“Ostwald was certainly an atheist in the strong sense. The 1969 biography by Rodnyj and Solowjew contains a section on Ostwald entitled ‘A Pugnacious Atheist’ [‘als streitbarer Atheist’] and an entire German language book on this subject was published in 1960: Science versus Faith in God: From the Atheist writings of the Great Chemist Wilhelm Ostwald (Friedrich Herneck).”— William Jensen (2015) [25]
See main: Ostwald happiness formulaIn 1905, German physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald penned a happiness equation based on his energetics theories. [17] Ostwald's happiness equation reads as follows:
Ostwald and Svante Arrhenius, from a 1904 issue of Popular Science Monthly (Ѻ); in 1884, Arrhenius published work which showed that affinities and electrical conductivity in solution parallel one another; Ostwald, who in 1882 had become full professor at the University of Riga, recognized the originality of the this young fellow chemist and helped him to find due appreciation, the same way M.M. Pattison Muir (1848-1931) had further him in 1879. |
“Matter is only a mirage, which the mind creates to comprehend the workings of energy.”
“From now on the whole of physics has to be represented as a theory of energies.”This incident has been documented by American energetics historian Robert Deltete in a series of articles. The group found the idea “so absurd that they refused to take it seriously at all” and offered only “ridicule and abuse”. The next morning, Ostwald awoke early and went for a walk in the Tiergarten, and had a “personal Pentecost”, as he described it, seeing clearly the view that “all is energy”. Ostwald’s revelatory moment of insight is detailed in his Autobiography, and is quoted in Eduard Farber’s Great Chemists. [15]
Ostwald with Jacobus van 't Hoff, in Leipzig, from a 1905 issue of the Journal of Physical Chemistry. (Ѻ) |
“A catalyst is any substance which changes the velocity of a reaction without appearing in its end products.”
The final section of Ostwald's Natural Philosophy. [4] |
See main: Monistic Sunday SermonsAfter his retirement in 1906, Ostwald found a new sphere for his scientific and organizatorial talents. Besides continuing his studies and publication on philosophy, such as Der energetische Imperativ (The Energetic Imperative), Moderne Naturphilosophie (Modern Natural Philosophy), Die Pyramide der Wissenschaften (The Pyramid of the Sciences), he also took an active part in public life.
See main: Economic thermodynamicsIn 1907, Ostwald incorporated thermodynamics, or energetics specifically, into a general theory of economic development. Ostwald reasoned that energy was the sole universal generalization, in that energy processes underlie all circumstances. Based on this hypothesis, Ostwald theorized that for any event in the universe it is always possible to state an equation, between two time intervals, such as to quantify the difference between the energies that have disappeared and those newly arrived. [6] This, coincidentally, is the methodology currently used to quantify energetic reactions in chemistry, namely the calculation of the before and after conditions in reactions.
“If a chemist or physicist of to-day is asked about his ideas on immortality, his first feeling will be that of some astonishment. He meets with no question in his work which is connected with this one, and his reply may usually be classified under one of two heads. He may remember the religious impressions which have clung to him since his youth, kept alive by him or nearly forgotten, as the case may be, and he will then explain that such questions are in no way connected with his science; for the objects treated by his science are non-living matter. This is immediately evident in physics, and while there exists an organic chemistry, he will explain that any matter which is called organic in his sense is decidedly dead before it can become the object of his investigation. It is only the inanimate part of the world which concerns him scientifically, and any ideas he may hold about the question of immortality are his private opinions and quite independent of his science. Or he may dismiss his interlocutor still more shortly by saying from his standpoint of matter-and-motion: Soul is a function of living matter only. The moment life ceases in an organized body the value of this function becomes zero, and there is no further question about immortality.”— Wilhelm Ostwald (1906), Individuality and Immortality (pgs. 4-5)
“It must be restated from its very foundation, because, as I have been maintaining for the last ten years, the matter-and-motion theory (or scientific materialism) has outgrown itself and must be replaced by another theory, to which the name energetics has been given. The question therefore takes the form: what has energetics to say about immortality?”— Wilhelm Ostwald (1906), Individuality and Immortality (pg. 7)
“In conscious beings such natural tendencies are accompanied by a certain feeling which we call will, and we are happy when we are allowed to act according to these tendencies or according to our will. Now, if we recall the happiest moments of our lives, they will be found in every case to be connected with a curious loss of personality. In the happiness of love this fact will be at once discovered. And if you are enjoying intensely a work of art, a symphony of Beethoven's, for example, you find yourself relieved of the burden of personality and carried away by the stream of music as a drop is carried by a wave.”— Wilhelm Ostwald (1906), Individuality and Immortality (pgs. 44-55)
“Consider the best case, where we often use the word ‘immortal’ [see: Mor], that of a great poet or scientist. We say that Homer and Goethe, Aristotle and Darwin, are immortal, because their work is lasting, and will persist for scores of centuries, and their personal influence has proven independent of their bodily existence.”— Wilhelm Ostwald (1906), Individuality and Immortality (pg. 59)
“Death, considered from the standpoint of sexual propagation, is not only not an evil, but it is a necessary factor in the existence of the race. And looking into my own mind with all the frankness and scientific objectiveness which I can apply to this most personal question, I find no horror connected with the idea of my own death. After I have lived out the span of my life, the bodily ending will seem a perfectly natural thing, and it will be more a feeling of relief than one of sorrow that will come in watching the end. Quite independent of individual life or death, the work a man has done remains effective.”— Wilhelm Ostwald (1906), Individuality and Immortality (pgs. 62-63)
“There remains one last and most important question, What becomes of the foundation of all our ethics without the idea of a personal future life, in which vice shall be punished and virtue rewarded? I do not hesitate to answer that I not only think ethics possible without this idea, but that I even think that this condition involves a very refined and exalted state of ethical development.”— Wilhelm Ostwald (1906), Individuality and Immortality (pg. 67)
“No one thinks of punishing a cat who tortures a poor mouse for no vital purpose whatever, and we find it perfectly natural that the lame of certain wasps should develop in the interior of caterpillars, slowly devouring their hosts from within. It is only man who tries to change this general way of nature's and to diminish as far as possible cruelty and injustice to his fellow men and his fellow creatures. And from the strong desire that this black stain should be removed as fully as possible from humanity, the idea developed that there must be beyond our bodily life a possibility of compensating for the evil which is done and for that which is suffered during life without due punishment or reward as suggested by our sense of justice.”— Wilhelm Ostwald (1906), Individuality and Immortality (pgs. 68-69)
“Ostwald developed [his] epiphany into his doctrine of energetics, which he thought should revolutionize all human understanding: natural and earth sciences, of course, but also history, economics, sociology, politics, even ethics and morality. The laws of thermodynamics, to Ostwald, implied a new categorical imperative: ‘waste no energy!’”— Eric Zencey (2013), “Energy as Master Resource” via citation of Caspar Hakfoort [1]
“Everything we sensually experience can be reduced to energy relationships between our sense organs and the world around us.”— Wilhelm Ostwald (1909), autobiographical reflection of his spring “pentecostal inspiration”; as recounted in his Lifelines: an Autobiography, 1926 [21]
“Research workers were, at one time, obliged to endeavor to ensure that their theories did not contradict those of the church; nowadays, in contrast the church is at pains to prove that its teachings are compatible with those of science. In other words, the church acknowledges science as the higher authority.”— Wilhelm Ostwald (1909). “On Catalysis”, Nobel Lectures [22]
“I am made from the C-H-N-O-S-P combination from which a Bunsen, Helmholtz, Kirchhoff came.”— Wilhelm Ostwald (1926), Lifelines: an Autobiography [19]; compare Carl Sagan (1980)
“My only supporter and comrade-in-arms was Georg Helm, who had endeavored to formulate an energetic conception of science before me and had presented his results in a treatise [Die Lehre von der Energie] exhibiting great independence of thought. But we were separated by his aversion to a realistic conception of energy. Consequently, each of us considered the other only a half ally, toward whom an attitude of caution was necessary.”— Wilhelm Ostwald (1927), reflection on the 1895 energetics dispute in Lubeck [20]