What’s a prime mover, and how do we improve the ultimate prime mover?

I’ve been reading “Energy: A Beginner’s Guide” by Vaclav Smil.¹ It’s a really fascinating book, fact-dense, and pleasingly completist in scope, starting from definitions & measurements of energy², through physical and chemical processes, into biochemistry, and eventually into fuel density and modern energy systems, especially electricity and its generation, transmission, and use. For a small book it covers a huge amount of ground.³

The main insight I’ve taken from the book is that “progress”⁴ in society has come about through improvements in “prime movers”, i.e. things that let us harness energy. We’ve moved from our own bodies, to the wheel, to pack animals, to the steam engine, to modern steam turbines. These improvements have allowed us to harness more and more energy, and therefore get more and more work done. More work done means we can be physically safer, more comfortable, and even prosperous. Improvements in prime movers have enabled modern society.⁵

But how did we improve the prime movers? It must be through analysis, experimentation, and verification.

So, I reckon Science™ is the prime mover behind it all. Prime mover Prime.

So the question on my mind is — if science is the ultimate prime mover, how do we improve the engine?⁶

I know I’m absolutely not the first to think it, but it’s the first time I’ve realised it might be the question that most improves the odds of all the other questions getting answered, and I’m chewing on it at the moment.

1. Smil has been growing in nerd influence ever since Bill Gates recommended one of his books with a glowing review on his blog in 2017: “I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next Star Wars movie.”. Gates seems to be a true fan, and has been recommending Smil’s books on his blog since 2010. ↩

2. I knew I liked this book as soon as I read the quote about nobody actually really being able to explain what energy quite is, which was a topic I was briefly obsessed with when I was around 11, when I realised all my kids science books kept talking about this “Energy” thing without really quite defining it. My parents and teachers were no help, and I kind of counted it as a strike against “science” for quite a while, until I took the lesson that maybe “true” science isn’t as precise and incisive as it pretends to be - all the fun stuff happens when all the world experts go “I have NO idea about that, but I guess we could try X to find out!”. I wish science was more obviously about that. Either way, this greatly gratified my 11-year-old self - not quite getting what energy like, really is, man wasn’t just me being dumb. ↩

3. A lesser-pulled Bill Gates quote about Smil is “I’ll admit that Energy and Civilization is not easy reading. In fact, when I read my first Smil books years ago, I felt a little beat up and asked myself, “Am I ever going to be able to understand all of this?””, which makes me feel a little better, if Bill Gates also found it hard going. Honestly it’s taken me months to read, because I feel I need to be at full cognitive capacity to tackle it, and the slim gap between “had my morning coffee” and “gotta get on with things” is only wide enough for a few pages per week. ↩

4. Progress in scare quotes for a reason. More on “progress” later. First question: progress towards what? ↩

5. I know it sounds trite, but it’s extremely humbling to remember (realise?) that simply carting water (let alone crafting the vessel in which to cart it) or harvesting and cooking food (let alone making the implements used to harvest, store, and cook it) require substantial energy. Trust me, by the time Smil gets to electricity and the microwave oven, you want to drop to your knees and worship every power outlet you see. Another input that’s stimulated this pathway is, don’t laugh, the Primitive Technology YouTube channel. John Plant goes into the FNQ bush and sees what things he can make starting with nothing besides his bare hands. Watching this has hit me just in the right spot and really made me appreciate how much energy expenditure is abstracted away in our society. Recently whenever I look at basically any object, I think about the huge numbers of calories expended to manufacture it, ship it, support the people’s lives who designed it… it’s mind-boggling. ↩

6. Also interesting: where is 21st century science along that spectrum, and where is it compared to 17th century science? ↩