2 The Assumption of “Energy”

Energy is treated in physics as a conserved substance, flowing through systems, transferred, stored, and transformed. It carries authority: what has energy can act, and conservation is a law that underpins all interactions. Energy seems tangible, even almost material, a cornerstone of reality itself.

Yet energy is not observed in isolation. It is a relational accounting device, a measure of how states of a system can change relative to one another. Kinetic, potential, thermal, or even quantum energies are not objects or forces in their own right; they are abstractions we use to organise and predict relational patterns. Energy is a symbolic handle on possibility, not a substance that exists independently of the frame we impose.

By reifying energy as a thing, physics again projects modulation onto modal relations. Conservation laws appear as imperatives, as though the universe is compelled to preserve a quantity. In reality, these laws codify patterns in relational potential, stabilised by measurement, model, and perspective. What we call energy is not decreed by nature; it is the regularity we construe in the interplay of system states.

Recognising energy as relational rather than absolute does not weaken physics; it sharpens it. It reminds us that the “flow” of energy is not a literal current but a symbolic reflection of potentiality made intelligible through human construal. Energy becomes a guide for understanding patterns, not a metaphysical agent acting behind the scenes.