In classical mechanics, work is defined as force applied over a distance. It is the archetype of energetic expenditure — when something pushes something else, and something moves. Work, in this formulation, is the bridge between force and energy: it connects motion with effort, change with cause.
But this definition is deeply tied to an object-based, causal worldview. It depends on metaphors of pushing and pulling, of agents acting on patients, of energy being spent like currency.
A relational ontology reframes this picture. If there are no discrete entities, no background space, and no external causes, then work cannot be the movement of things through space under applied force. Instead, work becomes something more subtle and systemic: the actualisation of potential under constraint.
1. No Force, No Distance — Just Transformation
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In a relational field, nothing “pushes” anything else,
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There are only configurations of potential constrained in certain ways, and reconfigurations that resolve those tensions,
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What we call “work” is not something done by one thing to another, but a phase transition in a shared system — a redistribution of coherence.
2. Work as Structural Resolution
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Classical work implies expenditure — energy lost or used,
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But relationally, work is not expenditure but transition: a field resolving itself from one metastable configuration to another,
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The “cost” of work is the degree of constraint that must be reorganised — how far the system has to move across its own topology to reach coherence.
3. No Agent, No Recipient — Just Co-Transformation
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In classical mechanics, one object acts, another reacts,
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But in a relational system, there are no isolated actors — only mutually dependent transformations,
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Work, then, is not the application of force by one entity to another, but the co-actualisation of a system moving into a new regime of possibility.
4. Thermodynamic Work and Constraint Exchange
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In thermodynamics, work is defined by its contrast with heat: ordered vs. disordered energy transfer,
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But from a relational view, this distinction becomes a difference in how constraints are reorganised:
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What we call “work” is the structured resolution of constraint gradients,
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What we call “heat” is the unstructured dispersion of potential across unconstrained degrees of freedom.
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5. Toward a Relational Definition
We might say:
Work is the reconfiguration of a relational field through the constrained actualisation of potential.
This definition removes the need for force, distance, motion, or substance. It focuses instead on affordance, transformation, and coherence — the core dynamics of any relational system.
Closing
The classical idea of work imagines effort expended across distance. But this image misleads. In a relational world, there are no distances without constraints, no effort without tension, no entities without relation. Work is not force in motion — it is structure in transformation.
In the next post, we will turn to the notion of momentum — and ask whether it, too, can be rethought as a relational construct, no longer tied to mass and motion, but to patterns of coherence and temporal directionality.
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