ENERGY AS A PRIMITIVE ONTOLOGY FOR THE PHYSICAL WORLD.
We reanalyze from a modern perspective the bold idea of G. Helm, W. Ostwald, P. Duhem and others that energy is the fundamental object composing the physical world. We start from a broad perspective reminding the search for a fundamental "substance" from the pre-Socratics to the important debate bet...
| Published in: | Cosmos & History Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 414 - 429 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
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Ashton & Rafferty
2025
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=188107357&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 188107357 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 18329101 78JL jtl: Cosmos & History issn: 18329101 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: 2025 vid: 21 iid: 1 pid: 47219 pub: Ashton & Rafferty artinfo: ui: 188107357 ppf: 414 ppct: 15 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 1MB tig: atl: ENERGY AS A PRIMITIVE ONTOLOGY FOR THE PHYSICAL WORLD. aug: au: Horvath, Jorge E. Martins, B. B. su: Quantum theory Quantum mechanics Idea (Philosophy) Nineteenth century Gravitation sug: subj: Quantum theory Quantum mechanics Idea (Philosophy) Nineteenth century Gravitation keyword: Energetics Primitive Ontology Quantum Physics ab: We reanalyze from a modern perspective the bold idea of G. Helm, W. Ostwald, P. Duhem and others that energy is the fundamental object composing the physical world. We start from a broad perspective reminding the search for a fundamental "substance" from the pre-Socratics to the important debate between Ostwald and Boltzmann about the energy vs. atoms at the end of the 19th century. While atoms were eventually accepted (even by Ostwald himself), the emergence of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity were crucial to suggest that the dismissal of energy in favor of atoms was perhaps premature, and should be revisited. We discuss how the so-called primitive ontology programme can be implemented with energy as the fundamental object, and why fields (and their quanta, particles) should rather be considered as nonfundamental quantities. We sketch some of the difficulties introduced by the attempt to include gravitation in the general scheme. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Cosmos & History is the property of Ashton & Rafferty and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Cosmos & History holder: Ashton & Rafferty dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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