His confidence stemmed in part from his upbringing and beliefs. Politically conservative and a devout Christian, Joule saw his scientific endeavors as “essentially a holy undertaking,” convinced as he was that a divine being had endowed the universe with a fixed amount of an immaterial substance that enabled change and movement. Electricity, work, and heat were simply different facets of this. They might be converted from one to the other, but the total amount was invariable.
