n.sp.), Bull. soc. micr. belge, 24, p. 116, 1898; (39) T. Smith, “The
production of sarcosporidiosis in the mouse,” &c., J. Exp. Med. 6,
p. 1, 4 pls., 1901; (40) W. Stempell, “Über Thelohania mülleri,”
Zool. Jahr. Anat. 16, p. 235, pl. 25, 1902; (41) ib. “Über Polycaryum
branchiopodianum” (n.g., n.sp.), Zool. Jahrb. Syst. 15, p. 591, pl. 31,
1902; (42) ib. “Über Nosema anomalum,” Arch. Protistenk, 4, p. 1,
pls. 1-3, 1904; (43) P. Thélohan, “Recherches sur les Myxosporidies,”
Bull. sci. France belg. 26, p. 100, 3 pls., 1895; (44) P. Vuillemin,
“Le Sarcocystis tenella, parasite de l’homme,” C. R. ac. sci. 134,
p. 1152, 1902; (45) H. M. Woodcock, “On Myxosporidia in flat
fish,” Proc. Liverp. Biol. Soc. 18, p. 126, pl. 2, 1904; (46) ib.
“On a remarkable parasite” (Lymphocystis), op. cit. p. 143, pl. 3,
1904.
(H. M. Wo.)
ENDYMION, in Greek mythology, son of Aëthlius and king of
Elis. He was loved by Selene, goddess of the moon, by whom he
had fifty daughters, supposed to represent the fifty moons of the
Olympian festal cycle. In other versions, Endymion was a
beautiful youth, a shepherd or hunter whom Selene visited every
night while he lay asleep in a cave on Mount Latmus in Caria
(Pausanias v. 1; Ovid, Ars am. iii. 83). Zeus left him free to
choose anything he might desire, and he chose an everlasting
sleep, in which he might remain youthful for ever (Apollodorus
i. 7). According to others, Endymion’s eternal sleep was a
punishment inflicted by Zeus upon him because he ventured to
fall in love with Hera, when he was admitted to the society of the
Olympian gods (Schol. Theocritus iii. 49). The usual form of the
legend, however, represents Endymion as having been put to
sleep by Selene herself in order that she might enjoy his society
undisturbed (Cicero, Tusc. disp. i. 38). Some see in Endymion
the sun, setting opposite to the rising moon, the Latmian cave
being the cave of forgetfulness, into which the sun plunges
beneath the sea; others regard him as the personification of
sleep or death (see Mayor on Juvenal x. 318).
ENERGETICS. The most fundamental result attained by the
progress of physical science in the 19th century was the definite
enunciation and development of the doctrine of energy, which is
now paramount both in mechanics and in thermodynamics.
For a discussion of the elementary ideas underlying this conception
see the separate heading Energy.
Ever since physical speculation began in the atomic theories of the Greeks, its main problem has been that of unravelling the nature of the underlying correlation which binds together the various natural agencies. But it is only in recent times that scientific investigation has definitely established that there is a quantitative relation of simple equivalence between them, whereby each is expressible in terms of heat or mechanical power; that there is a certain measurable quantity associated with each type of physical activity which is always numerically identical with a corresponding quantity belonging to the new type into which it is transformed, so that the energy, as it is called, is conserved in unaltered amount. The main obstacle in the way of an earlier recognition and development of this principle had been the doctrine of caloric, which was suggested by the principles and practice of calorimetry, and taught that heat is a substance that can be transferred from one body to another, but cannot be created or destroyed, though it may become latent. So long as this idea maintained itself, there was no possible compensation for the destruction of mechanical power by friction; it appeared that mechanical effect had there definitely been lost. The idea that heat is itself convertible into power, and is in fact energy of motion of the minute invisible parts of bodies, had been held by Newton and in a vaguer sense by Bacon, and indeed long before their time; but it dropped out of the ordinary creed of science in the following century. It held a place, like many other anticipations of subsequent discovery, in the system of Natural Philosophy of Thomas Young (1804); and the discrepancies attending current explanations on the caloric theory were insisted on, about the same time, by Count Rumford and Sir H. Davy. But it was not till the actual experiments of Joule verified the same exact equivalence between heat produced and mechanical energy destroyed, by whatever process that was accomplished, that the idea of caloric had to be definitely abandoned. Some time previously R. Mayer, physician, of Heilbronn, had founded a weighty theoretical argument on the production of mechanical power in the animal system from the food consumed; he had, moreover, even calculated the value of a unit of heat, in terms of its equivalent in power, from the data afforded by Regnault’s determinations of the specific heats of air at constant pressure and at constant volume, the former being the greater on Mayer’s hypothesis (of which his calculation in fact constituted the verification) solely on account of the power required for the work of expansion of the gas against the surrounding constant pressure. About the same time Helmholtz, in his early memoir on the Conservation of Energy, constructed a cumulative argument by tracing the ramifications of the principle of conservation of energy throughout the whole range of physical science.
Mechanical and Thermal Energy.—The amount of energy, defined in this sense by convertibility with mechanical work, which is contained in a material system, must be a function of its physical state and chemical constitution and of its temperature. The change in this amount, arising from a given transformation in the system, is usually measured by degrading the energy that leaves the system into heat; for it is always possible to do this, while the conversion of heat back again into other forms of energy is impossible without assistance, taking the form of compensating degradation elsewhere. We may adopt the provisional view which is the basis of abstract physics, that all these other forms of energy are in their essence mechanical, that is, arise from the motion or strain of material or ethereal media; then their distinction from heat will lie in the fact that these motions or strains are simply co-ordinated, so that they can be traced and controlled or manipulated in detail, while the thermal energy subsists in irregular motions of the molecules or smallest portions of matter, which we cannot trace on account of the bluntness of our sensual perceptions, but can only measure as regards total amount.
Historical: Abstract Dynamics.—Even in the case of a purely mechanical system, capable only of a finite number of definite types of disturbance, the principle of the conservation of energy is very far from giving a complete account of its motions; it forms only one among the equations that are required to determine their course. In its application to the kinetics of invariable systems, after the time of Newton, the principle was emphasized as fundamental by Leibnitz, was then improved and generalized by the Bernoullis and by Euler, and was ultimately expressed in its widest form by Lagrange. It is recorded by Helmholtz that it was largely his acquaintance in early years with the works of those mathematical physicists of the previous century, who had formulated and generalized the principle as a help towards the theoretical dynamics of complex systems of masses, that started him on the track of extending the principle throughout the whole range of natural phenomena. On the other hand, the ascertained validity of this extension to new types of phenomena, such as those of electrodynamics, now forms a main foundation of our belief in a mechanical basis for these sciences.
In the hands of Lagrange the mathematical expression for the manner in which the energy is connected with the geometrical constitution of the material system became a sufficient basis for a complete knowledge of its dynamical phenomena. So far as statics was concerned, this doctrine took its rise as far back as Galileo, who recognized in the simpler cases that the work expended in the steady driving of a frictionless mechanical system is equal to its output. The expression of this fact was generalized in a brief statement by Newton in the Principia, and more in detail by the Bernoullis, until, in the analytical guise of the so-called principle of “virtual velocities” or virtual work, it finally became the basis of Lagrange’s general formulation of dynamics. In its application to kinetics a purely physical principle, also indicated by Newton, but developed long after with masterly applications by d’Alembert, that the reactions of the infinitesimal parts of the system against the accelerations of their motions statically equilibrate the forces applied to the system as a whole, was required in order to form a sufficient basis, and one which Lagrange soon afterwards condensed into the single relation of Least Action. As a matter of history, however, the complete formulation of the subject of abstract dynamics actually
