Abstract

William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, played a major role in the nineteenth century in changing scientific theory from the statical view, associated with imponderables, to the dynamical view which conceived of energy as a separate and convertible entity. Thomson's conversion from the statical to the dynamical view of nature was due to the influence of experimentalists, Michael Faraday and James Prescott Joule. It was Thomson's use of mathematical metaphor that enabled him to interpret on a theoretical level the physical explanation given by Faraday and Joule