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dredmorbius@joindiaspora.com
Doc Morbius (moved to Glasswings)

Many of the "physics" terms used in other disciplines ...

... originally started in other disciplines.

@woozle@hey.iseeamess.com happens to bring up the concept of "physics envy" as he discusses the term "power" used in a political context

It should be remembered that the concepts of power and gravity were actually borrowed by physics:

Power:

c.1300, "ability; ability to act or do; strength, vigor, might," especially in battle; "efficacy; control, mastery, lordship, dominion; legal power or authority; authorization; military force, an army," from Anglo-French pouair, Old French povoir, noun use of the infinitive, "to be able," earlier podir (9c.), from Vulgar Latin *potere, from Latin potis "powerful" (see potent).

Whatever some hypocritical ministers of government may say about it, power is the greatest of all pleasures. It seems to me that only love can beat it, and love is a happy illness that can't be picked up as easily as a Ministry. [Stendhal "de l'Amour," 1822]

Meaning "one who has power" is late 14c. Meaning "specific ability or capacity" is from early 15c. Meaning "a state or nation with regard to international authority or influence" [OED] is from 1726. Used for "a large number of" from 1660s. Meaning "energy available for work is from 1727. Sense of "electrical supply" is from 1896.

Gravity:

c.1500, "weight, dignity, seriousness," from Middle French gravité "seriousness, thoughtfulness," and directly from Latin gravitatem (nominative gravitas) "weight, heaviness, pressure," from gravis "heavy" (see grave (adj.)). The scientific sense of "force that gives weight to objects" first recorded 1640s.

Those established terms were adopted by natural philosophers (they weren't yet scientists -- 1834, from "science" + "artist") as they found a need for language to describe the new concepts they were positing. More recently it's been quarks, charm, and spin.

In my own explorations of economics and the many, many, many flaws in existing orthodox theory, one of the pretty evident historical accidents is that economics modeled itself after classical Newtonian statics, dating to the late 1600s, just as the concepts of energy and thermodynamics were being established. Smith wrote in 1776, while the first scientific use of "energy" is dated to 1807, and Lord Kelvin's formal expression of thermodynamics didn't occur until 1854.

#science #economics #physicsenvy #etymology #power #energy #gravity #scientist #artist #thermodynamics

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