quibble.”
— Donald Cardwell (1971), From Watt to Clausius (pgs. 79-80)
One will have to refer back to these diagrams and models frequently, as no such working models exist
currently, and as this is the origin of the Clapeyron pressure-volume
diagrams, which were introduced in 1834 by Emile Clapeyron, to
summarize what Sadi Carnot was saying in his 1824 discussions of the
Carnot cycle. Combined, these diagrams, Watt, Carnot, and Clapeyron,
become highly confused, for some peculiar reason, which is hard to pin
down.

19.6 | Unit of Power | W = J/s

In 1882, William Siemens, in his President's Address to the 52nd
Congress of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
proposed that Watt might be an appropriate name for a unit of power; the proposing one watt defined as ‘the
power conveyed by a current of an ampere A through the difference of potential of a volt V’, as shown
below by the fourth equivalence:

In 1948, the watt as the unit of power was redefined using only length, mass, and time, wherein one watt
was defined as the quantity of energy transferred in a unit of time, namely 1 J/s.2
Here, as in the case of the pascal as the unit of pressure, if one is desiring to quantify or theorize about
social power, thermodynamically, the units one employs must be either one of the above variations of the
160 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

watt, or an equivalent derivative of the SI base units, such as quantifying human power in in terms of length,
mass, and time. This becomes highly confusing, to say the least. Here, we have but stated the basics.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. (a) http://www.eoht.info/page/indicator
(b) http://www.eoht.info/page/indicator+diagram
2. http://www.eoht.info/page/SI+unit+geniuses
3.
4.
5.
Chemical | Physical | Preliminary

I
n the following set of chapters, we will be covering needed prerequisite material in chemistry, e.g. the
early models of thoughts on heat and combustion, and physics, e.g. the origin of the models of force, vis
viva, and vis mortua, needed before one can begin to understand thermodynamics, firstly, and chemical
thermodynamics, secondly.
162 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism
20. Sulfur, Terra Pinguis, and Phlogiston
“Geber and al-Razi taught a ‘new theory’ [two principles] in chemistry, the germ of which is contained
in Aristotle’s Meteorology, namely that metals are composed of mercury and sulfur, and are generated
in the earth from these.”
— James Partington (1937), Elements of Chemistry (pg. 29)

Chapter point: (add) [length: 3-pgs]

I
n 300BC to 800AD, burning, generally, skipping some historical discussion, was considered as the
passing off of the element ‘fire’, the third main element of Empedoclean four element theory, from its
compounds:

In c.790, Arabian chemist Geber, amid his translation of Aristotle, and his summary and application of
Empedocles’ model of the four elements of things, namely: water, earth, fire, air, ordered according to
Heliopolis creation myth order, to explain the variation with which different metals burn, by adding added
two principles, namely ‘sulfur’, aka the stone that burns, as the new basis of combustibility, and ‘mercury’,
being the vehicle of the ductility, fusibility and luster.
In c.900, al-Razi, the second main Arabian chemist, in his The Secret of Secrets, building on an earlier
partial list made by Zosimos (c.300), along with ideas by Geber, divided mineral bodies into the following
size classes:
1. Bodies | the metals
2. Spirits | sulfur, arsenic, mercury, and sal ammoniac
3. Stones | marcasite, magnesia, etc.
4. Vitriols | sulfate containing things, e.g. as known to Pliny
5. Boraces | borax, natron (soda), plant ash
6. Salts | common salt, kali (potash), salt of eggs, e.g. saltpeter, etc.
Later, someone, following Razi, introduced a third constituent principle or element, namely ‘salt’,
representative of that which is permanent and unaltered by the action of heat, after which Geber's so-called
two principles became a ‘three principles’ theory of the combustion.
In c.1430, Basil Valentine, a German alchemist, was teaching, as a matter of chemical fact, the doctrine
of ‘three elements’, of sulfur, mercury, and salt, to explain the variations of combustion of metals, wherein
‘sulfur’ was the principle of combustibility, the more sulfur something contained, the more it would
combust; ‘mercury’, which explained the fluidity of metals, and ‘salt’ which was used to explain the solidity
of things, not effected by heat.2
In c.1535, Paracelsus promulgated the three elements doctrine so vigorously, that this doctrine became
associated with his name; the gist of which, as concerns the development of thermodynamics, was that he
was advocating the following axiom, in respect to all things that burn or combust:
“All that burns is sulfur.”
— Geber (c.1535), Publication (pg. #)
In more detail, in respect to what Geber considered to be the seven metals:
“Know that all the seven metals are brought forth after this manner, out of a threefold manner, namely:
mercury, sulfur, and salt, yet in distinct and peculiar colors. Now this is not to be
164 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

understood so that of every mercury, every sulfur, or of every salt, the seven metals may be generated.
Concerning the generation of minerals, and half metals, nothing else need be known than what at first
said concerning metals, namely that they are in like manner produced of the three principles: mercury,
sulfur, and salt, and yet with their distinct colors. The generation of gems is from the subtlety of the
earth of transparent and crystalline mercury, sulfur and salt, even according to their distinct colors. But
the generation of common stones is of the subtlety of water, of mucilaginous mercury, sulfur, and salt.”
— Geber (1537), Of the Nature of Things (pg. #)
The model of four elements of all things, combined with the three principles model of combustion, became,
shown below, the de facto standard model of chemistry, for the next two-centuries:

In respect to how combustion worked, in this three principles scheme of things, starting with the Paracelsus
model (1537), below left, substituting wood for metal, knowing that the three principles model of
combustion eventually began to be applied universally to all kinds of combustion, when a thing, such as a
log of wood or some metal burned, according to Paracelsus, the sulfur would represent the flame or heat of
the fire, the salt the solidity of the wood or metal, not affected by the fire, and the mercury would be the
smoke leaving the process, in short, give or take a few details left out:

In 1699, Johann Becher, a German physician and chemist, upgraded Paracelsus’ sulfur model of combustion
into his so-called fatty earth or terra pinguis model of combustion, the gist of which being that when
something burns or combusts, terra pinguis leaves the body, and ash is left behind, as shown above middle;
Becher elaborates on this model as follows:
“Concerning the second principle of minerals, which is fatty earth, aka ‘terra pinguis’, improperly called
sulfur, we find the three earths in animals, vegetables, and minerals. These three have a great affinity
one for the other, and a great analogy. While terra pinguis is related to the other earth which we have
already treated and whence metals and stones obtain their liquidity and fusibility, it most certainly has a
great relationship and analogy with the earth of vegetables, that, namely, which is present in the
calcination of vegetables and the lixiviation of ashes. It can also be prepared from all vegetables, for this
earth, although it seems to be useless and of no value, has a very great analogy with the preceding earth
of minerals and magnetism. This is apparent in the glassmaker’s art, for when the glassmaker makes
glass out of stone and flint, that is, from the aforementioned earth of minerals, which is thickened in
flowing, either because of a lack of salt, or because of an excess of fire, so that it is again made hard and
coagulates, nevertheless as soon as the preceding earth is injected from the ashes, not only is the whole
mass of glass made more flowing, but also takes on growth and augment. This not only proves the great
affinity of vegetable earth with mineral, but even a great likeness, harmony, and analogy, since this
earth per se can be made into glass.”
— Johann Becher (1669), Subterranean Physics (pgs. 129-32)
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 165

In 1703, George Stahl, Becher’s student, modified his mentor’s terra pinguis model of combustion into a so-
called ‘phlogiston model’ of combustion, according to which heat, no longer thought of as terra pinguis or
sulfur, was a fire-like element, having mass, called ‘phlogiston’, contained within all combustible bodies
and released during combustion, as pictured above right.
At this point, in the history of science, we are beginning to see a semi-quantitative model of heat, as
some sort of particle with mass. While not entirely correct, as in many cases, one has to take one or two
steps forwards, before one can take several steps backwards.
“It is difficult, in our endeavors to discover the principles of a new science, to avoid beginning the
guesswork; and it is rarely possible to arrive at perfection from the first setting out.”
— Antonine Lavoisier (1789), Elements of Chemistry (pg. 108)
This Stahl phlogiston model of heat, held-sway for the next eight centuries.
To exemplify, in 1774, when Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen O2, which had the remarkable property
that it supported combustion far better than normal air (N2 and O2), Priestley named this new gas ‘de-
phlogist-icated air’, because he thought that this new gas (O2) acted as a receptacle or holder for Stahl’s
phlogiston, or the matter of heat, such that when say wood or metal reacted or combusted with oxygen, that
the oxygen would absorb the phlogiston from the wood or metal.1
In 1775, when Antoine Lavoisier, the curator of the new term ‘caloric’, which we will soon become
overly-familiar with, began to investigate Priestley’s new gas, and had already harbored doubts about the
existence of phlogiston.

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. Lavoisier, Antoine; Laplace, Pierre. (1783). Memoire on Heat (Memoire sur la Chaleur) (translator and
introduction: Henri Guerlac) (§: Introduction, pgs. vii‐xviii; dephlogisticated air, pgs. vii‐viii). Academic
Press, 1982.
2. http://www.eoht.info/page/Three+principles
3. http://www.eoht.info/page/Entropy+models
4.
5.
21. Title
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

Text
168 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

21.1 | Galileo’s Momento (1592)

Text

21.2 | Descartes’ Momentum (c.1640) | mv

Text

21.3 | Huygens’ Conserved Collisions (1669) | mv-2

Text

21.4 | Lagrange’s half factor (1788) | T = ½ mv2

Text

21.5 | Vis viva as Heat

Text

21.6 | Actual Energy (Rankine, 1853) → Kinetic Energy (Thomson, 1862)

Text

Synopsis: (add)

Further reading
● Hanlon, Robert. (2020). Block by Block: the Historical and Theoretical Foundations of Thermodynamics
(Illustrators: Robert Hanlon and Carly Sanker) (§10: Rise of mv2, pgs. 169‐79). Oxford University Press.
22. Vis Mortua
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

Text

22.1 | Galileo’s Peso Morto (1638)

Text

22.2 | Leibniz (1673)

Text

22.3 | Latent Energy → Potential Energy (1853)

Text

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. Lavoisier, Antoine; Laplace, Pierre. (1783). Memoire on Heat (Memoire sur la Chaleur) (translator and
introduction: Henri Guerlac) (§: Introduction, pgs. vii‐xviii; dephlogisticated air, pgs. vii‐viii). Academic
Press, 1982.
2.
3.
4.
5.
23. Lagrange
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

Text

#.1 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

#.2 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

Synopsis: (add)

References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
172 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

24. Newton
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

21.1 | Mass vs Weight

In 1609, Johannes Kepler, began to allude to a proto-distinction between ‘mass’, symbol m, above, from
weight, symbol mg, as follows:
“If two stones were removed to any part of the world, near each other but outside the field of force of a
third related body, then the two stones, like two magnetic bodies, would come together at some
intermediate place, each approaching the other through a distance proportional to the mass [moles] of
the other.”
— Johannes Kepler (1609), Astronomia Nova (pg. #)
In 1673, Christiaan Huygens progressed further on this as follows:
“When particles move with equal speeds along equal circles, the centripetal forces are to each other as
the ‘weights of the particles’ or as their ‘solid quantity’ indicates mass.”
— Christiaan Huygens (1673), De vi Centrifuga (pg. #)
d:

22.2 | Laws of Motion

d:
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 173

Near the surface of the earth, the work W done in lifting an object of mass m through a height h is equal to
the product of these times the acceleration of gravity g, defined as follows:

with substitution of Newton’s second law of motion:

where the acceleration ‘a’ is g or 9.8 m/s2, for bodies accelerating toward the earth, we find that work W can
also be defined as the force F moving the mass times the distance d through which the body moves:

This formulation, however, was not derived until Gustave Coriolis in 1829, as we will discuss, referring to
this formula as the principle of the transmission of work, on the core formulations in thermodynamics.

21.3 | Unit of Force | N = kg⋅m/s²

Text

21.4 | Query 31
Text

Synopsis: (add)

References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
25. Affinity Chemistry
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

Text

22.1 | Geoffroy Affinity Table

Text

22.2 | Cullen Affinity Reaction Diagram (1757)

Text

22.3 | Bergman Affinity Table (1775)

Text

22.4 | Goethe Affinity Table (1796)

Text
d:

This table is from the ‘soul mate’ article.

176 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Synopsis: (add)

References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
26. Lavoisier
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

Text

d:
“If heat is a fluid, it is possible that during the combination of various substances, it combines with them
or is evolved from them. Thus, nothing indicates a priori that the ‘free heat’ is the same before and after
the combination; nothing, moreover, suggests in the hypothesis that heat is only the vis viva [kinetic
energy] of the particles of bodies, for in substances that combine together, acting on one another by
virtue of their mutual affinities, their particles are subjected to the action of attractive forces that
can alter the amount of their vis viva, and, subsequently, the amount of heat. But one should accept
the following principals being common to the two hypotheses:
‘If, in any combination or change of state, there is a decrease in free heat, this heat will reappear
completely whenever the substances return to their original state; and conversely, if in the
combination or in the change of state there is an increase in free heat, this new heat will disappear
on the return of the substances to their original state.’
This principle, moreover, is confirmed by experiment, and in what follows the detonation of saltpeter
will furnish us with visible proof. We can generalize it further, and extend it to all the phenomena
of heat, in the following way:
‘All changes in heat, whether real or apparent, suffered by a system of bodies during a change of
state of recur in the opposite sense when the system returns to its original state.’
Thus, the changes of ice into water and of water into vapor, cause the thermometer to show the
disappearance of a very considerable amount of heat which reappears in the change of water into ice and
in the condensing of vapors.”
— Antonie Lavoisier (1783), Memoir on Heat (co-author: Pierre Laplace) (pgs. 5-6)
d:
178 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

#.1 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

#.2 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

Synopsis: (add)

References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Thermodynamics

I
n the following set of chapters, we will be covering the basics of thermodynamics, which is basic
material before one can understand chemical thermodynamics, or thermodynamics applied to energy,
heat, and work aspects of chemical reactions and processes.

(add)
180 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism
2#. Carnot
“Nothing in the whole range of natural philosophy is more remarkable than this establishment of general
laws by such a process of reasoning.”
— William Thomson (1849), ‘An Account of Carnot’s Theory on the Motive Power of Heat’

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

Text

#.1 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

#.2 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

Synopsis: (add)

References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
2#. Clapeyron
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

Text

#.1 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

#.2 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

Synopsis: (add)

References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 183

36. Joule
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

36.1 | E = Sun (Etymology)

The letter ‘E’, the root letter of the word ‘energy’, according to Plutarch, from his essay ‘De E apud
Delphos’ (110 ACM), was introduced as the second of the seven Greek vowels, to align symbolically with
the ‘sun’, then known as second of the seven wandering stars: moon, sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn, the ‘moon’ thought to be the closest and the first, in Greco-Roman cosmology; the following is
a synopsis:

“An anonymous member of the group reports the remarks of a Chaldean visitor who said that the
significance of the letter ‘E’ lay in its second place amongst the seven vowels and compared this to the
second place of the sun amongst the seven wandering stars.”
— Judith Alexander (2018), “Plutarch’s ‘De E apud Delphos’” (pg. 20)

The letter ‘E’, prior to its adoption in the Greek alphabet (c.1000BC), derives from the hieroglyph of a man
with his arms raised, a person ‘in action’, or doing ‘work’ of some sort, i.e. expending ‘energy’ as we would
say:

E words, accordingly, such as energy, existence, engine, equation, experiments, explosion, etc., typically
have deep etymological significance, in respect to a person in action, powered by the sun.1

#.2 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. https://hmolpedia.com/page/Sator_square#E_.7C_Sun
2.
3.
184 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

4.
5.
37. Thomson
“The hardest part of researching this book was untangling the origin of thermodynamics. Scientific
progress in any area tends to be a steady refinement of qualitative ideas into analytical laws, but in
thermodynamics this journey was unusually tortuous, with the result that academic literature today
contains many discrepant opinions on what several pioneers of the subject said, what they thought they
were saying, and how important their contributions were. I found no single account that provided a
thorough and measured estimation of the whole subject.”
— David Lindley (2004), Degrees Kelvin: a Tale of Genius, Invention, and Tragedy (pgs. 318-19)

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

In Jun 1854, William Rankine, in his “On the Geometrical Representation of the Expansive Action of Heat,
and the Theory of Thermodynamic Engines”, introduced his so-called ‘thermodynamic function’, which is
said to have adumbrated the concept of entropy.1

In May 1854, William Thomson, in his ‘On the Dynamical Theory of Heat – Part 5: Thermo-Electric
Currents’, gives us the following formula:

where each H is a quantity of heat, going into or out of the boundary of a system, at the absolute
temperatures t, t’, t’’, etc., at those boundary locations, or in those ‘localities, respectively’, as Thomson puts
things.

#.1 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

#.2 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

Synopsis: (add)

References
1. http://www.eoht.info/page/thermodynamic+function
2.
3.
4.
5.
186 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism
38. Clausius (1865)
“If we say, in the words of Maxwell some years ago (Nature, 1878), that thermodynamics is ‘a
science with secure foundations, clear definitions, and distinct boundaries’, and ask when those
foundations were laid, those definitions fixed, and those boundaries traced, there can be but one
answer. Certainly not before the publication of Clausius’ 1850 memoir ‘On the Motive
Power of Heat and the Laws of Heat Which May be Deduced Therefrom’. This memoir marks an epoch
in the history of physics. Before Clausius, truth and error were in a confusing state of mixture, and
wrong answers were confidently urged by the highest authorities”
— Willard Gibbs (1889), ‘Rudolf Clausius’ (pg. 262)

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

Text

26.1 | Internal Energy

Text

26.2 | Work Done BY the System

Text

26.3 | Work Done ON the System

Text

26.4 | Etymology of the Symbol ‘S’ of Entropy

Having now digressed on the symbol ‘Q’ for heat, a partial overview of the Egyptian origin of the English
alphabet origin, etymological origin of Theta Θ and Delta Δ, in connection thermodynamics, it behooves us
to now, at least in passing, touch on the ‘ S ’, origin of entropy, a letter derived from the Greek Sigma ‘ Σ ’,
which became the integral symbol ‘ ∫ ’ in 1675 in the work of Gottfried Leibnitz, meant to be an elongated
S, from the Latin word summa, which became the mathematical summation symbol ∑ in 1755 work of
Leonard Euler.
In short, as we will expand on later, the origin of the ‘S’ symbol for entropy, while this cannot be
verified with hundred percent certainty, originated, over the course of a seven month period, in the
combined minds of William Thomson (May 1854) and Rudolf Clausius (Dec 1854), Thomson building on
Carnot (1834), Clausius building on Thomson.
In May 1854, Thomson, aged 30, in his ‘On the Dynamical Theory of Heat – Part 5: Thermo-Electric
Currents’, gives us the following formula:
188 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Where each H is a quantity of heat, going into or out of the boundary of a system, at the absolute
temperatures t, t’, t’’, etc., at those boundary locations, or in those ‘localities, respectively’, as Thomson puts
things.
In Dec 1854, Clausius, aged 32, having read Thomson, in his ‘On a Modified Form of the Second
Fundamental Theorem in the Mechanical Theory of Heat’, gave us the following nearly equivalent formula:

where heat Q and absolute temperature T are defined exactly as Thompson, but where N is called the
equivalence value of all uncompensated transformations, which he says can be ‘summed’ up as follows:

Clausius also says that if we integrate over the entire cycle, namely the Carnot cycle, as we will explain, the
formula becomes:

In 1865, Clausius, building on previous publications, comes to define the differential units of heat dQ going
into or out of the system, divided by the absolute temperature, measured at the point of transmission of heat,
as Thomson had done, by the new symbol dS, as follows:

which, as Clausius says, if we conceive this equation to be integrated for any reversible process whereby the
body can pass from the selected initial condition to its present one, and denote at the same time ty S0 the
value which the magnitude S has in that initial condition, we arrive at the following equation:

This ‘new’ equation, as Clausius says, is to be used in the same way for determining S as equation the
previous equation #59 (Clausius, 1865) was for defining U, which is repeated below:

In modern notation, this would be represented as:

Clausius goes on to clarify that this new S differential dS is an ‘exact’ differential, whereas the old Q
differential dQ is an ‘inexact’ differential, which in modern notation, translates as follows:

Where the lower case ‘δ’ means inexact and the English lowercase letter ‘d’ means exact differential, which
is a mathematical derivation that originated in the so-called Euler reciprocity relation (c.1739), which
Clausius does not cite directly.
In any event, with respect to the etymology of ‘S’, Clausius, without stating this directly, choose the
symbol ‘S’, in upgrade to his former symbol ‘N’, and prior to that Thomson’s symbol ‘0’, as best as we are
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 189

able to discern presently, as having the meaning of the summation ‘Σ’ (Euler) or summa integral ‘ ∫ ’
(Leibnitz), of the sum of all ‘transformation equivalents’ in one Carnot cycle. This is about as simply as we
can state things, presently, baring chapter progression.
We will, however, directly point out that Maxwell, following his published misunderstandings of what
entropy was exactly, per his misaligned understanding learned via his readings of Peter Tait, after having
learned the basic overall correct understanding of what entropy was, namely in terms of sums of
‘transformation equivalents’, i.e. sums or integrals of ‘δQ/T’ units, going into or out of a system, stated the
following very discerning comment:
“By the introduction of the expression ‘without compensation’, verses ‘of itself’, combined with a full
interpretation of this phrase, the statement of the second principle [second law], namely: that ‘heat
cannot without compensation pass from a colder to a warmer body’, becomes complete and exact;
but in order to understand it we must have a previous knowledge of the theory of transformation-
equivalents, or in other words entropy, and it is to be feared, that we shall have to be taught
thermodynamics for several generations before we can expect beginners to receive as axiomatic the
theory of entropy.”
— James Maxwell (1878), ‘Tait’s Thermodynamics’ (pg. #)
In other words, according to quick mind of Maxwell, it should have taken us several generations, or about
99 to 132 years, assuming 33-years per generation (3 to 4 generation) since the publication of ‘Tait’s
Thermodynamics’ article, or the years 1877 to 2010, for humans to get an axiomatic understanding of
entropy, for beginners, in respect to the theory of transformation equivalents. The year, presently, at the
penning of this chapter, is 2020 years after Christ myth (YAC), and we are still ignorant, below the beginner
level.
This can be evidenced, as has been done in multiple YouTube videos, by going onto the street and
asking any random 10 people what ‘entropy’ is? On average, about two out of ten will have an answer,
telling you that it is the tendency towards disorder, maximal chaos, or the heat death end of the universe, or
something along these lines. One of the aims of penning this publication is to remedy this ongoing cultural
idiocy.
Clausius, to conclude, and summarize, employed the letter ‘S’, as the symbol for entropy, which he
alternatively called the ‘transformational content’ of the body, to mean the summation ‘Σ’ (Euler) or summa
integral ‘ ∫ ’ (Leibnitz) of all transformation equivalents, in one Carnot cycle.

“Clausius proposes that the transformation of mechanical energy into heat be taken as ‘positive’, that the
heat into mechanical energy as ‘negative’.”
— Donald Cardwell (1971), From Watt to Clausius (pg. 265)

“Clausius’ 1850 equation: U = Q – AW, is defined such that Q quantifies the heat ‘gained by the system’
(positive value), while W quantifies the ‘work done by the system’ (positive value), such that a system gains
energy for positive Q and loses energy for positive w (by doing work).”
— Robert Hanlon (2020), Block by Block (pg. 117)

(add)

26.3 | Entropy
Text

Synopsis: (add)
190 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 191

43. Lewis (1923)

“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

“While I have flirted with many problems, I was for many years pretty loyal to the main task which I had set
for myself, namely, to weave together the abstract equations of thermodynamics and the concrete data of
chemistry into a single science. This is the part of my work in which I feel the greatest pride, partly because
of its utility, and partly because it required a considerable degree of experimental skill. That part of my work
therefore which has given me the greatest amount of personal satisfaction was the study of the free energy
of formation of the most important compounds and, in particular, the electrode potentials of the elements.”
— Gilbert Lewis (1928), “Letter to James Partington”

Text

#.1 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

#.2 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

Synopsis: (add)

References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
100. Religion
“The surest way of extirpating all the heresies, and of destroying the kingdom of the antichrist, and of
establishing ‘true religion’ in the hearts of men, is by perfecting a true system of natural philosophy.”
— Roger Bacon (c.1275), Publication (pg. #)

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

Text

#.1 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

#.2 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

Synopsis: (add)

References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 193

107. Roegen-Samuelson Copper Economic Model (1971)

“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: 3-pgs]

I
n 1934, Romanian Nicholas Roegen, after having completed his undergraduate degree in mathematics,
at the University of Bucharest, Romania, and his PhD in statistics at the Institute of Statistics, Sorbonne,
Paris, where he absorbed the philosophy of science ideas of Blaise Pascal, Ernest Mach, Henri Bergson,
and Karl Pearson, accepted a scholarship, via the Rockefeller Foundation, to study at Harvard, whereat he
encountered economist Joseph Schumpeter, who became his guiding mentor, whose work then was on
business cycles and evolutionary economics. Roegen stayed in the US for a year before return to Romania,
during the course of which he met: Irving Fisher, Friedrich Hayek, and Einstein.
In 1971, Roegen, skipping forward four decades, came to pen his infamous, as we correctly view things,
or famous, as he is viewed by many in the pop culture presently, The Entropy Law and the Economic
Process, wherein he opened to the following:
“To some, the term ‘entropy’ may seem esoteric. Once it was, but now it is becoming increasingly
popular in one field after another. What should now give us reason for concern in meeting the term is
the fact that its meaning varies substantially, at times even within the same domain of intellectual
endeavor. In Webster's Collegiate Dictionary alone we find four distinct entries under ‘entropy’. In
part, this situation reflects the most unusual history of the entropy law, continuously punctuated by
celebrated controversies, not all dead yet. In view of the confusion which has accumulated in some
quarters, a preliminary survey to contrast the main meanings of ‘entropy’ may prove useful even for the
reader already familiar with some of them.
There is, first, the original meaning with which ‘entropy’ was introduced more than one hundred
years ago by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius. This meaning is grounded in a bedrock of physical
facts [Yes]. All other meanings constitute a separate category that stands in opposition to it [?]. These
are related in a purely formal way to a simple algebraic formula which is the cloak under which
‘entropy’ is now becoming familiar to an increasing number of social scientists. Just recently, the
term—with such a formal meaning—was brought within the economist's field of vision by the invitation
to include a special ‘theory of information’ (Theil, 1967) in his tool box [No].
The physical concept is generally judged to be quite intricate [Yes]. If we take the word of
some specialists, not even all physicists have a perfectly clear understanding of what this concept
exactly means. Its technical details are, indeed, overwhelming [Yes]. And even a dictionary
definition suffices to turn one's intellectual curiosity away: ‘a measure of the unavailable energy in a
closed thermodynamic system so related to the state of the system that a change in the measure varies
with change in the ratio of the increment of heat taken in to the absolute temperature at which it is
absorbed’. All this does not alter the fact that the nature of most thermodynamic phenomena is
so simple [?] that the layman may grasp the concept of entropy in its broad lines without much
difficulty.
Let us take the case of an old-fashioned railway engine in which the heat of the burning coal flows
into the boiler and, through the escaping steam, from the boiler into the atmosphere. One obvious result
of this process is some mechanical work: the train has moved from one station to another. But the
process involves other undeniable changes as well. To wit, the coal has been transformed into ashes. Yet
one thing is certain: the total quantity of matter and energy has not been altered [No]. That is
the dictate of the ‘law of the conservation of matter and energy’ [No] —which is the ‘first law of
thermodynamics’ [No] and which, we should stress, is not in contradiction with any of the laws of
mechanics. The conclusion can only be that the change undergone by matter and energy must
be a qualitative change [No].
194 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

At the beginning, the chemical energy of the coal is free [No], in the sense that it is available to us
for producing some mechanical work. In the process, however, the ‘free energy’ loses this
quality [No], bit by bit. Ultimately, it always dissipates completely into the whole system where it
becomes ‘bound energy’ [No], that is, energy which we can no longer use for the same
purpose. To be sure, the complete picture is more involved [Yes]. And in fact, the merit of
the introduction of entropy as a new variable of state lies precisely in the analytical simplification and
unification achieved thereby. Even so, the other, more intuitive concepts of free and bound energies
have never lost their transparent significance. For, in a broad yet substantive perspective, entropy is an
index of the relative amount of bound energy in an isolated structure [No] or, more
precisely, of how evenly the energy is distributed in such a structure [No]. In other words,
‘high entropy’ means a structure in which most or all energy is bound [No], and ‘low entropy’, a
structure in which the opposite is true [No].”
— Nicholas Roegen (1971), The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (pgs. 4-5)
The above description is confused beyond measure. Granted, we will conceded, Rogen was a
mathematician, by training, never having an educational contact with physics, chemistry, or
thermodynamics, let alone chemical thermodynamics, wherein ‘free energy’ and ‘bound energy’ were
coined, specifically in Helmholtz’s 1882 On the Thermodynamics of Chemical Processes, based on the
earlier work of Gibbs’ 1876 On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances. As the saying goes: ‘take one
step forward, three steps back’. Here, we are forced to take one step forward, at least ten steps back, to say
the least.
This entire confused mess of convoluted misunderstanding, resulted in the so-called equally-confused
concept of ‘material entropy’, the mis-understood idea that natural recourses, such as coal, oil, copper, are
‘free energy’, and that according to the ‘second law of matter-energy’, as Roegen incorrectly phrases things,
these will transform into ‘bound energy’ or waste gases, or something along these lines? These simplified to
the point of backwards incorrectness, has many followers in the modern day.
In 1989, Paul Samuelson, to cited a prevalent example, in his ‘Gibbs in Economics’ talk, at the 150th
birthday Symposium on Gibbs at Yale, after praising Roegen’s The Entropy Law and the Economic Process,
and his surrounding work, as being deserving of a Nobel Prize in Economics, goes on go gives us the
following economic model, employing Roegen’s material entropy model of copper:1
“Let me close on a serious note. Nicolas Georgescu-Roegen has well said that the, logo for economics
should be an hourglass and not a frictionless pendulum. To model this insight, I ignore the niceties of
primers on thermodynamics. Instead I contrast two economic models.
Model #1, a stationary population working on specified land, exposed to the sun's energies,
produces a steady state of consumable output of bread. This is the orthodoxy Georgescu-Roegen wants
to go beyond.
Model #2 is like Model #1 but to produce our daily bread we need, along with labor and land, an
input of copper. Copper can be mined by labor but the faster you mine its limited seams the greater your
incremental labor cost; and, the more you have depleted the mine of rich copper veins inherited from
way back, the greater the needed labor.
It must be obvious without writing down the system's equations that no steady state of positive
bread consumption is possible with a specified constant total of labor and land. The more copper that
has been 'dissipated' in the past from its rich seams, the more labor must be switched out of bread
production. The system runs downhill in bread production as, so to speak, the entropy of dispersed
copper concentrations grows. If copper has no effective substitutes, the addition of produced capital
goods to the model does not change its declining fate at all.
Admittedly, no steady state is possible in this Club-of-Rome model of exhaustible resources. The
ball, however, is in the court of those who believe that Clausius-Gibbs formulisms can give us more
insights than are already in this ad hoc model.”
— Paul Samuelson (1989), ‘Gibbs in Economics’ (pg. 266)
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 195

Here, firstly, Samuelson, without saying so, as absorbed the Roegen model that copper is ‘free energy’, and
that according to the ‘material entropy’ scheme, it will, over time, according to thermodynamics, transform
into ‘bound energy’?
Secondly, Samuelson, being a grandson of Gibbs, as he refers to himself, believes that conjugate
variable pairs apply to economic systems, BUT only in the form of mathematical isomorphisms. Here, we
will note this this ‘ball is in Clausius court’, comment, as opposed to the ‘Shakespeare side of the tennis
court’, in the Charles Snow definition of the two cultures, comes after, in 1938, Edwin Wilson, one of the
only handful of protégé’s of Gibbs, suggested to Samuelson that he try to employ Gibbs equation 133,
shown below, in the form of conjugate variable pairs, as a basis for a model of an economic system:2

The entire situation makes one shake their head, to say the least.

References
1. Samuelson, Paul. (1989). “Gibbs in economics”, in: Proceedings of the Gibbs Symposium, Yale University,
May 15‐17 (editors: D.G. Caldi and George Mostow) (pgs. 255‐68). American Mathematical Society.
2. http://www.eoht.info/page/equation+133
3.
4.
5.
196 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

#. Title
“.”
— Author (date), Publication

Chapter point: (add) [length: #-pgs]

S
entence.

(add)

Text

#.1 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

#.2 | Subsection Title (date)

Text

Synopsis: (add)

References
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 197

#. Homework Problems
“Quote.”
— Author (date), Source

Chapter point: (add)

Sentence.
198 Dark Ages, Explicit Theism, and Explict Atheism

Postscript | Solidification
Of note, some of the chapters herein may, to the discerning reader, if there be such a thing, may seem
decisively short and abrupt; say as compared some of the content of the four-million plus word-filled
Hmolpedia.
To explain, and to keep everyone in the loop, the author’s heart, or ‘Jb’ as he Egyptians named things,
as explained in the first chapter, has been going, owing to ‘arrythmia’ condition, wherein conflicting
electrical activity, shuts off blood, for about the last six years, or since circa 59 AE (2014 ACM). This is
coming from someone who ran a 5-min mile, qualified for the Boston Marathon, ran a 40-mile 15% incline
run in a sub 12-range, and nearly completed a sub 10-hour Ironman. The author has been aware of this for
some time, as it was once mentioned in passing at age of about 20±.
It is a general rule, stated somewhere, that each ‘thing’ has an existence window correlative to the rate
of its heart beat, think humming birds (3-5 years) vs elephants (60-70 years). As the author has been, for
some time, 1991-present, burning the ‘wick at both ends’, as the saying goes, he is closer to the humming
bird, than the elephant.
Hence, after two blackouts, waking up in hospitals, and two surgeries, the goal has be shortened, and the
present focus, herein, is to get past the 1,067 ‘will to power fragments’ level of Nietzsche, prior to him
losing his mind, wherein in the last of these fragments he was grappling with thermodynamics.
In short, some chapters will be short, because they are trivial but necessary stopping points, e.g. the
Savery chapter, whereas others will be short, but are in need of being longer, owing to the density, e.g.
Gibbs, Clausius, Euler, Legendre, etc., and or short owing to lack of available translations, e.g. Winiarski,
Bazargan, etc. The author desires to ‘see’ a basic outline of the subject of chemical thermodynamics applied
to humans, however crude it may be, and however ideal author would have liked or envisioned to see the
subject presented, in his heart-working-correctly powerful mind-flow years of 1991 to 2013, wherein 4-7
hours of sleep would, on average, yield 3 to 14 hours of powerful, daily, research, writing, and thinking. It
would seem advisable, accordingly, given the extant situation, to have a stitched outline of a 100 or so
connective chapters, exact or crude, then 1,067 unconnected fragments. The 5,300+ articles of Hmolpedia,
in some sense, are Nietzschean fragments to the finalized vision of human chemical thermodynamics,
derived, pure, and applied.

Ideally, the completion of a textbook on the fundamental principles of ‘human chemical thermodynamics’,
geared to graduate level students, in applied social, economic, and history, etc., thermodynamics, was slated
for years into the future [c.2030], therein allowing for more research and digestion of material before
solidification of subject matter. Health issues, in respect to recent growing ‘heart arrythmia’ complications,
however, have worked or acted to precipitate, i.e. bring solidification of, the ephemeral realization of said
topic in a single book format, however crude and or incomplete.
Chronologically, in c.2010 the author found it difficult to do his typical fast-paced 38-mile roller blade
trip along Lake Shore Drive, from Hollywood Boulevard to Rainbow Beach, having to lay down on the grass
on the return trip for several minutes. In Jun 2013, while lecturing in Romania, the author, a former age 20-
something Boston marathon qualifier, found it curiously difficult to run up the 1,480-steps of Poenari Castle,
aka Dracula’s castle, in one continuous spurt, and had to pause multiple times.
In 2014, the author, in the weeks of his physico-chemical sociology debates with Mirza Beg, began to
notice fainting spell like moments.
Human Chemical Thermodynamics 199

In Sep 2015, the author, while at the gym, completely ‘blacked out’, while running on the treadmill (at
his normal 7.8 mph / 15% incline pace), coming to several hour later in the hospital, owing to what turned out
to be arrythmia of the heart. This was a HUGE turning point. Two separate ablation procedures resulted, one
in 2015 another in early 2018 resulted. These seemed to abate the issue, in some sense.
On 7 Nov 2018, a fourth semi-black out had occurred, resulting in one-hour of resting immobility, therein
preempting the author, following reaction extent end visions and planning, in a worst case scenario, to get his
thoughts down on the subject of ‘human chemical thermodynamics’, in one coherent form, before his
reaction existence comes to an end, presuming time is short in respect to existing as a ‘working’ powered
CHNOPS+26 element thing (note: a non-working powered CHNOPS+26 element thing, e.g., could be a
vegetative person following a stroke, whose existence, therein, becomes endergonic, i.e. Gibbs energy
absorbing, such as being kept powered, aka ‘alive’, by family and or life-support devices), so as to go beyond
the fate of Nietzsche (1889) who supposedly had a nervous breakdown and his mind amid assembling his
energy based ‘will to power’ fragments; John Tukey (1966) whose Gibbs energy based ‘attitude change’
model of transition states only made it to the verbal discussion level; or Adriaan Lange (2009), whose health
issues barred him from completed his Gibbs energy based evolution model of things, at the social level, in
English (he published only in Afrikaans, and separate online blogs), as a book, something he had discerned,
in his mind, as a physical chemistry professor, while teaching student standard physical chemistry.
While the author had planned
on completing a five-volume Smart
Atheism for Kids, some of which
shown adjacent, replete with
religio-mythology decoding, e.g.
how Noah’s Ark and Manu’s boat
are both rescripts of Nu’s flood,
Abraham and Brahma are both
rescripts of Ra the sun god born out
of Nu, etc., based on the content of
the previous atheism for kids class,
some 300+ draft pages of which An image Einstein biking, Turing running, and Thims (mock) running, from
having been completed by 2017, the Genius and Exercise article of Hmolpedia.
getting stalled out on a few details
of the Roman era recension (100-500 ACM) of the Osiris-Horus to Jesus rescript, along with absorbing more
works of the great social newtons, e.g. Pareto, Buckle, Adams, Schopenhauer, Hobbes, Spinoza, Winiarski
(needs English translation), etc., and religio-mythology scholars, e.g. Bruno, Godfrey Higgins, Massey,
Budge, etc., with heart issues seemingly increasing in frequency, a move to at least get the basic outline of
human chemical thermodynamics, in condensed format, in 740-pages or less (max 8.5x11-inch sized page
limit per book at Lulu), thematic in powerfulness to Baron d’Holbach’s great masterpiece The System of
Nature, before reaction existence ends, would seem to be of pressing order.

Synopsis: (add)

Index
(add index of names and terms)

1history of Thermodynamics
No ratings yet
1history of Thermodynamics
9 pages
Heat Engines 7
No ratings yet
Heat Engines 7
8 pages
Thermodynamics 1
0% (1)
Thermodynamics 1
33 pages
Ch01 PPT05
No ratings yet
Ch01 PPT05
33 pages
The Chemical Elements
100% (1)
The Chemical Elements
202 pages
CHE F213 Lecture 1-3rd August 2019
No ratings yet
CHE F213 Lecture 1-3rd August 2019
49 pages
Chemical Element A Historical Perspective TQW - Darksiderg
No ratings yet
Chemical Element A Historical Perspective TQW - Darksiderg
201 pages
Thermodynamics Study Guide
No ratings yet
Thermodynamics Study Guide
17 pages
Notes PHY3
No ratings yet
Notes PHY3
3 pages
Physical Chemistry Thermodynamics, Statistical Mechanics Kinetics by Andrew Cooksy
No ratings yet
Physical Chemistry Thermodynamics, Statistical Mechanics Kinetics by Andrew Cooksy
567 pages
Thermodynamics for Science Students
100% (1)
Thermodynamics for Science Students
12 pages
Mat E 212 - Thermodynamics For Materials Engineering R.E. Napolitano, MSE Dept., Iowa State University
No ratings yet
Mat E 212 - Thermodynamics For Materials Engineering R.E. Napolitano, MSE Dept., Iowa State University
23 pages
5.docx Adlı Dosyanın Kopyası
No ratings yet
5.docx Adlı Dosyanın Kopyası
24 pages
Atomism Leucippus Democritus Epicureans Atomic Theory Atoms
No ratings yet
Atomism Leucippus Democritus Epicureans Atomic Theory Atoms
7 pages
Chemistry 11
No ratings yet
Chemistry 11
42 pages
Physical-Chemistry-3rd-Edition 1-23
100% (1)
Physical-Chemistry-3rd-Edition 1-23
23 pages
Chemistry 180-213B Introductory Physical Chemistry: David Ronis © 2002
No ratings yet
Chemistry 180-213B Introductory Physical Chemistry: David Ronis © 2002
36 pages
Physical Chemistry
No ratings yet
Physical Chemistry
994 pages
Joule's Experiment & Background Physics - Emmanuel Chevassus
No ratings yet
Joule's Experiment & Background Physics - Emmanuel Chevassus
17 pages
Module 1 Introduction and Temperature Scales
100% (1)
Module 1 Introduction and Temperature Scales
10 pages
Thermodynamics Intro & Glossary
No ratings yet
Thermodynamics Intro & Glossary
19 pages
CPT1.SI Thermo 8e Chap 1 Lecture GCB
No ratings yet
CPT1.SI Thermo 8e Chap 1 Lecture GCB
57 pages
Chapter I
No ratings yet
Chapter I
39 pages
Foundations of Modern Physics
No ratings yet
Foundations of Modern Physics
325 pages
Introduction, History and Applications: Engr. Shakeel Ahmad
No ratings yet
Introduction, History and Applications: Engr. Shakeel Ahmad
13 pages
1-SCH 201 Chemical Thermodynamics-2016.by HON - Steve TOSH
No ratings yet
1-SCH 201 Chemical Thermodynamics-2016.by HON - Steve TOSH
49 pages
Physical Chemistryby Moore, W.J.
No ratings yet
Physical Chemistryby Moore, W.J.
648 pages
Me 313 Thermodynamics 11
100% (2)
Me 313 Thermodynamics 11
68 pages
Thermodynamics for Engineering Students
No ratings yet
Thermodynamics for Engineering Students
30 pages
Thermodynamics Basics for Students
No ratings yet
Thermodynamics Basics for Students
20 pages
Boettcher Thermodynamics
No ratings yet
Boettcher Thermodynamics
78 pages
Thermodynamics for Science Enthusiasts
100% (4)
Thermodynamics for Science Enthusiasts
13 pages
Chemical Thermodynamics-1
No ratings yet
Chemical Thermodynamics-1
16 pages
THERMODYNAMICS
33% (3)
THERMODYNAMICS
66 pages
Thermodynamics Books
No ratings yet
Thermodynamics Books
3 pages
Introduction To Thermodynamics
No ratings yet
Introduction To Thermodynamics
29 pages
October 6 - History of Chemical Engineering
No ratings yet
October 6 - History of Chemical Engineering
7 pages
Chapter 1 - Seatwork
No ratings yet
Chapter 1 - Seatwork
3 pages
D 008 Extract
No ratings yet
D 008 Extract
15 pages
Science Blasts Many Doubts, Foresees What Is Not Obvious It Is The Eye of Everyone, One Who Hasn't Got It, Is Like Blind
No ratings yet
Science Blasts Many Doubts, Foresees What Is Not Obvious It Is The Eye of Everyone, One Who Hasn't Got It, Is Like Blind
29 pages
Chemical Thermodynamics
0% (1)
Chemical Thermodynamics
46 pages
Module 1 Temperature Thermometer
No ratings yet
Module 1 Temperature Thermometer
7 pages
History of Thermodynamics
No ratings yet
History of Thermodynamics
14 pages
Theoretical Chemistry by Walter Nernst
No ratings yet
Theoretical Chemistry by Walter Nernst
799 pages
CH 01 - Basic Concepts - Part 01
No ratings yet
CH 01 - Basic Concepts - Part 01
25 pages
Termodinámica, Presentación
No ratings yet
Termodinámica, Presentación
40 pages
WINSEM2017-18 MEE1003 TH MB203 VL2017185001359 Reference Material I Module 1 and 2 1
No ratings yet
WINSEM2017-18 MEE1003 TH MB203 VL2017185001359 Reference Material I Module 1 and 2 1
130 pages
Introduction To Thermodynamics PDF
No ratings yet
Introduction To Thermodynamics PDF
131 pages
History of Temperature
No ratings yet
History of Temperature
6 pages
Thermodynamics for Students
No ratings yet
Thermodynamics for Students
131 pages
Theory of Heat - Maxwell PDF
No ratings yet
Theory of Heat - Maxwell PDF
352 pages
Thermodynamic Principles: Topic 1
No ratings yet
Thermodynamic Principles: Topic 1
32 pages
Thermodynamics Lecture1 July25 2024
No ratings yet
Thermodynamics Lecture1 July25 2024
27 pages
History of Thermodynamics
No ratings yet
History of Thermodynamics
8 pages
Thermodynamics
No ratings yet
Thermodynamics
8 pages
Heat and Thermodynamic
No ratings yet
Heat and Thermodynamic
220 pages
Human Molecule
No ratings yet
Human Molecule
120 pages
Creation of The Hebrew Alphabet - Douglas Vogt
100% (1)
Creation of The Hebrew Alphabet - Douglas Vogt
101 pages
Change of Nature
No ratings yet
Change of Nature
9 pages
Stating The Obvious
No ratings yet
Stating The Obvious
5 pages
Zadok Way Calendar 2024 2025
100% (1)
Zadok Way Calendar 2024 2025
13 pages
Freedom Teachings MCEO
100% (25)
Freedom Teachings MCEO
93 pages
Israels Migration 000 Intro
100% (2)
Israels Migration 000 Intro
61 pages
Israels-Migrations 4
No ratings yet
Israels-Migrations 4
150 pages
Musicians: Wagner's Insights
100% (1)
Musicians: Wagner's Insights
170 pages
Arkansas Water Quality
No ratings yet
Arkansas Water Quality
159 pages
2019 UPF Today V13 No1 v7 Press
No ratings yet
2019 UPF Today V13 No1 v7 Press
28 pages
Inter-Galactic War: by Chris Thomas
No ratings yet
Inter-Galactic War: by Chris Thomas
15 pages
Working and Living in Denmark
No ratings yet
Working and Living in Denmark
10 pages
Upftoday Vol12no1 Feb 2018
No ratings yet
Upftoday Vol12no1 Feb 2018
32 pages
Upf Today Upf Today Upf Today
No ratings yet
Upf Today Upf Today Upf Today
28 pages
ANGELIC DNA - 170726 PDF
No ratings yet
ANGELIC DNA - 170726 PDF
9 pages
God Code 2.0: 12-Strand S-DNA Explained
94% (16)
God Code 2.0: 12-Strand S-DNA Explained
20 pages
What Is Clean Dry Air
No ratings yet
What Is Clean Dry Air
7 pages
Cape Water Handout
No ratings yet
Cape Water Handout
4 pages
18892id 3.4.3 3.4.3.1
No ratings yet
18892id 3.4.3 3.4.3.1
178 pages
Arc Furnace Book
No ratings yet
Arc Furnace Book
42 pages
HyZor Technology (Preview)
50% (2)
HyZor Technology (Preview)
23 pages
Chapter 8
No ratings yet
Chapter 8
11 pages
Soil Adhesion and Biomimetics of Soil-Engaging Components: A Review
No ratings yet
Soil Adhesion and Biomimetics of Soil-Engaging Components: A Review
25 pages
Jipmer 2018 Solved Paper
100% (1)
Jipmer 2018 Solved Paper
33 pages
Aromatic Aldehyde Synthesis Methods
No ratings yet
Aromatic Aldehyde Synthesis Methods
28 pages
A Study of Caustic Corrosion of Carbon Steel Waste Tanks
No ratings yet
A Study of Caustic Corrosion of Carbon Steel Waste Tanks
10 pages
ICSE Class 8 Chemistry Important Questions
No ratings yet
ICSE Class 8 Chemistry Important Questions
3 pages
Crystal Refinement with GSAS
No ratings yet
Crystal Refinement with GSAS
36 pages
BEC198
100% (1)
BEC198
3 pages
Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (Zimsec) : Zimbabwe General Certificate of Education (ZGCE)
100% (2)
Zimbabwe School Examinations Council (Zimsec) : Zimbabwe General Certificate of Education (ZGCE)
34 pages
Gaines, 1910 Bacterial Activity As A Corrosion Induced in The Soil
No ratings yet
Gaines, 1910 Bacterial Activity As A Corrosion Induced in The Soil
3 pages
Fuel Cell Technology Overview
100% (1)
Fuel Cell Technology Overview
18 pages
Cells: Molecules and Mechanisms (Official)
No ratings yet
Cells: Molecules and Mechanisms (Official)
283 pages
Acetato de Etilo GPS
No ratings yet
Acetato de Etilo GPS
40 pages
Double Bond Equivalent
100% (1)
Double Bond Equivalent
4 pages
Class 10 Science Mind Maps
86% (14)
Class 10 Science Mind Maps
13 pages
ELCAS5 Exergoceonomics Methanol Production
No ratings yet
ELCAS5 Exergoceonomics Methanol Production
26 pages
MOPAC-en UK
No ratings yet
MOPAC-en UK
2 pages
Inorganic Chemistry Review
100% (3)
Inorganic Chemistry Review
25 pages
Agha Waqar's Water Kit
100% (1)
Agha Waqar's Water Kit
19 pages
Addison Wesly Biology PDF
No ratings yet
Addison Wesly Biology PDF
662 pages
Semi Detailed Lesson Plan
No ratings yet
Semi Detailed Lesson Plan
2 pages
Practical Paper 4questions - 1 PDF
No ratings yet
Practical Paper 4questions - 1 PDF
78 pages
AQA 8402 1 W MS Jan14
100% (1)
AQA 8402 1 W MS Jan14
18 pages
Chemistry Multiple Choice Questions
No ratings yet
Chemistry Multiple Choice Questions
5 pages
Hydrogen & Compounds: Questions & Reactions
No ratings yet
Hydrogen & Compounds: Questions & Reactions
8 pages