This blog was originally posted in October 2014.
This Circular Argument has run for 174 years; Is It Perpetual Motion?
I wrote a poem out of frustration that such an idiotic argument could ever have been taken seriously, don’t worry, I won’t reproduce it here! Hermann von Helmholtz (August 31, 1821 – September 8, 1894) was a brilliant German physician and physicist but as so often happens, he was credited with discoveries outside of his area of expertise, hence the acceptance of a conjecture so easily disposed of, that the mere fact that it is relied upon to dismiss such theories as I have researched over many years, defies logic.
With acknowledgement and grateful thanks to Scott Ellis of Besslerwheel forum:-
"In 1847, a 26-year-old German medical doctor, Hermann Helmholtz, gave a presentation to the Physical Society of Berlin that would change the course of history. He presented the original formulation of what is now known as the First Law of Thermodynamics, beginning with the axiomatic statement that a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible.
Axiom - A statement or proposition that is accepted as true without proof.
No one had ever succeeded, he wrote, in building a Perpetual Motion Machine that worked. Therefore, such machines must be impossible. If they are impossible it must be because of some natural law preventing their construction. This law, he said, could only be the Conservation of Energy.
But a profound reversal of reasoning has occurred in the last century. Helmholtz originally said "Because a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible, therefore the First Law of Thermodynamics must apply;" while in any physics text book today one will find the statement that "Because of the First Law of Thermodynamics, a Perpetual Motion Machine is impossible."
Skeptics are quick to cite the Laws of Thermodynamics to disprove Bessler's claims. In fact, the argument is circular.
The Laws of Thermodynamics do not prove that Bessler's machine is impossible. On the contrary, they are deduced from the "leap of faith" of first presuming it is impossible."
It is often found that people who are recognised for their expertise in one field often comment on areas outside their experience and because of their celebrity their ideas are accepted.
Of course in this case the expert was a 26 year old medical student. Others such as Lord Kelvin in 1895 stated that “heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible” .
Lord Kelvin could not know what would happen in the future, and apparently, Hermann von Helmholtz didn’t even know what had happened in the past, over one hundred years before.
JC
