ЭНЕРГИЗМ

Energism

A philosophical conception which appeared at the end of the 19th century among some natural scientists. The followers of Energism explain all phenomena of nature by changes in energy which is devoid of materiality. Wilhelm Ostwald, Mach, and other followers developed the energetical interpretation of natural science, denied the scientific value of the atomistic theory. Later, influenced by the success of the atomistic theory of the 20th century, they had to recognise the existence of the atoms. The ideas of atomism penetrated even the physical doctrine of energy. It was discovered that energy could be converted into small portions—quanta.

The ideas of Energism, however, reappeared but in a less systematic form in connection with the new data provided by nuclear physics and the physics of elementary particles. In particular, the discoveries of the mass defect, and of the possibility of transforming pairs of particles into a field, and vice versa, were interpreted as mere transformations of matter into energy and vice versa. These "energetical" arguments were supported by references to the law of the interconnection of mass and energy (E=mc²), which was explained as a theoretical foundation of this possibility.

The epistemological roots of Energism are found, on the one hand, in the successes achieved by the energetical method in natural science and, on the other, in the difficulties facing the contemporary theory on the structure of matter. Energism, as a philosophical trend, revives whenever science is confronted with the task of penetrating deeper into the structural level of matter. Ostwald's Energism reflected the vacillations of scientific thought in the search for the then unknown ways of cognising the atomic structure of matter. Contemporary Energism is beset by the difficulties which physics encounters in cognising the structure of the elementary particles.