Research Prompt: Thermodynamics in Language

Core Hypothesis

Thermodynamic concepts (potential, flow, gradient, entropy, energy, pressure) appear in everyday language long before formal scientific definition. This suggests humans recognized these patterns experientially and encoded them in language before we had mathematical frameworks.

Research Questions

1. Historical Etymology of Thermodynamic Terms in Common Usage

"Potential" (as in "that child has potential")

• When did "potential" enter common usage meaning "unrealized capacity"?
• Was it used this way before or after physics formalized potential energy (1850s)?
• Cross-linguistic equivalents: Do other languages have similar terms?
• Related phrases: "squandered potential," "untapped potential," "reaching one's potential"

"Energy" (as in "I have no energy today")

• Usage of "energy" for human vitality/capacity before thermodynamics
• Etymology: Greek "energeia" (activity, operation) - Aristotle used it
• When did it shift from philosophical concept to physical quantity to everyday usage?
• Related: "energetic," "drain someone's energy," "give me energy"

"Pressure" (as in "under pressure," "feel the pressure")

• When did pressure move from physical (force per unit area) to psychological?
• Did the psychological meaning exist before formal physics definition?
• Cross-cultural: Do languages without steam engine history use similar metaphors?

"Flow" and "Flow State"

• "Go with the flow," "in the flow," "flow state" (Csikszentmihalyi)
• Water/river metaphors for experience, time, consciousness
• Ancient usage: Heraclitus's river, Tao as "the way/flow"
• When did "flow" become a psychological/experiential term?

"Burnout" and Heat Metaphors

• "Burnt out," "fired up," "spark," "ignite," "extinguish"
• Usage timeline: Industrial Revolution terminology applied to humans?
• Or did humans always use fire/heat metaphors for vitality?

"Momentum"

• "Building momentum," "losing momentum," "the momentum shifted"
• Physics definition (mass × velocity) vs. experiential meaning
• Did usage precede formal definition?

"Inertia"

• "Organizational inertia," "social inertia," "stuck in my ways"
• Newton's first law (1687) vs. common usage
• Did the concept exist pre-Newton in different words?

2. Pre-Scientific Thermodynamic Thinking

Ancient and Medieval Usage:

• Aristotle's energeia and dynamis (actuality and potentiality)
• Stoic pneuma (breath/spirit) as flow/energy
• Chinese qi (氣) - flow, energy, breath, vitality
• Indian prana - breath, life force, energy
• Medieval humoral theory - balance, flow, blockage, excess

Do these frameworks show thermodynamic thinking before thermodynamics?

• Balance and imbalance (equilibrium)
• Flow and blockage (gradient)
• Hot and cold, wet and dry (temperature, phase)
• Excess and deficiency (potential)

3. Language as Evidence of Pattern Recognition

Hypothesis: If thermodynamic vocabulary appears cross-culturally in pre-scientific contexts, it suggests humans recognized these patterns through lived experience.

Cross-Linguistic Survey:

• Do non-Indo-European languages use similar metaphors?
• Japanese, Arabic, Swahili, Indigenous languages
• Are energy/flow/potential metaphors universal or culturally specific?
• What alternative metaphors exist for the same phenomena?

Cognitive Linguistics:

• George Lakoff's work on conceptual metaphors
• LIFE IS A JOURNEY, TIME IS A RIVER, IDEAS ARE FOOD
• Are thermodynamic metaphors similarly fundamental?
• Are they based on bodily experience (embodied cognition)?

4. Timeline: Folk Concepts → Formal Science → Scientific Terminology

Three possible patterns:

Pattern A: Science Names What We Already Knew

• Folk concept exists in language → Science formalizes it → Scientific term reinforces folk usage
• Example: "hot" (experience) → temperature (formalization) → "hot topic" (metaphoric extension)

Pattern B: Science Creates New Concepts

• No prior folk concept → Science discovers principle → Term enters common usage
• Example: "relativity" (didn't exist pre-Einstein)

Pattern C: Convergent Recognition

• Folk concept exists vaguely → Science formalizes precisely → Folk usage becomes more precise
• Example: "momentum" (vague sense of forward motion) → Newton's laws → "building momentum" with implied mass and velocity

Which pattern applies to thermodynamic concepts?

5. Specific Research Targets

Before Carnot (1824):

• Were people using "potential," "energy," "flow" metaphorically?
• Look at literature: Shakespeare, Milton, early novels
• Religious texts: King James Bible (1611), earlier translations
• What vocabulary did they use for vitality, capacity, drive?

Industrial Revolution (1760-1840):

• Did steam engine terminology influence language immediately?
• "Letting off steam," "building up pressure," "running out of steam"
• Timeline: When do these phrases appear in literature?

Post-Thermodynamics (1850-1900):

• How quickly did formal terms enter common usage?
• Did "entropy" ever become a common metaphor? (It tried in 1960s-70s)
• What about "enthalpy," "free energy," "exergy"? (They didn't)

Why do some terms generalize and others don't?

6. Linguistic Fossils of Thermodynamic Thinking

Phrases that encode thermodynamic principles:

"What goes up must come down" - gravity, potential energy "You can't get something for nothing" - conservation of energy "Everything runs down eventually" - Second Law "Strike while the iron is hot" - temperature-dependent properties "A watched pot never boils" - perception of time during phase transition "Don't burn bridges" - irreversibility "Spread yourself too thin" - conservation with area increase

Are these post-hoc scientific interpretations or did speakers intuit the principles?

7. Parallel Evolution: Science and Language

Hypothesis: Both formal thermodynamics and everyday thermodynamic language are observations of the same underlying reality.

Scientists formalized it mathematically. Folk wisdom encoded it metaphorically.

Both are correct.

Evidence to look for:

• Accuracy of folk thermodynamic predictions
• Do cultures with "flow" metaphors behave differently than those without?
• Can you reverse-engineer thermodynamic principles from linguistic analysis?

8. The "Universe in Your Pocket" Angle

Modern Context: We have computational tools to explore these patterns.

Research question: Now that we can computationally model thermodynamics, energy flow, gradient dynamics—can we use natural language processing to:

• Extract thermodynamic metaphors from historical texts?
• Map their evolution over time?
• Show convergence between folk wisdom and scientific principle?
• Prove humans have always known, just lacked formal framework?

Potential methods:

• NLP analysis of historical corpora
• Semantic network mapping of energy/flow/potential terms
• Cross-linguistic computational analysis
• Timeline visualization of term usage

Questions for Perplexity

• When did thermodynamic terms like "potential," "energy," "pressure," and "flow" enter common English usage, and was this before or after their formal scientific definitions?
• What evidence exists that ancient cultures (Greek, Chinese, Indian, etc.) had thermodynamic-like concepts in their philosophical or medical systems before Western science formalized thermodynamics?
• Are there linguistic studies examining how metaphors of energy, flow, and potential appear across unrelated language families?
• What research has been done on the relationship between folk concepts of vitality/capacity/force and the formal scientific concepts of thermodynamics?
• How did Industrial Revolution technology (steam engines, etc.) influence everyday language, and what metaphors entered common usage during this period?
• Has anyone used computational linguistics or NLP to track the evolution of thermodynamic metaphors in historical texts?
• What does George Lakoff's work on conceptual metaphor theory say about energy/flow/force metaphors as fundamental to human cognition?
• Are there examples of pre-scientific cultures making accurate predictions about energy, flow, or potential based on their metaphorical frameworks?
• What's the academic literature on "folk physics" or intuitive thermodynamics - do humans have built-in models of energy and flow?
• Has anyone argued that thermodynamics didn't just formalize physics but formalized patterns humans already recognized through lived experience?

Expected Findings

If the hypothesis is correct:

• Thermodynamic metaphors should appear in pre-scientific texts
• Cross-cultural convergence on similar concepts (energy, flow, potential)
• Folk wisdom should contain thermodynamically sound principles
• Language should stabilize around metaphors that match reality

If the hypothesis is wrong:

• Thermodynamic metaphors only appear post-formalization
• They're arbitrary cultural impositions
• Different cultures have wildly different incompatible metaphors
• Folk wisdom contradicts thermodynamic principles

Why This Matters for the Book

Chapter 7+ Thesis: We've always known. We just approximated through available vocabulary.

Evidence needed: Show that the language already had it. Before Carnot formalized the Second Law, people were saying "burnt out" and "squandered potential" and "running out of steam."

The claim: This isn't science teaching us new concepts. This is science formalizing what humans already recognized through lived experience as embedded, finite observers subject to the same constraints.

The payoff: When you realize thermodynamics isn't "just physics" but the structure of how embedded observers work, you see it everywhere. Language is the evidence we've always seen it. We just didn't have the mathematical notation.

Related Research Directions

• Embodied cognition and thermodynamic metaphors
• Folk biology and folk physics as pre-scientific frameworks
• How craftspeople recognized physical principles before formalization
• Indigenous knowledge systems that encode thermodynamic principles
• Children's intuitive understanding of energy and force

Output Format

Ideally, the research produces:

• Timeline: When terms entered usage vs. when science formalized them
• Cross-cultural mapping: How different languages encode energy/flow/potential
• Linguistic evidence: Quotes from pre-scientific texts using thermodynamic metaphors
• Convergence proof: Show that folk wisdom and formal science arrived at the same structure independently

Provenance

Document

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Changelog

• 2026-01-23 19:09: Node created by mcp - Research prompt for exploring thermodynamic concepts in language as evidence that humans recognized patterns before formal science

North

slots:
- slug: tools-as-universe-models
  context:
  - Research thread to prove the language already had thermodynamics before science
    formalized it

West

slots:
- slug: aasb-ch07-poetry
  context:
  - Research supporting Ch7 claim that we've always known - language is the evidence