The discourse of energy. The legacy of Thomas Young. Authors Enric Pérez Canals Departament de Física Fonamental. Facultat de Física. Universitat de Barcelona Nemrod Carrasco Nicola. Universitat de Barcelona Keywords: energy, etymology, popularization, Young, Enlightenment Abstract We show a brief review of the etymology of the term ‘energy’. Despite its importance and ubiquity, in specialized circles as well as in the common use, the history of the word is poorly studied. We point out the existence of a Greek root, enargeia, often ignored but crucial to understand the introduction of the word in the vernacular languages during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Therefore, besides energeia, a neologism introduced by Aristotle, enargeia, a term mainly used in treatises of Rhetoric in the Greco-Latin antiquity, should also be considered. In this review we analyze in more detail one of the most important episodes in the etymological history of energy: its application by Thomas Young to the study of particle collisions. We demonstrate that his use perfectly fits in a context —the British Enlightenment— where ‘energy’ had an increasing presence in several fields.Key words: energy, etymology, popularization, Young, Enlightenment Author Biographies Enric Pérez Canals, Departament de Física Fonamental. Facultat de Física. Universitat de Barcelona Nemrod Carrasco Nicola., Universitat de Barcelona Downloads PDF (Català) Issue Vol. 6 (2013) Section Articles License The intellectual property of articles belongs to the respective authors.On submitting articles for publication to the journal Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, authors accept the following terms:Authors assign to Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (a subsidiary of Institut d’Estudis Catalans) the rights of reproduction, communication to the public and distribution of the articles submitted for publication to Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica.Authors answer to Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (SCHCT) for the authorship and originality of submitted articles.Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for the reproduction of all graphic material included in articles.SCHCT declines all liability for the possible infringement of intellectual property rights by authors.The contents published in the journal, unless otherwise stated in the text or in the graphic material, are subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 3.0 Spain licence, the complete text of which may be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/deed.en. Consequently, the general public is authorised to reproduce, distribute and communicate the work, provided that its authorship and the body publishing it are acknowledged, and that no commercial use and no derivative works are made of it.Actes d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica is not responsible for the ideas and opinions expressed by the authors of the published articles.
