Institute for Energy Conceptions

Research

What is energy?

Energy is a concept that has long eluded an unequivocal definition. Richard P. Feynman underscored the point in The Feynman Lectures on Physics1:

“It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is…”

The remark does not mark a defect in physical theory. It draws attention to the unusual role energy occupies within it.

The problem

Energy appears across mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, quantum theory, and beyond, under diverse forms, yet is treated as one and the same conceptual quantity. That universality gives it extraordinary explanatory reach. Empirical work has repeatedly confirmed the related physical relations with mathematical precision. Still, no definitive account of energy’s intrinsic nature has been secured.

Common definitions often frame energy as the capacity to do work, and work as a measure of energy transferred by a force along a displacement2. The two characterisations become interdependent: energy is defined through work, and work through energy. The circularity is not a quibble about wording; it is a symptom of how the concept is held in place.

Outside physics, the word circulates widely—in energy policy, advertising, and everyday and spiritual speech. Wider uses of the term need not be treated as simple misunderstanding. They may instead suggest that physics, lacking a concrete account of what energy is, leaves the word free to extend beyond its scientific setting without clear limit.

Research agenda

The research aims to disentangle the concepts, assumptions, and inherited modes of explanation through which energy is commonly understood across not only the domains of physics, but also politics, economics, and even philosophy.

What often emerges in common habitual explanatory practices is that widely accepted ways of invoking energy rest less on explicit theoretical justification than on unexamined presumptions. The work challenges the tendency to treat energy as an unquestioned explanatory primitive and calls for reconsideration of the causal structure implicitly carried by prevailing energy concepts.

This reassessment is what the project calls a Copernican turn in the understanding of energy: a change of standpoint in which energy is no longer taken for granted as the foundation of causal structure, but must earn its explanatory place.

It investigates:

  • definitions and conceptual roles of energy within physics;
  • the historical development of the concept;
  • relationships between physical meanings and wider technical, political, economic, philosophical, and everyday uses of the term.

Outputs appear on the Publications page as they are developed.

Current work

Work under this agenda is developed as research notes and related materials. The following items are currently in view:

References

  1. Feynman, R. P., Leighton, R. B., & Sands, M. (1963). The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Vol. I). Addison-Wesley. Quotation from the discussion of conservation of energy.
  2. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (2025). Energy; Work. In Britannica. Definitions consulted for the common framing of energy as capacity for work and work as energy transfer.