Section 25

Concepts

The final section of the Foundations theme is the subject area Concepts. It is in effect the foundation of the foundations, in that it presents important terms and ideas that have historically formed the basis for energy studies.

The concept of energy itself is thought to have first been described by Aristotle in ancient Greece the 300s B.C. However, it was not until the early 1800s that the term was first used in English in the modern scientific sense, in a series of lectures on natural philosophy by the English scientist Thomas Young. Ancient Greek thinkers also described the nature of matter and the concept of the atom.

Among the earliest concepts to be identified were in ecology. Chinese proverbs described the idea of ...

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