Cover page of Polish economist Leon Winiarski's 1898 "Essay on Social Mechanics" in the Italian Journal of Sociology (translated below). [2]

In famous publications, “Essay on Social Mechanics” is an 1898, 22-page article, by Polish economist Leon Winiarski, divided into three parts: one on economic equilibrium and social equilibrium, a second on transformations of social energy, and the third on social dynamics, all in the context of Rudolf Clausius’ thermodynamics and Joseph Lagrange’s mechanics. [1]

To note, there may have been more to Winiarski's social mechanics publications than this essay as evidenced by the 313-page 1967 book Leon Winiarski and Social Mechanics, possibly a reprint and or analysis of Winiarski’s social mechanics theories, by Swiss-Italian social scientist Giovanni Busino, indicates, according to text key word dominance, that Winiarski’s theory was dominated by the terms energy, potential energy, biological energy, sexual selection, social evolution, partial equilibriums, division of work, anthropology, Karl Marx, Leon Walras, and constant capital, among other topics. [5]

Overview
In this essay, Winiarski supposedly applied the principle of equivalence of transformation (transformation equivalents) to argue that, since the transformation of hunger and love into the higher wants of means the conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy, the evolution of a civilization involves a lowering of the potential of a people and its eventual replacement by a fresh, unexhausted race. [3]

In terms of personal energies, Winiarski argues that things such as examples, ideas, and commands radiate from people of greater energy to those of lesser energy, and that this radiation takes the form of authority and influence of the social superior over that of the social inferior. In this logic, it is reasoned that this passage of energy tends to terminate in an equalizing of intensities and a state of equilibrium. [3]

English translations of this essay are difficult to find. An Italian-to-English translation of an 1899 Italian reprint (or variant) of this article, entitled "Theory of Property and Family: Essay on Social Mechanics", found in the Italian Journal of Sociology, is shown below: [2]

Prediction
On the topic of prediction, in the context of Winiarski’s Essay view of desire as a form of energy, American sociologist Edward Ross states:

“Desire may or may not be a form of energy. In any case it is certain that a mechanical interpretation cannot help to predict the choices of people.”

Ross seems to base this argument in the view that prediction can be made on the lower animals, whose behaviors are simply stimulus and reaction processes, but that in higher organisms, factors such as memory, psychic energy, consciousness, spontaneous sportive or festive activities, etc., except humans from mechanical simplicity. [3]

Italian to English translation of Essay

Since the theory of energy is fundamental to the social mechanism, I begin by summarizing the state of studies on energy in general and in particular biological energy. [4] The mechanical theory of the universe reduces the social order, the order of life and the physical order to a single order, in which all phenomena can be reduced to transformations of matter or motion. The molecular mechanics is complete in all exactness in the energy theory, which is not only a basis of modern physics, but also penetrates into the biology and sociology. Mechanics, including energy, claims to embrace and unite all the sciences, since only precariously they are independent from each other, but everything in the universe has a related scheme, science, reflecting the ideal of the universe, must also submit such a system.

The law of indestructibility of matter was proposed by Lavoisier, that of the indestructibility of energy by Robert Mayer. So we must get used to this truth, namely, that there are no isolated phenomena in the world, they are linked to each other in constant transformation from a state of things to another. Heat, electricity, light, etc., no longer considered as independent phenomena. There is an exact relationship between the state and physical characterization of a system.

In each phenomenon, this exact ratio depends on a constant and eternal passing from one state to another, changing only the outward form of this conversion. This conversion element is the energy, and can manifest as mechanical chemical, thermal, and electrical, etc. These forms go into each other with certain quantitative relations closely. Energy might have, generally speaking, two states: kinetic and potential, a body raised to a certain height, spread, falling, work equal to that which is used to lift the body. Work as well developed in the fall can be used in different ways, e.g. to set in motion a clock. When the weights have not yet begun to fall, we say that they have some ability to do the work, a certain potential energy, which subsequently, by the measure of their descent, is transformed into kinetic energy which manifests itself in motion clock.

The daily experience convinces us that the mechanical work is transformed into heat and science has already measured accurately the quantitative relation of this transformation. The chemical energy may give rise to all other forms of energy: heat, electricity, mechanical work, etc. The physical world presents to us that the transformation of one kind of energy into another. Similarly, the living world shows us only mutations of matter and energy changes. The activity of living beings corresponds to transformations of energy, to change from one species into another, according to fixed rules of equivalence.

Already R. Mayer, CI. Mayer, CI. Bernard and Helmholtz observed phenomena of life from the viewpoint of energy, and in this organic energetics has made great progress the work of Chauveau mercy of Loeb, the Lalaunié and several others. Indeed it has come to make some more very interesting. These law are:

1. The biological energy comes from energy food chemistry and ends in the energy heat. The phenomena of life there thus appears as a movement of energy, which, starting from a point in the physical world, returns to this world after a run through the animal organism. The circle is a circle of energy matters, nutrition, i.e. a stream of material that draws from outside the body through food and rejects coli'escrezione.

2. Maintaining vital not consume any power that is characteristic of life, rather it takes from the outer world that puts all that energy into work and takes the form of chemical energy potential. This principle shows us the source of that energy, which, at a stage of its transformations, will be biological energy. That source is the chemical energy of the elements stored in body tissues. "When the movement has produced", says C.I. Bernard, "the contraction of a muscle, when the will and awareness arise, when the thought is exercised, when the gland secretes the substance of the muscles, nerves, brain, glandular tissue is disorganized, it destroys and consumes." Energetics explains the biological reason for this coincidence between the operation and the destruction of organic chemistry: a portion of organic material decomposes, it simplifies chemically, descends to a lower potential in this defense and leaves the chemical energy that transformed into biological energy, which is the essence of all vital phenomena. The energy expenditure should be reconstituted because the body is kept in balance: the power supply provides the necessary materials for this purpose, digestion incorporates them into the body to the state reserve.

3. The energy emanating from the chemical potential of food, after going through the body and produced the phenomena of vitality, he returns to the physical world in the form of heat. The biological energy has therefore a very specific place, lies between the chemical and thermal energy and can also say that it is a chemical thermal energy conversion. We do not know what is the biological energy in its core, but even we know what it is electricity or heat; know them only at the escort of the phenomena in which they arise, how do we know the energy only organic form of vital phenomena, which are all our movements, our feelings, our thoughts, etc. This being totally science in either case. Energy belonging to organic acts silent and invisible even if you do not recognize their effects, it is all that happens, e.g. in preparing its muscle contraction, the nerve that leads to the influence nervous. And that is what we must now consider how mutual equivalence hill energies because of the physical world, as these are among them. Biological energy is repeated in the case of ordinary physical energy, known apparently not knowing what is reality.

The three principles listed show that takes place throughout the life of the universe. Since the chemical energy of food is prepared from plants, we can say that the animal spends the energy the plant world has accumulated. The same plant world takes its activity by the energy radiated by the sun. Eventually the animals return to the heat dissipated: in this way the whole universe is a concatenated system. Must still add something important: bio energy, although drawn from the chemical energy of food, must be regarded as existing in the substance of the organs and tissues active in food, not brutes. These must first be digested, modified, processed and incorporated as integral parts of the fabrics that you spend. This observation clearly applies not only to individuals but also to aggregations of individuals: the food are not a part of their biological energy are treated as if they had no body.

As to energy in biological it is necessary to distinguish, as in every other, two states: potential and kinetic. Potential, when it's been a reserve in the tissue, as they instinctively unconscious, while each event instead of movement by the body, or, in other words, every action and every conscience, a movement nervous in the case of feelings, ideas or the will, belongs biological kinetic energy. Now, in our opinion, social energy that is not composed of these two kinds of energy. And that becomes the physical energy of the natural or artificial? If you must have some social value, must first cause a biological reaction energy. Thus X-rays had no social value before Roentgen had discovered them, that is, before they had caused a nervous reaction, before him, back in all of us, as awareness of their existence, as a form of biological energy kinetic. Food assimilated by the body become a source of biological energy potential. But all that does not take any of these forms of biological energy is not part of social energy, which undergoes constant change. What are these changes?

Hunger and love are the two main forms of biological energy: hunger and love are two fundamental forces that reign in the living world, are the primary source of all phenomena, mental and social. Not suffer a single direction, that of seeking the maximum of pleasure. Of these two forces hunger has also broader and more general importance. Seize food, assimilate, digest, here is the phenomenon that is grounds to life. The increase and multiply the percentage is not a continuation of the process of digestion. Take the amoeba, one of the lowest living beings. Man mano che assimila il cibo, il suo corpo cresce, ma sino a un dato limite. As we assimilate food, your body grows, but up to a specified limit.

When he reached certain definite proportions, is divided into two parts: the multiplication is therefore not a result of digestion. Beings higher organisms multiply glue fertilization, but even in this case, procreation does not begin only when the individuals have added their full development, that is when they can no longer grow by assimilation of food. The seizing of food and the assimilation process is a purely selfish, which puts the individual in relations of enmity with the outside world. Is the domain of hatred and struggle for existence. In contrast, proliferation is the source of a different kind of feeling, that is. Feelings of sympathy, which is not extended, moreover, that self-interest, in the same manner that procreation is but the extent of digestion. The son is but a part of parents and separates from it when they touch the limit extremes of their Crescenzi.


References
1. Sanger, C.P. (1898). “Work Reviewed: Winiarski, Dr. Léon, Essai sur la Mécanique Social (Essay on Social Mechanics)”. The Economic Journal (pgs. 387-88). MacMillan.
2. (a) Winiarski, Leon. (1898). “Theory of Property and Family: Essay on Social Mechanics” (Italian → English) (pgs. 572-76, 577-81, 582-86, 587-92) ("La Teoria Della Proprieta E Della Famiclia: Saggi Sulla Meccanica Sociale Pura") (pgs. 572-594) In: Rivista Italiana di Sociologia (Italian Journal of Sociology), Volume 3. Fratelli Bocca, 1899.
(b) Appeared in the Revue Philosaphique (April 1898).
3. (a) Ross, Edward A. (1907). Foundations of Sociology (Winiarski, pgs. 156-60). MacMillan Co.
(b) Winiarski, Leon. (Date). “Article”, Revue Philosophique, Vol. XLV, pgs. 351-86; Vol. XVIX, pgs. 113-334.
4. (a) This work is a follow him Sayglo drop the social mechanism, which appeared in the Revue Philosaphique (April 1898) and contains the following parts: the economic and social balance, the processing of social energy, the social dynamics. See also: our Saygio balance aesthetic, in the Revue Philosophique, June 1899.
(b) The reader will find more details in the following works: a. Chauveau, the trmail musculairc. Paris, 1891; Du travati physiologique et de san equivalent (Revue scientifìque, 1888); La ' routes et the energies that ' the animals, Paris, 1894; Cl. Maxwell, Materand motion; Balfour-stewart, Conservalion de energies; f. Lalauxik, Knei-giìtique musc.ulaire,Paris, 1898; a. Gautieb, Lecons de chimie bioìogique, Paris, 1897; Dastre, Dans energies monde vivant (Revue des deux mondes).
5. Busino, Giovanni. (1967). Leon Winiarski es la Mecanique Sociale. Cahiers Vilfredo Pareto, Revue Europeenne D’Histoire des Sciences Sociales, Vol 14. Librairie Droz, Geneve.

Further reading
● Winiarski, Leon. (1900). “Essay on Social Mechanics: The Social and Energy Measurements” (Essai sur la Mecanique Sociale: L’energie Sociale et ses Mensurations), Part II, Revue Philosophique, XLIX, 265, 287.
● Winiarski, Leon. (1967). Essais sur la Mecanique Sociale (Essays on Social Mechanics). Geneva: Droz.