1 Reimagining Energy: From Quantity to Construal
In contemporary science, energy is often treated as a foundational concept: a conserved quantity, measurable and transferable, the universal currency of change. Defined conventionally as "the capacity to do work," energy permeates all domains of physics, from the motion of a falling apple to the fusion reactions powering stars. Yet despite its ubiquity, energy remains strikingly abstract. It is not something we observe directly, but something we infer. We cannot see or touch it; we can only detect its effects.
This abstraction is part of what makes energy so useful: it can be applied across disciplines, converted between forms, and conserved across transformations. But this same abstraction invites a question: what exactly are we talking about when we talk about energy? Is it an entity, a substance, a number? Or is it something else entirely?
This series takes up that question from the standpoint of a relational ontology: an approach that treats meaning as arising not from entities in isolation, but from their relations—especially the relations that emerge in systems of interpretation. In this view, energy is not a thing-in-itself but a semiotic construal: a meaning function used to model relational potential within a given system. It is, in short, a way of construing the capacity for transformation under idealised constraints.
To say that energy is a semiotic construal is not to deny its practical power or its mathematical precision. Rather, it is to acknowledge that these depend on an act of modelling. For energy to be measured, a system must be delineated, constraints defined, and a perspective selected. Frames of reference, equilibrium conditions, ideal gases, closed systems—these are not givens, but theoretical constructs. They do not exist independently of the observer or the measuring apparatus. They are meaning potentials, actualised in specific experimental configurations.
Under this lens, energy becomes not an objective substance but a projection of interpretive structure onto physical processes. It functions as a relational index of potential transformation: it tells us what could happen, within a model, given certain assumptions. Kinetic energy tells us how much motion might be exchanged. Potential energy tells us how configuration might be restructured. Chemical energy tells us how bonds might be broken or formed. Each type of energy presupposes a system of meaning in which that potential can be expressed.
This raises further questions: What do these different kinds of energy actually construe? What relations do they model, and which aspects of material experience do they omit? When we describe a rock as having potential energy, or a molecule as storing chemical energy, what kind of meaning are we projecting onto these phenomena? And what happens when that projection is reified as reality?
In the posts that follow, we will explore these questions by re-reading each major type of energy as a construal of relational potential: a semiotic act embedded in scientific practice. Our aim is not to undermine science, but to enrich it—to show that its abstractions, far from being neutral, are powerful models of meaning that shape how we participate in the world. Reimagining energy in this way opens up space for a deeper epistemological reflexivity: one that recognises science not as the discovery of objective facts, but as a system of interpretations co-emergent with the observers who make them.
In doing so, we hope to clarify the role of scientific concepts not only as tools for manipulating the material world, but also as expressions of how we construe its potential.
2 Kinetic and Potential Energy — Motion and Configuration as Relational Construals
In the previous post, we introduced the idea that energy is best understood not as a thing or substance, but as a relational semiotic construal — a way of modelling potential transformation within a system. Here we begin unpacking specific types of energy, starting with two of the most familiar: kinetic and potential energy.
Kinetic energy is conventionally defined as the energy of motion. But what does this really mean? Motion itself is not absolute — it only has meaning relative to a frame of reference. When we say a car has kinetic energy, we implicitly choose a coordinate system against which to measure its velocity. This choice is not neutral; it reflects a perspective embedded in the context of observation. Thus, kinetic energy is a meaning potential constrained by the reference frame selected by the observer.
By recognising kinetic energy as a relational construct, we see that it is not an inherent property of an object but a projection of the interaction between the object and the observer's chosen frame. This insight aligns with modern physics, where velocity and energy depend on the observer’s inertial frame. Yet, it also highlights the semiotic nature of the concept: kinetic energy is a meaning function realised in the relation between system and observer.
Potential energy, by contrast, is energy stored by virtue of an object’s position or configuration within a field of influence — such as gravity or elastic tension. It models the capacity for change inherent in a system’s arrangement, representing a kind of latent potential.
However, potential energy is always defined with respect to an arbitrary zero point, or baseline. The choice of this reference is again an act of meaning-making. For example, gravitational potential energy is often measured relative to the Earth's surface, but that surface is an idealised boundary, not an intrinsic property of the system. This means that potential energy is not intrinsic to the system itself, but depends on how we frame and interpret the system.
Moreover, potential energy is a semiotic construal of relational configuration: it encodes the capacity for transformation based on the relations between parts of a system, within a model defined by its constraints and assumptions.
Taken together, kinetic and potential energy form complementary relational models of transformation: one representing actual motion within a frame, the other representing latent capacity within a configuration. Both depend on choices made by observers or experimenters about how to delineate systems, set reference points, and measure change.
This relational understanding does not diminish the power of these concepts. Instead, it enriches our epistemology by making explicit the interpretive frames that underlie scientific measurement and calculation. Recognising energy types as construals of meaning opens the door to reflexive science — one conscious of its conceptual foundations and limitations.
In the next post, we will explore thermal energy, a higher-order abstraction emerging from the collective behaviour of many particles, and see how this further complexifies the semiotic nature of energy.
3 Thermal Energy — Emergence, Collective Behaviour, and the Semiotics of Heat
Building on our exploration of kinetic and potential energy as relational construals, we now turn to thermal energy, a more complex and emergent form of energy that arises from the collective behaviour of countless particles.
Thermal energy is often described as the internal energy contained in the random motions of atoms and molecules within a substance. Unlike the relatively straightforward kinetic energy of a single particle or the potential energy tied to an object's position, thermal energy emerges from the statistical properties of large ensembles of particles.
This means thermal energy is fundamentally a higher-order semiotic construction: it is not simply the sum of individual particle energies, but a meaning function that arises from patterns, distributions, and collective relations.
In this sense, thermal energy represents an interpretive model of disorder and probabilistic motion. Temperature, the macroscopic variable most closely associated with thermal energy, is a statistical average of particle kinetic energies. But what counts as a "meaningful" average depends on the observer’s framework, measurement tools, and theoretical assumptions.
The concept of entropy — a measure often linked to thermal energy — further illustrates the semiotic complexity involved. Entropy quantifies uncertainty or disorder, but its meaning is not fixed; it depends on the choice of microstates and the system’s constraints. Entropy and thermal energy thus encode the potential for transformation not just in terms of motion, but in terms of the organisation and information embedded in the system’s configuration.
Understanding thermal energy as a semiotic construct invites us to reflect on how science models phenomena that are not readily reducible to individual components, but arise instead from collective dynamics and probabilistic relations.
This interpretive stance does not undermine the empirical utility of thermal energy; instead, it enriches our grasp of its conceptual depth. Thermal energy exemplifies how scientific abstractions navigate between the concrete and the statistical, the individual and the collective, the measurable and the modelled.
In the next post, we will explore chemical energy, examining how bonds and reactions are construed as relational potentials within molecular systems — further extending our reimagining of energy as a semiotic act embedded in scientific practice.
4 Chemical Energy — Bonds, Transformations, and the Relational Modelling of Reactivity
In this post, we turn to chemical energy, a form of energy deeply bound to processes of transformation — yet one that, like the others we’ve explored, is best understood not as a substance to be stored or transferred, but as a relational construal shaped by the models we use to understand molecular systems.
Chemical energy is typically described as the energy stored in the bonds between atoms. When these bonds are broken and reformed in chemical reactions, energy is released or absorbed. This framing gives the impression that energy resides within the bond, as if bonds were containers or repositories.
But bonding is not a thing — it is a model of stability and relational configuration between atomic nuclei and their electron distributions. Bonds are not objects to be filled with energy but abstractions constructed to interpret regularities in the behaviour of matter. The so-called “energy stored in a bond” is not a fixed quantity intrinsic to a material entity but a potential for transformation, conditioned by the environment and the system boundaries we define.
Indeed, whether a reaction is said to release or require energy depends on how we frame the system. Exothermic and endothermic are not properties of reactions in themselves but perspectives on the relation between a system and its surroundings. This framing involves decisions about what counts as input, output, and boundary — all of which are acts of semiotic construal.
Chemical energy is thus a meaning potential shaped by both spatial configuration (the structure of molecules) and the semiotic framework used to describe interactions (thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, etc.). It relies on symbolic systems — from Lewis structures to reaction equations — to model possibilities for transformation.
Importantly, chemical energy also encodes relational histories. The meaning of a bond, or a reaction, depends on patterns of co-selection — regularities built up over many observations. This aligns with our broader relational ontology: energy is not an essence but a statistical and symbolic encoding of how systems tend to transform under given conditions.
In recognising chemical energy as a relational construal, we not only clarify its conceptual basis but open up more reflexive practices in science and education. Rather than imagining chemical energy as a hidden substance, we can teach it as a tool for mapping meaning across transformations — a semiotic scaffold for anticipating and interpreting change.
Next, we’ll turn to electrical energy, where potential and flow are construed through systems of difference and connectivity — and where the semiotics of circuitry reveals how deeply our abstractions are embedded in human-designed frames.
5 Electrical Energy — Potential Difference, Flow, and the Meaning of Charge in Motion
In previous posts, we explored kinetic, potential, thermal, and chemical energy as relational construals — interpretive models that describe potential for transformation within different system configurations. In this post, we turn to electrical energy, a form often visualised in terms of charge movement through circuits, batteries, and fields.
At the heart of electrical energy lies the concept of potential difference — an abstraction representing the tendency for electric charge to move from one point to another. This “difference” is not a material gradient but a relational value, defined only with respect to a chosen reference point. Voltage, as a unit of potential difference, is thus not an absolute quantity, but a meaning function — a symbol of how we model energetic relations in a system of charges.
Electrical energy becomes visible to us through work done by or on charges: for example, when electrons flow through a resistor and produce heat, or when a current powers a motor. But this movement — electric current — is not energy itself; it is a reconfiguration of relational states within a circuit. We often speak of energy “flowing,” but in fact it is difference that is propagated, modelled in terms of fields and charge distributions.
Crucially, electrical energy depends on constraints and connectivity. A battery on its own is not performing work — only when connected into a circuit, with paths that allow for potential difference to be expressed as current, does the system become a site of transformation. The meaning of electrical energy, then, lies in the networked relations among components, not in any single part.
Just as chemical energy encodes bonding as a symbolic system, electrical energy encodes electrodynamic potential through circuit diagrams, field lines, and equations such as Ohm’s Law. These are not mirrors of reality but symbolic construals: they map tendencies for transformation under imagined conditions, shaped by the observer’s models and measurements.
Even the concept of charge, often treated as a basic property of matter, is itself a modelled regularity: a way of constraining phenomena into categories that support further abstraction. Electrons “have” negative charge only within the interpretive frame of electromagnetic theory — itself a powerful but symbolically mediated system of meaning.
Seen through this lens, electrical energy is not a substance that flows, but a semiotic abstraction of dynamic relationality: a way of modelling how configurations of potential difference lead to patterns of transformation, governed by symbol systems and conventions.
In the next post, we’ll look at nuclear energy, where transformation occurs at a deeper material scale, and where relational construals must grapple with forces and potentials far removed from everyday experience — yet still mediated by the same semiotic scaffolding that underpins all science.
6 Nuclear Energy — Binding Forces, Mass–Energy Equivalence, and the Semiotics of the Subatomic
As we move deeper into the physical fabric of matter, we encounter nuclear energy — a form of energy often described as the energy stored in the nucleus of an atom, released through processes like fission or fusion. But as with the other forms of energy explored in this series, nuclear energy is not a thing contained within particles. It is a relational construal: a modelled potential for transformation grounded in symbolic systems that describe subatomic structure and interaction.
At its core, nuclear energy arises from the interplay of fundamental forces — chiefly the strong nuclear force, which binds protons and neutrons together, and the electromagnetic force, which causes protons to repel one another. The concept of binding energy represents the energy required to hold a nucleus together or, conversely, the energy released when it forms. This energy is inferred, not observed: it is derived from mass deficits via Einstein’s famous relation E = mc².
Here, the relational nature of energy is especially clear. Nuclear energy is not measured directly but modelled as a difference — a differential between the mass of a bound nucleus and the total mass of its free components. That is, energy is construed not as something located within the nucleus, but as a symbolic expression of transformation between possible states of matter.
This is reinforced by the concept of mass–energy equivalence, which invites us to see mass itself as a form of potential — not an intrinsic substance, but a relational variable shaped by context. In this framework, mass and energy are not separate quantities, but alternative construals of how systems participate in transformation. The relation E = mc² thus functions as a semiotic hinge, linking two domains of meaning (mass and energy) within a shared symbolic system.
Fission and fusion, the two primary nuclear processes, are modelled not only in terms of particles and forces, but also in terms of probability, stability, and transformation. These models are deeply dependent on representation: from the shell model of the nucleus to quantum mechanical treatments of tunnelling and decay. Nuclear energy is always construed through layers of abstraction — diagrams, equations, simulations — that mediate our understanding of what is otherwise inaccessible to perception.
Moreover, the enormous energetic yield of nuclear reactions lends itself to mythologisation: nuclear energy is often imagined as something “unleashed,” “harnessed,” or “contained.” These metaphors reinforce the illusion that energy is a thing, rather than a modelled consequence of difference and potential. Our relational ontology, by contrast, helps clarify that what’s unleashed is not a substance, but a reconfiguration of meaning within a symbolic system describing the transformations of matter at extreme scales.
In the final post of this series, we’ll explore radiant energy — the energy of electromagnetic radiation — and consider how light itself is construed as both wave and particle, frequency and quanta, within the relational semiotics of energy.
7 Radiant Energy — Light, Frequency, and the Relational Semiotics of Radiation
In this final post in the series, we turn to radiant energy — the energy carried by electromagnetic radiation. Light, whether visible or invisible to human perception, occupies a uniquely complex position in scientific thought. It is at once wave and particle, continuous and quantised, familiar and abstract. And like all the forms of energy we've explored, radiant energy is not a substance but a relational construal: a modelled potential for transformation encoded in symbolic systems.
Radiant energy is often described in terms of photons, the so-called “particles” of light. But photons are not miniature bullets travelling through space; they are quantum events — abstractions that participate in interactions like absorption, emission, and scattering. These interactions are measured not directly, but through their effects: a sensor fires, a leaf photosynthesises, a surface warms. Energy, in this context, is not “delivered” as a payload, but construed as a change in state that we model as being caused by radiant input.
The amount of radiant energy associated with a photon is given by the equation E = hf, where h is Planck’s constant and f is the frequency of the radiation. Once again, energy is represented as a relational value: not something possessed by the photon, but something assigned to it by our model, based on the frequency of the associated wave. Frequency itself is not an object in the world — it is a measure of patterned difference over time, made meaningful by the symbolic system in which it is defined.
Radiant energy also exemplifies a key feature of energy across all its forms: it is only meaningful in relation to interaction. Light in a vacuum, not incident on any surface, is not doing work. Only when it is interpreted through reception — by a retina, a photovoltaic cell, a photosensitive molecule — does it participate in transformation. The system that interprets the light is what renders the radiation meaningful as energy.
Even the electromagnetic spectrum — from radio waves to gamma rays — is a semiotic artefact, a human-made categorisation of wave-like phenomena according to frequency and wavelength. There is no natural border between infrared and visible light; these distinctions emerge from systems of classification that serve human purposes. Radiant energy is thus not just a physical phenomenon, but a semiotic construction, shaped by the ways we divide, label, and measure the electromagnetic field.
In viewing radiant energy through a relational ontology, we foreground the fact that no form of energy is meaningful outside a system of interpretation. There is no "pure energy" waiting to be discovered. What we call energy is always a construal: a model of transformation across configurations of matter, fields, and systems, rendered intelligible by observers who deploy symbolic systems — from equations to diagrams, from instruments to language.
Across this series, we've seen how each form of energy — kinetic, potential, thermal, chemical, electrical, nuclear, and radiant — is not a thing but a relational possibility, defined through symbolic systems, encoded in models, and made meaningful only within particular contexts of use and interpretation.
Energy, in short, is not what the world is made of. It is how we construe change — how we model the patterned differences that allow us to imagine transformation.
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