Ikeda Kikunae and Reactions to Energetics in Japan

Abstract

This article analyzes the reception of energetics advocated by German physical chemist, Friedrich Wilhelm Ostwald (1853‒1932), in Japan, focusing on the role of his Japanese student, Ikeda Kikunae (1864‒1936) as its proselytizer. More specifically, it examines the reaction of Japanese philosophers, psychologists and pedagogues to Ostwald and Ikeda in the 1900s and the early 1910s. In doing so, I clarify the importance of a subtle but crucial difference between their positions on the applicability of energetics to science in general for the reception of energetics in Japan. This difference is epitomized by the different ways in which Ostwald and Ikeda visualized the ordering relations between scholarly disciplines, i.e., pyramidal versus cyclic, and discuss possible cultural origins of these differences. Also, I would argue that a rival atomistic theory was also introduced to Japanese philosophers and psychologists by Japanese physicist Nagaoka Hantarō (1865‒1950), internationally known for his Saturnian model of the atom, at exactly the same time. Nagaoka's exposition of atomistics affected the reception of Ikeda's and Ostwald's energetics in Japan.