Talk:Energy (science)

Name?

If the distinction is between energy as discussed in physics and as discussed in psychology, then the former should not be titled energy (science), but energy (physics), since many people consider psychology, too, to be a science. I don't know that psychologists discuss energy under that title... Another obvious sense is energy in the sense of oil, solar, nuclear, etc. ...

And weren't we preferring to redirect energy to energy (disambiguation)? Just curious, maybe not. --Larry Sanger 07:49, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Larry, there are more sciences than physics that use the concept energy. Personally, I don't see psychology as a science (my late father, who was a psychologist, agreed with me on this). In any case, in psychology (science or not), energy has a completely different meaning than in physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, and so on. For one, energy (psychology) is not measurable, i.e., cannot be expressed in joule (or do you say to mrs. Sanger in the morning: "I have 10 kJ today and will write a nice blog and do some other work, whereas yesterday I had only 0.1 kJ and didn't get much done")?--Paul Wormer 08:40, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

I think there are good arguments both ways. Physics is certain the field in which energy is defined, although others (e.g. chemistry) make use of it.

I don't really have any strong feelings one way or the other about the best name - I would only ask people that we discuss potential new names before we start moving articles around; since cluster moves are not (yet) automated (although I've just found some stuff that may enable us to make it easier), moving from name to name is a pain.

As to the correct target for the redirect at energy (whether to go here, or the dab page) - it's not that important, frankly. As long as there's a redir there, and all articles which reference this concept eventually get linked directly here, that's all that matters. I think most links to the name energy do mean this one, so it's probably reasonable to go here. J. Noel Chiappa 09:54, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

I do not claim that psychology is or is not a science: it depends on how one defines the key terms, of course, and the position one takes on the question probably reflects personal philosophical biases more than anything more interesting. But CZ is neutral, and there are many people who insist that psychology (or the experimental parts of it) is a science. Hence, to use energy (science) and distinguish that from energy (psychology) is to take a stance with which many well-informed people will disagree, and a stance we are not forced to take. So I'd like to ask someone to change this. How to change it, I leave up to you. I'm sure there are many suitable alternatives, if you are creative.

This is a style of thinking and dispute-resolution that I hope we can get more into the habit of using...it's not particularly difficult or subtle, but it will help us in the long run to keep a smoothly-running community, as well as a resource that scholars of all sorts can respect. --Larry Sanger 10:19, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

I chose the name "Energy (science)" because the then article "Energy" did not only deal with the physical but also the chemical aspects of the topic. This was not meant as an offense to the field of psychology (which can be viewed either way, I agree) but also as a reminder that further restructuring might be necessary, since most people would find the term "Energy (science)" odd and prefer something like "Kinetic energy", "Chemical energy" and "Nuclear energy" instead. The question for me is now whether we keep these notions all in one article or split it up. I would prefer the latter, though the current preamble at "Energy" might well be extended a bit. -- Daniel Mietchen 05:20, 28 May 2008 (CDT)

Update: A related discussion on article naming is here. -- Daniel Mietchen 05:02, 29 May 2008 (CDT)

Comment deleted?

I seem to recall that I wrote a comment on this talk page when I started the article "energy". It was something like: Large subject, with many angles, science, economy, politics, etc., important that there is at least something, that is why I start. Also I seem to remember that I got some comments, as usual, that my writing was too difficult. Do I just imagine this, or did the talk page get lost?--Paul Wormer 10:12, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Are you sure it was not on a different page? I see no sign of a comment similar to that here or on Talk:Energy. Chris Day 10:21, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Umm, this is the old Talk:Energy - check the history. It got moved here. Talk:Energy is just a redir that got created when the article was moved here.

But yeah, could have been somewhere else - the history of this one goes back a ways. J. Noel Chiappa 10:32, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

To Chris and Noel: No I'm not sure. In the meantime I found the comment about its degree of difficulty (by Anthony.Sebastian) on my own talk page. This other comment may be something I thought of writing, but never did. Anyway, in the article I only touched the surface of the iceberg that is "energy", there is much more to say about it, also from the point of biology, world politics (oil is now $132/barrel), and so on. --Paul Wormer 10:39, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

To Larry: I did not make the move from "energy" to "energy (science)", but I don't mind it either. A little bit flippant I wanted to explain to you that the concept energy, as in "energetic person", does not have anything to do with the concept in science. And I agree that much more must be written about all aspects of energy.--Paul Wormer 10:39, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Your point about the lack of relationship between "energy" as used in physics, e.g., and as used colloquially about talking about human motivation, was perfectly obvious. My objection is not really to energy (science) but to the juxtaposition of that title with energy (psychology). That implies that psychology is not a science, which is a position we need not take.

We can solve this problem handily by simply not planning to have an article about "energy" as used in psychology (though we might, less confusingly, have an article titled energy psychology, which--I'm scanning Google--looks like some sort of therapeutic technique).

This also does not solve the other and more interesting problem, described below--what articles will we have, related to energy? I think that's the question we really need to be tackling. --Larry Sanger 08:45, 6 June 2008 (CDT)

As the "psychology as science or not" discussion is just eating away energy here, I put it off the disambiguation list for the time being. It had just come there as one example that energy is not only used in one sense. Now, this placeholder function is taken over by Energy (politics). -- Daniel Mietchen 09:43, 6 June 2008 (CDT)

What articles on energy should exist?

I doubt anyone deliberately deleted the comment (that's not the sort of thing we do!); but I don't know where it is.

But you raised a good point anyway that needs to be thought about here. Perhaps there should be a general article about energy that covers the various things that people say about it--at least as to engineering and power generation, economics, politics and geography, and policy. I suspect that those topics are closely enough related that it would be useful to have an article about that, e.g.: energy (social aspects). Then the distinction could be made between that and energy (physical aspects) (if you don't like "physics"), which concerns the physical, chemical, etc., aspects of the topic. As to psychological aspects, probably energy (psychology) would be best redirected to motivation or motivation (psychology). --Larry Sanger 10:36, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Definition and introduction

Both the definition of energy and the introductory paragraph of the article leave much to be desired. There are many measurable properties of a system, and the definition doesn't explain which property is "energy". The introductory paragraph describes some manifestations of energy, but doesn't say what it is that those manifestations have in common.

If I knew how to state the definition well, I'd do so, but my introductory physics textbooks are at home and I'm at work; and my pride prevents me from looking it up on Wikipedia. Anthony Argyriou 12:53, 24 June 2008 (CDT)

Anthony, I'm curious to see what you will write, but don't underestimate the difficulty of defining energy. For instance, the definition of Chambers: "The capacity of a body for doing work" is much too limited. An iceberg floating in the ocean has lots of energy of all kinds (potential, thermal, even nuclear), yet it is hard to see how this particular body may do work. When one hears "Saudi Arabia must increase its energy production" (as I did on the news after I finished the first part of this message), I don't believe that "Saudi Arabia must produce more bodies capable of doing work" is a striking alternative. So, please give the intro a fresh try and make an attempt to write a conclusive definition of energy. But, don't be surprised when it turns out that I will have problems with your definition.

I'm not too proud to have peek at our large neighbor, their first two sentences are in essence:

In physics and other sciences, energy is a scalar physical quantity that is a property of objects and systems which is conserved by nature. Energy is often defined as the ability to do work.

Comments:

1. "scalar physical quantity that is a property of objects and systems" is not far from "measurable property of a physical or chemical system" (my writing); the more so if one knows that only scalar quantities are directly measurable.
2. "Energy is often defined as the ability to do work" can be compared with "Roughly speaking, the energy of a system is a measure of the amount of work that the system is able to perform on its environment" (my writing).

--Paul Wormer 13:34, 24 June 2008 (CDT) and --Paul Wormer 02:39, 25 June 2008 (CDT)

Well, I hope we can do better than our large neighbor. Poking around a little, I find that the definition seems to be somewhat circular - energy is the ability to do work, work is the transfer of energy. Apparently, Richard Feynman said that there was no consistent non-circular definition of energy, though I can't find a good source for that quote. If nothing else, I'd like to put the "scalar property of a system" after "ability to do work" - there are many scalar properties of systems which aren't energy, and "a scalar property of a system" doesn't actually give any clue as to what sort of property one is talking about. Anthony Argyriou 13:42, 25 June 2008 (CDT)