I downloaded a free book from the Academia website last week entitled 'Introduction to Philosophical Principles' by Brian Kemple. He points out that in the ancient Greek world the concept of energy or 'energia' equates to what we would now call 'character'. We might describe someone as full of bubbly energy or full of moral energy. We might even consider ambition to be a kind of energy. But mostly we think of energy as a force that powers the electricity in our factories or heats our houses. At this present moment in early 2022, many of us are worried about the rising costs of energy and the consequent pressure on household budgets.
In modern physics, energy is considered a measurable force that causes motion or heat or sound etc. The unit of measurement is the joule. Technically, it is the amount of energy transferred when an object is moved one metre against a force of one Newton. It is a blind force that has no end goal. It can be neither created or destroyed. It has no moral purpose in itself. We don't think of it as having the 'ambition' or the 'desire' to transfer from one form to another, i.e. from motion to heat. Even if 'ambition' could be demonstrated in energy, it would be of no use to the engineer, unless you could find a way of persuading it to 'change its mind' - a hopeless task.
The ancient world equates energy/energia with forceful mindfulness. It is the very thing that drives me to do something. It is synonymous with who I am. Suppose I was sat outside in on a park bench and I saw someone being cruel to an animal. I was then compelled to get off the park bench, walk over to the cruel person and challenge their behaviour. There would be no motion if I wasn't minded to act. My walking was caused by my sympathy for the animal, and my sympathy for the animal was the result of the type of person that I am; my energia. Other people might not have been sympathetic and would have stayed put, resulting in no motion.
The ancients saw all motion to be the result of mindfulness; the motion of the clouds, the changing seasons, the motions of the seas and heavens. So, nature itself has a character as great, if not greater, and as present as human character. They thought of all forms of change to be a type of motion, so that a leaf changing from green to brown is considered to be motion, though it doesn't actually move from one place to another. We moderns tend to define motion as the rate of change of position, but why not the rate of change of colour or the rate of change in our thoughts?
The mindfulness of stuff is part of the unconscious assumptions about the nature of reality for someone like Solon, the hero of The Mystery of Healing. Everything that is seen contains it. The mindfulness of nature, like the mindfulness of others, is barely knowable. It constantly fools us. It is unpredictable. But equally it can be generous. It sustains us and gives beautiful things. It gives us life. But it has no principle of measurability. It does not have the objective 'thereness' of physical objects, hence its rejection by modern science as a constituent part of reality.
In modern physics, energy is considered a measurable force that causes motion or heat or sound etc. The unit of measurement is the joule. Technically, it is the amount of energy transferred when an object is moved one metre against a force of one Newton. It is a blind force that has no end goal. It can be neither created or destroyed. It has no moral purpose in itself. We don't think of it as having the 'ambition' or the 'desire' to transfer from one form to another, i.e. from motion to heat. Even if 'ambition' could be demonstrated in energy, it would be of no use to the engineer, unless you could find a way of persuading it to 'change its mind' - a hopeless task.
The ancient world equates energy/energia with forceful mindfulness. It is the very thing that drives me to do something. It is synonymous with who I am. Suppose I was sat outside in on a park bench and I saw someone being cruel to an animal. I was then compelled to get off the park bench, walk over to the cruel person and challenge their behaviour. There would be no motion if I wasn't minded to act. My walking was caused by my sympathy for the animal, and my sympathy for the animal was the result of the type of person that I am; my energia. Other people might not have been sympathetic and would have stayed put, resulting in no motion.
The ancients saw all motion to be the result of mindfulness; the motion of the clouds, the changing seasons, the motions of the seas and heavens. So, nature itself has a character as great, if not greater, and as present as human character. They thought of all forms of change to be a type of motion, so that a leaf changing from green to brown is considered to be motion, though it doesn't actually move from one place to another. We moderns tend to define motion as the rate of change of position, but why not the rate of change of colour or the rate of change in our thoughts?
The mindfulness of stuff is part of the unconscious assumptions about the nature of reality for someone like Solon, the hero of The Mystery of Healing. Everything that is seen contains it. The mindfulness of nature, like the mindfulness of others, is barely knowable. It constantly fools us. It is unpredictable. But equally it can be generous. It sustains us and gives beautiful things. It gives us life. But it has no principle of measurability. It does not have the objective 'thereness' of physical objects, hence its rejection by modern science as a constituent part of reality.
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