In history thermodynamics, Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918) was an American historian noted for multi-decade long attempt to apply and utilize the physical sciences, particularly chemistry and thermodynamics, in the study of human history. The following 1885 comment by Adams, sent to his wife in a letter, while on an extended work stay-over in Washington, captures his central quest worked on throughout life, a subject he would spend over 40 years on:

“Social chemistry—the mutual attraction of equivalent human molecules—is a science yet to be created, for the fact is my daily study and only satisfaction in life.”

Adams had begun to adopt the physio-chemical view of people as chemical "molecules" when in circa 1873 he chanced upon an English review-translation of the 1869 book On Intelligence by French philosopher Hippolyte Taine, wherein it was argued that the science of psychology is the study of reactive systems of human molecules.

Overview
In 1895, Henry's younger brother Lawyer-Historian Brooks Adams published his The Law of Civilization and Decay, in which he applied the Helmholtz-version of the first law, i.e. that energy or force is conserved, Kelvin-version of the second law, i.e. that there is a universal tendency to the dissipation of energy, along with a theory of social contractions and dispersions, to develop a energetic theory or model of history, in reference, particularly, to its civilization rises and falls.

In 1896, Henry Adams published the 173-page book The Tendency of History, which positioned history in the context of thermodynamics; the title, supposedly culling its theme from Scottish physicist William Thomson's 1852 paper "On a Universal Tendency to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy". [8]

In 1910, in his Letter to American Teachers of History, Adams' was one of the first to use the term "human molecule" and to use it in a functional sense. One of Adams central goals was to find rules to understand history through the sciences.

In Adams discussions, lectures, and publications, beginning in 1895, on the apparent incompatibilities between the first two laws of thermodynamics, i.e. the law of conservation, "that nothing could be added, and nothing lost, in the sum of energy," and the law of dissipation, "that nothing could be added, but that intensity must be always lost," and the law of evolution, "that vital energy could be added, and raised indefinitely in potential, without the smallest apparent compensation." [1] In other words, Adams seemed to capture the popular view during these years existent between the logic of William Thomson, as found his 1852 paper "On a Universal Tendency in Nature to the Dissipation of Mechanical Energy", which said that natural systems tended to degrade, and the logic of Charles Darwin, in his 1859 Origin of Species, which said that natural systems tended to evolve; an apparent conflict for many, especially in areas such as astrology, geology, biology, botany and most notably for the study of human history.

Henry Adams studying at his desk (1883). [13]

Taine
American biographer Ernest Samuels notes that Adams seems to have adopted the idea that the historian should consider humans as molecules and consider human motives and history to be subject to the same laws as other physical bodies in the universe from the views of French philosopher Hippolyte Taine as found in his 1869 book On Intelligence in which states in which he prefaces the view that:

“The historian notes and follows the general transformations presented by a certain human molecule, or a certain peculiar group of human molecules; and, to explain these transformations, he writes the psychology of the molecule or its group.”

Taine’s suggestion to other historians, in short, is that one should study and follow the transformations of human molecules and to write history as the psychology of human molecules. Adams came across this viewpoint in 1873 while working as an editor for the North American Review, when he accepted the article “Taine’s Philosophy” by James Bixby for publication, which summarized the views presented in Taine’s new book On Intelligence. [9] Adams had begun to make mention of Taine in his 1880 novel Democracy, an American Novel. [11] The influence of Taine on Adams is clearly seen in the 12 April 1885 letter to his wife, written while at extended stay at work in Washington, in which Adams declares: [10]

“I am not prepared to deny or assert any proposition which concerns myself; but certainly this solitary struggle with platitudinous atoms, called men and women by courtesy, leads me to wish for my wife again. How did I ever hit on the only women in the world who fits my cravings and never sounds hollow anywhere? Social chemistry—the mutual attraction of equivalent human molecules—is a science yet to be created, for the fact is my daily study and only satisfaction in life.”

In this passage Adams foreshadows the science of human chemistry, or social chemistry as he calls it, defining it as the study of the “mutual attraction of equivalent human molecules”, noting that it is a science yet to be created. He also refers to men and women as "platitudinous atoms", in the human atom sense.

Henry Adams in early years.

Education
Adams graduated from Harvard University in 1858. In the years to follow, he toured Europe, during which time he attended lectures in civil law at the University of Berlin. In 1868, Henry Adams returned to the United States and settled down in Washington, D.C., where he started working as a journalist. Adams saw himself as a traditionalist longing for the democratic ideal of the 17th and 18th centuries. Accordingly, he was keen on exposing political corruption in his journalistic pieces. In 1870, Adams was appointed Professor of Medieval History at Harvard, a position he held until his early retirement in 1877 at 39. As an academic historian, Adams is considered to have been the first (in 1874–1876) to conduct historical seminar work in the United States. One of the high moments in Adams' life was his visit to the great Exposition which opened in Paris on April 15th, 1900. In the Galerie des machines, huge equipment was exhibited, such as dynamos and steam engines: power-generating machines. [6] In a 1909 letter to English lawyer Charles Gaskell, Adams comments: [12]

“I have been studying science for ten years past, with keen interest, noting down my phrases of mind each year; and every new scientific method I try, shortens my view of the future. The last—thermodynamics—fetches me out on sea-level within ten years. I’m sorry Lord Kelvin is dead. I would travel a few thousand-million miles to discuss with him the thermodynamics of socialistic society. His law is awful in its rigidity and intensity of result.”

This comment comes a year before Adams great work A Letter to American Teachers of History, in which he attempts to outline how thermodynamics, particularly the second law, applies to the historical subject of studying people considered as human molecules.

Human history and thermodynamics
In 1909, Adams wrote "The Rule of Phase Applied to History," in which he reformulated a theory of scientific history, based on an analogy to American engineer Willard Gibbs’s "Rule of Phase" (phase rule) from his 1876 "On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances." [5]

In a connected area, in his manuscript The Rule of Phase Applied to History, Adams attempted to use Maxwell’s demon, as an historical metaphor, though he seems to have misunderstood and misapplied the principle. [2] Adams interpreted history as a process moving towards "equilibrium", but he saw militaristic nations (he felt German pre-eminent in this class) as tending to reverse this process, a "Maxwell's demon of history". Adams made many attempts to respond to the criticism of his formulation from his scientific colleagues, but the work remained incomplete at Adams' death in 1918. It was only published posthumously themed or titled on the idea of "degradation". [3]

A Letter to American Teachers of History

See main: A Letter to American Teachers of History

In 1910, at the age of seventy-two, Adams printed and distributed to university libraries and history professors the small volume A Letter to American Teachers of History proposing a "theory of history" based on the second law of thermodynamics, which seemingly had reign over all branches of science except, apparently, human history. In a way, this was a precursor to Arthur Eddington’s 1928 conception of the entropy “arrow of time” in history. [4] In short, he argued that the physics of dynamical systems of Rudolf Clausius, Hermann von Helmholtz, and William Thomson should be applied to the modeling of human history.

In the 1921 Annual Report of the American Historical Association, historian William Thayer comments on Adams’ history thermodynamics commentary by stating that “In reading Henry Adams’ astonishing tract, I can not help suspecting at times that he is making fun of us historians; for he proposes, as I think you would agree with me, something which is not only impossible for anyone to carry out but which he himself never even attempted to carry out. In all the nine volumes of his American History, is there a hint of the second law of thermodynamics? Can you discover the slightest trace of a common formula for history and physical chemistry?” [7]

References
1. Adams, Henry. (1910). A Letter to American Teachers of History. Washington.
2. Cater (1947), pgs. 640-647, see also Daub, E.E. (1967). "Atomism and Thermodynamics". Isis 58: 293-303. reprinted in Leff, H.S. & Rex, A.F. (eds) (1990). Maxwell's Demon: Entropy, Information, Computing. Bristol: Adam-Hilger, 37-51.
3. Adams, H. (1919). The Degradation of the Democractic Dogma. (pg. 267). New York: Kessinger.
4. Eddington, Arthur. (1923). The Nature of the Physical World. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.
5. A Chronology of Henry Adams Life (adapted from the "Chronology" contained in the three-volume Library of America edition of Adams's major works)
6. The Education of Adams (Henry) / Alamo
7. Thayer, William Roscoe. (1921). “Vagaries of Historians”, in Annual Report of the American Historical Association (pg. 82). American Historical Association, Smithsonian Institution Press.
8. Adams, Henry. (1896). The Tendency of History.The MacMillan Co., 1919, 1929.
9. Samuels, Ernest. (1989). Henry Adams (human molecule, pg. 115). Harvard University Press.
10. Gooch, George P. (1913). History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (human molecule, pg. 240). Longmans, Green, and Co.
11. Adams, Henry, Hay, John, and King, Clarence. (1880). Democracy, an American Novel (Taine, pg. 9). H. Holt and Co.
12. (a) Adams, Henry. (1909). “Letter to Charles Milnes Gaskell”, 23 Avenue de Bois de Boulogne, May 02.
(b) Adams, Henry, Samuels, Ernest. (1992). Henry Adams, Selected Letters (thermodynamics, pgs. 438, 466, 517). Harvard University Press.
13. Henry Adams photo (studying at desk) – 1883 photo by Marian Hooper Adams, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Further reading
● Burich, Keith R. (1987). “Henry Adams, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the Course of History”. Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep.), pp. 467-482.
● Smith, Crosbie and Higginson, Ian. (2001). “Consuming energies: Henry Adams and 'the tyranny of thermodynamics’”, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Vol. 26, No. 2, Feb. pgs 103-111(9).

External links
● Henry Adams – Wikipedia.