Hermann von Helmholtz - On the Conservation of Force

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The last decades of scientific development have led us to the recognition of a new universal law of all natural phenomena, which, from its extraordinarily extended range, and from the connection which it constitutes between natural phenomena of all kinds, even of the remotest times and the most distant places, is especially fitted to give us an idea of what I have described as the character of the natural sciences, which I have chosen as the subject of this lecture.

Hermann von Helmholtz
In speaking of the work of machines and of natural forces we must, of course, in this comparison eliminate anything in which activity of intelligence comes into play. The latter is also capable of the hard and intense work of thinking, which tries a man just as muscular exertion does.

Hermann von Helmholtz
There is a kind, I might almost say, of artistic satisfaction, when we are able to survey the enormous wealth of Nature as a regularly ordered whole — a kosmos, an image of the logical thought of our own mind.

Hermann von Helmholtz
The quantity of force which can be brought into action in the whole of Nature is unchangeable, and can neither be increased nor diminished.

Hermann von Helmholtz
Accurate experiments have shown that the quantity of heat which is developed by a chemical process - for instance, in burning a pound of pure carbon into carbonic acid - is perfectly constant, whether the combustion is slow or rapid, whether it takes place all at once or by intermediate stages.

Hermann von Helmholtz
Every educated man who tries to understand the forces at work in the world in which he is living... must have some interest in that peculiar kind of mental labour, which works and acts in the sciences in question.

Hermann von Helmholtz