are we, nearly 50 years after CP Snow complained about the Two Cultures, happy at the idea that an educated person would not have heard of the scientists, like Kelvin, Newton, Volta and Ampere, whose names are used for SI units?

Happy? No.  Surprised? Somewhat, because it’s Oeco, from whom we have come to expect a high level of erudition.  But even he can forget words he once learned. In general, I would not be surprised that someone working outside the areas of science and technology did not know “joule” as a unit of energy.  As a practical matter, it’s not used much in everyday life.  Yes, it relates directly to the familiar watt (one watt being one joule per second) but in practice we tend to use kilowatt-hours and the like as units of energy instead of joules or megajoules (1 kW-hr = 3.6 MJ). IIRC, nutrition labels in some countries give food energy in kilojoules rather than Calories, but certainly not in the US.  So, at best, the joule unit is something the average educated American might learn about as a student and but never encounter again after leaving school.  And even a lot of science classes are woefully deficient in teaching the history of science.

In my freshman classes, I take a 1 kg mass (that’s 2.2 pounds for the non-metric), hold it about 10 cm (4 inches) above the lecture table, and let it fall.  It makes enough of a thump to wake the ones drowsing in the back row.  “That’s a joule,” I tell them.

Yes, I’ve rarely encountered it since college and probably couldn’t have defined it for you.  And I got A’s in physics.

languagehat - 26 March 2008 10:22 AM

Yes, I’ve rarely encountered it since college and probably couldn’t have defined it for you.  And I got A’s in physics.

Oh, bless you dear lh.  I was beginning to feel like such a dolt.  Thanks for all the back-handed compliments friends.

On the divisions between the “two cultures” I wonder whether it is not about two fundamentally different epistemologies at work.  Two ways of knowing, making it difficult, though not impossible, for one culture to understand or correspond with another’s.  I note that even E.P. Snow approaches the problem from a mainly scientific point of view.  So, he wonders whether his otherwise well educated colleagues are able to explain the second law of thermodynamics (I certainly can’t and I didn’t follow the wiki link so that I would remain pure of heart).  And I immediately thought, well, how many science guys can explain or engage in serious conversation about Kant’s second categorical imperative?  I can do so for hours (to the profound boredom of my closest and most reliable family and friends).

E.P. Snow

That’s C. P., you dolt. ;) ;) ;)

I’ve run across Kant’s 2nd categorical imperative before, but I couldn’t remember it without looking it up. The question is, is that really comparable?  Snow himself put knowing the 2nd law of thermodynamics on a par with having read a play by Shakespeare.

In Aust, packaged food is labelled with kJ, diet books and programs use kJ etc, but in regular speech people still speak of “calorie counting” etc.

"By “knowledge” you mean “assumption.” It seems to me the “common knowledge” here is of the same order as an urban myth, where the same thing gets repeated until everyone is sure it must be true.  If the OED says “it is almost certain that J. P. Joule (and some at least of his relatives) used (dʒuːl),” that carries far more weight with me than “common knowledge” or the word of biographers who are not equipped to decide such things.”

So you agree with my previous statement, then, that the fact that it is common knowledge is no guarantee of truth.

Dr. Techie - 26 March 2008 05:54 PM

That’s C. P., you dolt. ;) ;) ;)

I’ve run across Kant’s 2nd categorical imperative before, but I couldn’t remember it without looking it up. The question is, is that really comparable?  Snow himself put knowing the 2nd law of thermodynamics on a par with having read a play by Shakespeare.

Thanks for the good humor, good friend.

I think that Kant’s categorical is a watershed in modern (mid-18th century forward) ethics and philosophy that is on a par with anything by Shakespeare, PBUH, though in an entirely different field of thought. (ooooh, I had a long and erased discursive discussion about why, but the voices of my good friends and family were in my head and suggested that brevity is the better part of valor)

I’m not sure that the Joul unit however it is pronounced is more important than this divide, but maybe. John Rawls would certainly agree with me, but my guess is that he would know who Joul was and he would know all about his unit.

Dr. Techie - 25 March 2008 07:54 PM

but the man himself pronounced his name as “jowl”.

I’m wondering how you (and Faldage) know this. 

I quotated correct to indicate that it was to be taken with a grain of salt.  Until now I have never heard anyone defend the jool pronunciation; most, if not all, use it but none defend it.  Jowl I have heard from people trying to “correct” those who say jool.  I never met the guy, so I couldn’t say how he pronounced it.

The evidence mentioned by the OED, above, is a series of letters published in Nature regarding the pronunciation of Joule’s name.  Through one of my academic connections I have been able to access these.  They are in the form of image-only PDF files (scans) but with relatively little effort I can OCR them and put them into a form that I could post here. My question is, is there enough interest to warrant doing this?  It’s not very little effort, just relatively little.

Nah*.  We trust you.  Mostly.

*(UK for “nope")

I trust you too, but for my own education I would be interested in reading them, please.

For the princely sum of the equivalent of ten greenbacks, I obtained fleeting access to a letter that appeared in Science (Vol. 77, No. 1986), January 20, 1933, pp 88-89.:

----------------
How did Joule pronounce his name?

In the summer of 1897, while being conducted through the physics laboratory of the University of Edinburgh by Professor P. G. Tait, I chanced to tell him that at the University of Strassburg Professor Wilhelm Hallwachs, in speaking of Joule, had given the ou the sound of ou in you, and that after the lecture an English student had told him that the ou should have the sound of ou in out. And I asked Professor Tait whether he could tell me how the name should be pronounced. He smiled and said, “Well, I used to work with him and I can only say that he always called himself Joule,” sounding the ou as in you.
The 1895 edition of the Standard Dictionary states that the ou is pronouned like u in rule, agreeing with Joule’s own pronunciation, but the latest edition gives the ou the sound of out in out. When I upbraided Mr A. G. Baker, publisher of Webster’s New International, for the way his dictionary pronounced Joule, he defended himself by saying he had writtern to one of our leading American physicists, a man whom I deeply respect, and had been assured that the English physicists generally pronounced the name as though it were spelled Jowl. They doubtless do, they also says “figgers”. But is not Joule himself the supreme authority as to the pronunciation of his own name?

Joseph O. Thomspon
Amherst College
----------------

But honestly, are we going to believe a man who says “they also says”?

are we going to believe a man who says “they also says”?

Be charitable, OP Tipping! “Science” in 1933 may simply have had a cross-eyed proofreader. Note that the signatory’s name is spelled “Thomspon”. This, of course, might not be an error, but the odds are against it*. Congratulations to you and to Dr. Techie on your dedication to the search for first-hand evidence. From here on I intend to introduce J.P.Joule into every possible conversation, and to rhyme him unflinchingly with “cool”, against all comers.

* From OneLook:

Thompson: a surname. Popularity rank in the US: #17
Thomspon: a surname. Popularity rank in the US: #67167

A very old person named Joule
Showed signs of beginning to drool.
When asked to desist,
He irascibly hissed
“It’s that stuff that they put in my grool!”

(sigh, embarrassed)

The Thomspon was my mistake. I typed it out from the article which I could not copy by any means. The man is called Thompson.

In any case, it seems pretty clear I was wrong.