Physics defines energy as the capacity to do work. At root, it is a relational measure: a way of describing transformations, constraints, and exchanges within a system. Yet in practice, physics often treats energy as though it were a substance: something that can be stored, transferred, or conserved like a physical fluid.
This is the distortion: a relational descriptor reified into an ontological entity.
The Physics Move
Conservation laws are framed as if they describe the persistence of a “thing” called energy.
Explanations of processes (from nuclear reactions to black hole thermodynamics) frequently invoke “flows” and “contents” of energy, as if energy itself were what moves, rather than the relational transformations it encodes.
Even modern field theory often suggests energy as the “stuff” fields carry, reinforcing the picture of energy as a substance.
Why This Distorts Ontology
Energy is not a “thing.” It is a constraint on relational transformation: a perspectival quantification of how possibility can be actualised. Treating it as a substance obscures this, collapsing a higher-order relational description into an object.
The distortion lies in misplacing ontology: mistaking a bookkeeping device for an ontological primitive.
The Relational Reframing
From a relational standpoint:
Energy is nothing over and above relation. It measures the coherence of constraints across transformations.
Conservation is not the persistence of a thing, but the structural consistency of relational dynamics.
What “flows” is not energy, but the shifting alignments through which systems actualise possibility.
Thus, energy is intelligible — but only as relation, not as substance.
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