Substance and energy
About the analogy between concept of substance and energy
Recently, I have been grappling with the concept of substance in the context of my own metaphysical system. Spinoza used this concept successfully, and I believe he was on the right track. However, what bothers me is attributing various properties to substance in an arbitrary way.
This is an invitation for attack—I might claim that substance has five properties, while someone else might refute my assertion by declaring that it actually has only four. In postulates not grounded in experience, I strive to be as economical as possible, maintaining only those that are absolutely necessary and cannot serve as a point of contention in criticism.
Today, I realized that in physics there exists a concept that is very close to the concept of substance. It is energy. However, not kinetic, potential, or thermal energy—those are just some of its forms. I'm referring to energy itself. What is it?—physicists are unable to answer this, glossing over it, due to the fact that it can be measured and expressed numerically.
Energy is thus something abstract and elusive, much like the concept of substance.
Energy is also the spiritus movens of physical systems. It enables motion, is equivalent to matter, is carried by electromagnetic waves, and is contained in the vacuum, causing the expansion of space. Moreover, energy appears already in the description of the first moments after the universe's creation. Perhaps it even existed at time zero. In this respect, it resembles substance.
Energy—like substance—manifests in many ways but is not limited to any of them. It simply takes on different forms.
Energy is also omnipresent in physics. In none of its fields can one do without it—just like substance, from which ultimately everything is made.
Energy cannot be destroyed either, according to the law of conservation of energy—just like substance.
Substance also has this property: it seems ordered. It is not chaos or disorder. Here, too, it is similar to energy, which strictly adheres to the laws of physics.
However, I do not think that energy is substance. I only believe that energy is a manifestation of substance that is closest to it, at least among those accessible to us. This is evidenced by the fact that energy can be measured, which does not really apply to substance. Energy in the universe also seems to be finite and cannot be created—according to the law of conservation of energy—which distinguishes it from substance, which is unlimited and unconditional.
I invoke the concept of energy in reflections on substance as an analogy. I do not claim that it is perfect, but the correlation is sufficiently strong to be helpful. There is nothing in science closer to the concept of substance than energy itself. Therefore, if we are to develop an intuition regarding the concept of substance, the best aid is precisely the concept of energy.
This concept of energy helped me resolve strong doubts I have concerning the concepts of attributes and modes in Spinoza's philosophy. While I highly value the concept of substance as used by Spinoza, those two mentioned concepts do not convince me. However, when I noticed the analogy between substance and energy, it suddenly occurred to me to replace these two concepts with another, known from physics, namely the term "form." Just as energy manifests in various ways—like kinetic energy, thermal energy, or potential energy—similarly, the universe is a form of substance, one of its manifestations that is not different from substance itself. This notion simplifies the terminology, reducing two concepts to one, is much more modern, and also brings my metaphysical system closer to physics, which I consider highly beneficial. Furthermore, it allows for a clear explanation thanks to an elegant analogy to energy.
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