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Early views
The ancients viewed heat as that related to re. The ancient Egyptians in 3000 BC viewed heat as related to
origin mythologies. One example, is the theory of the Heating a segment of protein alpha helix causes its atoms to viOgdoad, or the primordial forces, from which all was brate more vigorously.
formed. These were the elements of chaos, numbered in
eight, that existed before the creation of the sun.[1]
much of the air is in contact with the sphere of
The rst to have put forward a semblance of a theory
the moon, it becomes heated in consequence of
on heat was the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who lived
the movement and friction of the parts in conaround 500 BC in the city of Ephesus in Ionia, Asia Mitact. Thus there is produced re, which surnor. He became famous as the ux and re philosopher
rounds the air, less in amount in the proximfor his proverbial utterance: All things are owing. Herity of the poles owing to the slackening of the
aclitus argued that the three principal elements in nature
movement there.[2]
were re, earth, and water. Of these three, however, re
is assigned as the central element controlling and modify- In the 13th century, the Islamic philosopher and
ing the other two. The universe was postulated to be in a theologian Abd Allah Baydawi considered two possibilcontinuous state of ux or permanent condition of change ities for the cause of heat:
as a result of transformations of re. Heraclitus summarized his philosophy as: All things are an exchange for
a) that [natural heat] would be the heat of a
re.
ery atom that is broken, and b) that heat may
occur through motion-change, the proof of this
As early as 460 BC Hippocrates, the father of medicine,
being through experiment.[3]
postulated that:
In 1253, a Latin text entitled Speculum Tripartitum stated:
Heat itself, its essence and quiddity is motion and nothing else.
1
This echoed the mid-17th-century view of English scientist Robert Hooke, who stated:
REFERENCES
3 19th century
5 See also
Carl Gauss
History of thermodynamics
6 References
[1] J. Gwyn Griths (1955). The Orders of Gods in Greece
and Egypt (According to Herodotus)". The Journal of
Hellenic Studies 75: 2123. doi:10.2307/629164. JSTOR
629164.
[2] M. S. Asimov, Cliord Edmund Bosworth (1999). The
Age of Achievement: Vol 4: Part 1 - the Historical, Social
and Economic Setting. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 2112.
ISBN 81-208-1596-3.
[3] Bayw, Abd Allh ibn Umar; Ifahn, Mamd ibn
Abd al-Ramn; Calverley, Edwin Elliott; Pollock, James
Wilson (2002). Nature, man and God in medieval Islam:
Abd Allah Baydawis text, Tawali al-anwar min matali'
al-anzar. Leiden: Brill Publishers. pp. 409 & 492. ISBN
90-04-12102-1.
[4] Gutman, Oliver (1997). On the Fringes of the Corpus Aristotelicum: the Pseudo-Avicenna Liber Celi Et
Mundi. Early Science and Medicine (Brill Publishers) 2
(2): 10928. doi:10.1163/157338297X00087.
External links
History of Heat
A Brief History of Heat and Work
History of Heat Engineering (at MIT)
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