Actual and Virtual Energy: From Aristotle to Rankine and Back Again

Paris, France - June 14 2021: Foucault pendulum moving in the Pantheon de Paris. It was conceived by Leon Foucault in 1851 as an experiment to demonstrate the Earth's rotation.

When energy is ‘potential’ where or when is it? If potential energy is not also already in some sense ‘actual,’ existing in the world somewhere as energy, for example, as a lump of coal that might be burnt, then does it only come into existence when it becomes actualized, as Aristotle might write? A quick […]