The Nature of Energy. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake & Mark Vernon

hello and welcome to another conversation with myself Mark Vernon and Rupert sheldrake hi there Rupert hi Mark today you suggested that we talk about energy we talked about gravity last time we met in fact but today to turn to another sort of fundamental physical notion that of energy with the sense that whilst this is used widely in science of course and even more generally asking just what energy actually is might be quite interesting in Brackets because maybe people aren't really that clear about what energy is even though it's measured and worked into equations and and so on so do do you want to kick us off on this subject I mean you know what what does a scientist mean by energy well the central unifying principle really of 19th century physics was energy the principle of conservation of energy which is the first law of thermodynamics um energy is neither created nor destroyed it can be transformed but it's neither created nor destroyed and in a closed system uh then you can measure how it's transformed and so on um in the whole universe which is an entire system in itself it's supposed not to be created or destroyed well will come back to that because actually modern physics says it is created but nevertheless classical energy Theory says that a fundamental principle of movement actuality or change in nature um which can take many forms and we're familiar with this from say electric energy in a plug socket the electric energy is promiscuous the the energy in that plug socket can do all sorts of things it can power an electric toaster ahead haird dryer a computer a mobile telephone a fan uh the same energy can do lots of different things and the same's true of the sun's energy as the sun beams down on the earth you know it can create electricity in a photovoltaic cell or it can p a cabbage plant growing in an allotment or it can p a beach tree growing in a wood um it can do all these different things and be transformed into cabbages and beaches and and so on and electricity um and and then it can be burned a beach through the wood from the beach tree can be burned and give off heat and light which is also forms of energy and there's chemical energy uh which is released in Burning uh and in oil and coal and and and so on and chemical energy can be released electrically as in batteries so all of these and it can be turned into mechanical energy as in Steam Engines I mean thermodynamics was primarily about heat and and mechanical work as in Steam Engines so this unifying principle shows us that energy permeates the entire universe it's in all the stars all the galaxies all the light all the chemicals uh all Atomic nuclei can be converted into radiation um as in eal mc² energy equals the mass destroyed times the square of velocity of light as in atom bombs uh so it's this huge unifying principle of all nature um and that is one of the tremendous insights of modern science and um it's because it can take so many forms uh it's you know utterly fundamental to everything now the origins of this idea I think are one thing we should look into and in science in the 17th century there was already a kind of precursor of this cu the mechanistic vision of the universe in 17th century science said the universe was a machine uh being the laws of nature were mathematical ideas in the mind of God and God had started off the machine um by giving it a certain amount of motion and because the motion imparted to the universe like the revolving of planets on their in their orbits and so on because all this motion was imparted by God and was god-given uh it was therefore uh it couldn't be destroyed and so it was kind of god-given principle of conservation of energy and then in the 19th century it turned into much more General principle which underlies all science as we know it that's very interesting the origins there because of course the word itself is much older I think philosophers have argued that Aristotle so this is in the fifth fourth Century BC um coins the word energy and it does have the notion of work um that you mentioned there you know energy is that which does the work um but with Aristotle though there's as with all the ancient and indeed the medieval figures before the 16th century as you mentioned there there's a much more powerful sense of a a living quality to this you know energy is is activity it's action it's operation not in the sense of a machine which of course didn't really exist in the sense we mean that back then but in the sense of of kind of presence of of actuality Aristotle contrasts energy with potentiality um so the potential is that which could be born and then energy is that which is born and and you you you get this older sense still in Orthodox theology in fact where God's Ena is God's living Vitality presence in the world and so we participate in divine life because everything that we feel as energetic is actually part of the Divine Ena and so that sort of sense of existence itself in all its fullness um it's very interesting when you make that reference to how in the 17th century there's this notion that God sort of imparts a quantity of motion into the cosmos that then through this La of conservation subsequently is preserved D but of course what's lost there is that the Divine reference is cut off it's seen now as a self-contained system rather than as a manifestation of the Divine Ena yes in the 17th century they called it V via the moving Force the the the living Force V via versus Force via's life and um so there was this sense of it being in a sense connected to life or movement change and the energy within all things um yes I think that the the way it's been mechanized is you know because as soon as it's turned into equations and then the law of conservation of energy means energy can be treat treated like something on a balance sheet like accounting so much before and so much after a process of physical change um it then becomes much more mechan you lose this sense of the life uh and the flow of the energy I think another sorry did you want to say more there's another sort of telling Point go on quite another telling point in that which I've got from a person I often refer to Owen Barfield who was very interested in the roots of words and how Concepts change even though the word is the same but when it's used in very different contexts it can actually be conveying a very different sense of the word and and he notes actually that apparent quite a seminal mo mo moment came when Huxley th Huxley wrote a book called capital and labor and talks there about the way that biology Works particularly looking at bodies as machines but it's very interesting that he's written it in a book about capital and labor um which immediately gives a certain kind of economic inflection which you know I was reminded of when you mentioned accounting there but also how he uses engineering metaphors in order to describe the body um and you know he wasn't an engineer of course but and he didn't have I suppose you'd say I far as I know anyway he doesn't build this in um a sort of a felt love of materials you know the artist will know a lot about materials but it be very different from the sense in which a scientist knows about materials because the artist will have that living relationship with the paint or the wood or the metal um and then how they can work those things whereas with Huxley this more engineering approach dominates um and so energy then which was a metaphor transported into the engineering context loses the memory of how it was a metaphor and so becomes a sort of dead metaphor seems like something factual and barfield's very interested in how in the 19th century machines in general which you know machine originally had referred to manual labor um so again it was a sort of living human quality and now it becomes completely uncoupled from the human um you know one of the things which we would say about a machine is it's not human strangely and another word that does a very fascinating about turn is related it's the word automaton Plato even let alone Aristotle had talked about that which is automatic but for him it meant that which is self-organizing self-moving and that was because it contained its own soul its own purpose and capacity to move whereas that which wasn't autometer was that which needed to be pushed or pulled or programmed or shoved or whatever and now you know that that's almost completely inverted the autometer is that which is moving blindly um and to call a human being an autometer now would be rather offensive um and so a lot shifts and also really quite recently just the 19th century a lot of this imaginative change really comes about um so we feel the conceit perhaps Barfield called it chronological snobbery that um we're living in the world that understands these things correctly whereas actually things are borrowed and they're borrowed for good reason as you're saying you know these models can be built and they can be made to work and practical have great benefit um but what gets lost what gets C of just sort of cut off um and so imagina ly we lose contact culturally with that wider picture well it's interesting isn't it that you say that as it was mechanized in Machinery but and it was before more about life and actual manual work but it's interesting we still use the word horsepower when describing a car and the capacity of a car you know and the power of its motion so horsepower is still in use and and and in relation to horsepower then you've got the power horse pulling a cart or a horse pulling a plow um you've got a living source of energy there which then can be replaced by a machine and a machine can have 12 horsepower or 20 horsepower and stuff and so we actually still in our modern language have a residue of this living energy yeah that's wonderful it's it's worth noting those and asking you know where did that come from yes that's that's really good yeahuh um but the other thing when you were talking about the capitalism and th Huxley um and his book on Capital and labor there's another way in which we borrow in our economic system from this energy language because the two main forms of energy uh that we have since the 19th century are kinetic energy the energy of movement and potential energy uh the energy of a round wound up watch spring or if you lift a weight you know an old-fashioned clock and my son Merlin used to wind the clock at a local Church Christ Church and once a week he had to go and wind this handle where where there's big weight and then as it gradually dropped it ped the clock which just worked and chimed for a whole week on the basis of a lot of effort winding up this weight and that was giving the weight potential energy in the gravitational field so potential energy uh could turn into kinetic energy as it moved and make the cogs and the springs and things go around in in the clock but then when we translate those Concepts into the monetary world we have capital and currency and so capital is like potential energy you know if you've got a million pounds in the bank you've got the potential to do all sorts of things by itself it's static in the bank like a you know a weight that's lifted to height and just stays there but it has the capacity to generate kinetic energy as it falls and the capital um if invested has the capacity to make things happen and cause kinetic energy people building things machines laborers concrete mixers and all that kind of thing or factories or or whatever or buying a car that then moves and stuff um and the the what keeps the whole economy going is what we call currency and the and we talk about the flow of currency um you know and and we have booms and slumps in currency um which are like the flow of current in a river and the current the flow of current in a river which used to Power Water Mills uh which were the first step in the industrial revolution flow powered by the flow of water and then later by the flow of steam because it was still a flow that powered steam engines and still does um again then it's a flow principle which is again energy is basically about flow and currency is about flow um so it's interesting that so much of our thinking is permeated by these metaphors yeah and and I guess it's always worth asking how well the metaphor Works um say when it comes to the economy it's quite routine now to read articles saying that everything that Economist predicted or the antidotes to problems that the economists suggested may or may not work it seems you know rather random whether they do or not whether the predictions turn out or whether turning on the capital flow or whatever it might be does does the trick and I guess that's because people forget we're working for metaphys and models here and what's actually going on maybe or may not be that connected yes or liquid assets or liquidity it's permeated by these and actually when I was at Cambridge uh as a an undergraduate as a research student um I I came to know the professor of econometrics Richard Stone and I was discussing models with him and he told me about something I'd never heard of before which is that um I think in the 1940s and 50s certainly in his lifetime the main model that the treasury had used of the British economy it was a hydrodynamical model where you had reservoirs of fluid which represented currency and and then you had tubes with currency flows and Taps and valves and you could change the interest rate by changing Taps and then it had sort of reservoirs in it which would fill up and if it filled too full then there was a siphon and you get booms and slumps you know like the flushing systems in gentleman's urinals where it fills up and then when it reaches a certain level the whole thing flushes um and um the the the the before before computer models came in these were actually commercially manufactured the government of New Zealand had one and there's one in the science museum at Cambridge still um that the models of the economy were actually based on hydrodynamical flows quite literally that is amazing yes I wonder whether another way though in which um the machine mentality has an impact is in relation to energy meant in a more psychological or spiritual sense you know energy is a word that is used there and in the original context of Aristotle and so on that was completely natural um energy was seen to be the movement of Soul or edigar was the vital presence of God but I think what can happen now is that in some spiritual practices or psychological techniques the machine deployment of the word energy rather I think detracts or weakens from the potential benefit of the practice um you know take something like tapping um you know which I I do use um and often though it's taught in a rather mechanical way that if you you know do this particular kind of tapping say this kind of phrase then it automatically releases energy in the body and I think what can get lost there is actually you've got got to have a felt connection with the tapping with the words being used and to feel the soulfulness of the phrase that you decide to deploy and and to feel into the effects of tapping on the body um and and that that so that makes it much more personal and I think even the the quality of the person teaching the tapping um matters too because a sort of felt resonance is connected then um the energy of one um titrates almost into another although I've used the hydraulic metaph for there um maybe it's more like a shared kind of energy a shared life a shared Vitality um and I think this matters in Psychology because um when a technique looks like it can be manualized or automatized or you have to do is do this that and the other and a certain kind of psychological effect comes about this then gets moved um into um into the computer so you have you know counseling or advice um through an AI through a machine and I you know I wouldn't be surprised if this brings some benefit because there is a certain amount of just learning what to do um but the benefit in terms of actual change in the person themselves starts to Fall Away um because the the mechanization of these energy techniques has lost touch with the the real efficacy there which is the movement of Ena it's the movement of Soul um you know William Blake writing in the 17th and 18th century um 18th or 19th century rather sorry he talked about energy a lot you know energy is eternal Delight he said energy is the only life um and that I like it when he puts it poetically because it helps remind me that we're talking about something that can't be pushed and pulled around you know like um the the the Contraptions you were talking about there but must be sort of felt and engaged with related to you might say um energy in that sense this brings in the the bigger question of other forms of energy like in the Indian system Prana or in the Chinese system Chi which are forms of energy that flow through the body and flow from person to person and a lot of their medical systems are based on the flow of these Energies what are sometimes called subtle energies um um which would relate to tapping because that's the tapping is related to these it's called Energy Medicine I mean that's the general term under which some of these therapies are classified um and we have no idea in scientific terms what these other forms of energy are they seem to be forms of energy they've been described for centuries or Millennia in the Indian and the Chinese systems as as kinds of energy um and yet they don't map on to the standard kinds in Western science and there are plenty of mysteries about the energy within life I mean one of the ones I'm intrigued by is the you know the assumption that our bodies or any animal body is a thermodynamic machine was a 19th century assumption and helmholz who started this at first tried to prove it scientifically and he failed so he then just said well don't bother with any proof or evidence it's by definition bodies and animal and human bodies and machines so therefore they must obey the same laws of energy as Steam Engines um and around 1900 there was a famous study by two Americans called Atwater and Benedict who set out to demonstrate they said we're not setting out to investigate we're setting out to demonstrate that living organisms and the human body in particular follows the law of conservation of energy um and they made it clear from the outset they had no doubt this was the answer that they'd find and they measured people in calorimeters the food taken in the liquids that came out the Heat and the energy work done Etc by pedaling cycle pedals and things uh they measured all this and they came up with exactly the answer they expected but when this was investigated decades later by someone called Web an American uh nutritionist uh he found there were huge discrepancies he was getting massive arrows some people who were thin and and were seemed to be giving out too much energy and some people who were fat weren't giving out enough and there were huge errors um and it wasn't you know he took into account the converted into fat cells and weight weight gain and all that kind of thing and he then looked back at atwr and Benedict's results and found They too had had huge discrepancies in the individual measurements but they just put in enough people who were above the average and enough below the average so it averaged out at the answer that they knew they'd get in the first place and then there are all these cases of so-called inedia where in Indian tradition Chinese European tradition there are people who allegedly live for weeks months or even years without eating seeming to defy every principle of the conservation of energy and of course the usual Assumption of Western scientists of course they're eating secretly and they're sneaking out and eating biscuits or something when no one's looking um but there have been actual scientific studies of Indian sages who seem to live without food and even of um Saints so Theresa boomman was a 20th century example in Germany um quite a number of saintly figures who done this and Christian Saints there have also been documented cases of people who are not Saints but who just for some reason seem to live without food now obviously it doesn't happen to everyone because otherwise people on hunger strikes uh who wouldn't ever fast to death they just live forever as an embarrassment to governments and uh and support of their cause um but there these are huge unanswered questions and it's not the kind of thing anyone within the scientific world would investigate and um in India they might or they could there's more people who do this in India there are plenty of living examples I'm sure um so it's not if we've figured out everything to do with energy at least in relation to living organisms and there are these other Concepts the idea that they the Indians who live without food say they get the energy The Prana from the sunlight or from the air or breatharians who westerners who claim to live without food say they're getting it from The Prana the energy in the air what El going on we just don't know I mean I partly wonder about that as well just in terms of working as a psychotherapist and the notion of you know having more energy or I didn't have any energy these phrases are used all the time in terms of people's psychological mood and they clearly have often substantial effect on people's quality of life someone who says they don't have energy and really means it you know will hardly be able to get anything done in the day it's very dramatic and I guess that there are physiological attempts to explain that um and maybe or maybe not they go some of the way um but it does seem to be a very powerful notion that the energy which we have or the very least our capacity to use energy is not just related to the amount of food stuff that we're taking in um and but but I guess that this the skeptic would get very nervous at what you're saying and they would start W waggling their finger perhaps and talking about vitalism or searching for some kind of mysterious stuff that makes for life we're into that kind of terrain I suppose I mean what what what what's your response to to that accusation well I would simply say well you know what are the empirical facts you know it's an assumption that all living organisms just follow mechanistic principles and vitalism um there are very forms of vitalism but some forms of vitalism said that yes there are forms of energy in living organisms which are not the same as just regular physical energy I would just say it's an open question and and that one good way of investigating it is to study people with inedia um another way would be to reexamine um the um study organisms dogs cats mice rats whatever you like in calorimeters these classic studies is and see whether under different conditions of living what the energy balance is no one does those experiments anymore because it's just assumed um that that you know the answer in advance like Atwater and Benedict assumed in the in 1900 so it's not on the research agenda um so I think I'd ask the the sneering skeptic you know where's your evidence and they'd probably point to Atwater and Benedict and then you'd say well what about web studies and then they'd have say Well they're unreliable or they been discredited or they won't have heard of them of course or have read them but then it becomes clear this is a doctrinal assertion not an empirical scientific one may maybe this question will press a bit harder again because this is slightly going off at a tangent but this the new move towards systems biology and the recognition that biological organisms work at multiple levels with various exchanges and even with the The Wider environment as well I've just reading the new book by Philip ball the science writer on this and actually I noticed very early in the book he sort of clears his throat and says this is not an appeal to some kind of vitalism but it's interesting that he had to sort of signal that so who knows maybe this will return as of necessity let alone just curiosity one last thing rert unless you got anything else but you te us at the beginning about energy being created in fact rather than the 19th century assumption about the conservation of energy what what did you have in mind there I've got two further points actually okay okay before we end one is about the creation of energy you see because the I the current scientific theory is that energy and matter can't be created or destroyed or it's the principle conservation of matter and energy because they are interconvertible so the current theory is that all the matter and energy in the universe suddenly appeared from nowhere at the moment of the Big Bang um it's the one free miracle principle that Terence McKenna used to refer to Modern Science is based on the principle of one free Miracle the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe and all the laws that govern it from nothing in a single instant so there's one unbelievably massive violation of the principle of conservation of matter and energy but just one in the standard view however um by by the year 200000 um at that time people thought that the Universe would stop expanding and it would gradually uh there slow stop expanding and then begin to contract under all the Gravity from matter and dark matter within the universe ending in the reverse of the Big Bang called the Big Crunch but then it was discovered uh around 2000 that actually the most distant galaxies have enormous red shifts and they seem to be moving away faster and faster that the universe is not slowing down in fact the rate of expansion is speeding up now I didn't expect that so how do you explain it well then they say it must be speeding up because they being pushed apart by dark energy inventing a new form of energy to um explain what's observed and then when you say well what what is dark energy they don't know but the main equations of dark energy which come from the cosmological constant which is the energy of space um say that there's a fixed amount of energy per unit volume well since the universe is expanding the volume of the universe is increasing and there for the amount of energy is increasing um so therefore the universe has become a perpetual motion machine uh according to Modern cosmology um they don't like talking about this but um this violates all the fundamental principles and yet um they've got no explanation other than invoking all this dark energy um so that's another unexplained aspect of this but the final point I wanted to make really was that um if we look at the most fundamental models of reality which we find in theology then in trinitarian models like the Christian model of the Holy Trinity what we find is a model that has a ground of being which is the God the father or in the Hindu model of the Trinity it's sat as in sat Chanda um or in the Hindu Trinity of gods is Brahma which is the god the creat ultimate source of all things then we have a principle of energy or flow which is Spirit um or breath or wind the same word ruach or numar in Greek ruach in Hebrew uh means breath flow uh and this is one of your Owen barfield's big points that the these words won't distinguish the energy flow breath all these things were the same word it's the same so the holy spirit is a principle of flow move movement change it's always represented by the wind the breath by the fly flames of fire by flying birds it's about movement change and the other principle is the logos the word which is the principle of form or structure or order and so spoken language um is the principal metaphor like when I'm speaking now there's the flow of breath as I breathe out without that there'd be no spoken words there's the form and structure of the words that come come from the forms and structures in my mind and are articulated through the larynx and the speech apparat as the air flows over them uh but the the spoken word is a combination of the principles for form and energy and that is exactly the model that science gives us of everything in the universe everything has energy to have actuality or reality or activity and yet the energy has to have form the energy has no form in and of itself so the energy of an electron is given form by the electron field an electron is a vibratory pattern in an electron field a proton and a proton field an atom uh is a vibratory structure of activity within the quantum fields of the atom uh so everything in nature has energy and form and um the the fundamental source of those in this theological model is the Holy Trinity in one of the Hindu models the Brahma one the three the Trinity of principal Gods there Brahma The Source um Vishnu the preserver uh the maintainer and preserver of order who's the principle of former uh order and Shiva the Creator and Destroyer who's the principle of change and who's represented by Flames by the dance as in nataraja the dancing Shiva so we have these fundamental archetypal patterns in in theologies and in the most fundament mental philosophy um where there's a source of both but then within nature there's the principle of movement change or flow Spirit or in its secularized scientific form energy and the principle of form which mainly comes from Fields uh in in the physical view of nature uh the principle of order so we can see I think that the whole of the energy in nature including regular energy in electric wires and in Boulders rolling downhill and in um in in the movements of the planets and the kinetic energy of billiad balls and so on all these forms of energy are transforms of this ultimate energetic principle uh which is fundamental to all creation is ultimately part of the Divine ground of being and that's such a wonderful vision and it connects back to this Orthodox notion of Ena because Ena is the presence of God in this three-fold form as you're saying it's not like a fourth element um but the anig is known in the ground in the logos in the forming principle and then also in the flow the spirit of change as well yeah um I mean it's I love it when you you make these moves um feels like we've been in the world of science but actually when you just look that extra bit further the theology starts to show up again and then you realize you can hear the science as describing being in the divine body um of the created World um so kind of completing the loop back to something which I think would have made sense to Aristotle I really do experience it that way you know I think when we think of energy if we think of it just through pages of textbooks and equations we get this narrow cramped view but when you look at it in reality like the clouds blowing past in the wind um and the way it's expressed in the natural world and in lightning strike in our own breathing and in the energy of movement and the energy of human-made machines as well I mean all of these and that energy in our machines like jet planes is fossil fuel energy and that ultimately derives from the Sun um so we have you know all of these forms of energy they're not artificial they're all part of the flow that's part of the whole Cosmos look on that note on that experience of what been talking about we should draw to a close but thank you so much well thank you Mark

Channel: Mark Vernon

Views: 5,929

Keywords: Energy, physics, dark energy, subtle energy, conversation of energy, Aristotle, energeia, God

Id: YFki9xtpwbI

Length: 36min 32sec (2192 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 01 2024