Yet for all its centrality, energy has no direct physical manifestation. We never see “energy”; we infer it from the behaviour of systems. And we interpret it through inherited metaphors: energy as a kind of stuff that flows, accumulates, converts. These metaphors, however, rely on a substance ontology — a worldview of things with properties moving through space.
A relational ontology reframes the picture. Instead of energy as a quantity possessed by objects, we understand energy as an index of systemic potential — a measure of the field’s readiness for transformation under given constraints.
1. No Carriage, No Transfer
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In classical thinking, energy is “carried” by particles and “transferred” through interactions,
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But if there are no independent entities, no fixed trajectories, and no background space, then there is nothing to carry energy in the first place,
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From a relational view, energy is not something moved — it is something measured: the differential potential for transformation across a relational structure.
2. Potential and Kinetic Energy Reframed
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Potential energy is typically imagined as stored — e.g., a ball at the top of a hill — and kinetic energy as released motion,
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In relational terms, these are not two types of substance but two modes of constraint:
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“Potential” energy reflects tension within a constrained configuration — an unactualised path of transformation,
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“Kinetic” energy reflects the actualisation of that transformation, the system moving through a path of least resistance.
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3. Energy as Readiness-to-Resolve
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Energy does not reside in things; it expresses how a system is poised to change,
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High energy means high relational instability: many paths of possible reconfiguration, strongly weighted,
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Low energy means relative coherence — the system is already close to a stable configuration under its current constraints.
4. Conservation as Coherence
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The conservation of energy is not the preservation of a thing,
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It is the preservation of constraint compatibility — the system reorganises without losing its structural integrity,
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From this angle, conservation is a statement about the coherence of the transformation, not about the movement of a conserved quantity.
5. Quantum Energy as Discrete Constraint Transitions
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In quantum theory, energy appears in quantised packets: photons, vibrational modes, energy levels,
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These “quanta” are not pieces of substance but discrete shifts in the configuration space — phase transitions in the relational field,
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What we call a “quantum of energy” is a change in affordance, a restructuring of potential that satisfies the constraints of the system.
Closing
Energy, then, is not a thing, a fuel, or a transferable quantity. It is a measure of relational readiness — the system’s internal tension, its structural potential to undergo transformation. Where classical physics sees energy flowing, a relational ontology sees fields resolving.
In this light, the mystery of energy conservation dissolves: there is no substance to conserve — only coherence to preserve as the system reconfigures itself.
In the next post, we’ll explore how this reconception of energy informs our understanding of work — not as force over distance, but as the unfolding of constrained potential through relational affordance.
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