What is energy?

Drakkith

Lol, I think Dalespam was the one being called Pedantic.

Kiril

Yes I thought so too. Its a good example of the straw man fallacy. The type of trick one might play if he were hiding a proud dogmatism - perhaps even a fear of independent thought, and perhaps even worse still, he never knew it.

Drakkith

I'm glad everyone liked it!

Anyways, the point is that you don't come into a forum for mainsteam science, tell everyone you don't believe the description science has given something, base your opinion on a misinterpretation of scientific laws, provide no evidence or math for your position beyond that, and then expect to be taken seriously.

Not everyone in this thread has done so, but you most definitely have Kiril.

DaleSpam

Hey Drakkith, welcome to the pedantic club!

Awesome post, by the way. Definitely the best this month!

Drakkith

Woohoo! Where is my pedantic award!?

DaleSpam

It is not a straw-man fallacy, it is an analogy with exaggeration for effect.

A straw man fallacy is when one side refutes a position that the other side does not hold. In this case, the other side does, in fact, hold the position that there must be more to the question "what is energy?" than the definition.

The question "what is eating?" and the exaggerated dialogue is clearly analogous to the position actually being refuted, so it is definitely not a strawman. At worst you can say that it is over-exaggerated, but I think it is spot-on given posts like your #14.

This, on the other hand, is a good example of the ad hominem fallacy. If you are going to accuse others of fallacious arguments you should probably avoid them yourself.

DaleSpam

Definition is not necessarily very complex. Write a description X of some concept, take a word Y, then say "By definition Y is X". That is all.

Obviously, some concepts, such as love, are difficult to write a description for and other concepts, such as mangos, are relatively easy to describe. Energy is even easier to describe than mangos. So in the case of energy, the exercise of definition is not very complex at all.

You want him to post a link to show that Einstein did not say something? That doesn't make any sense.

DaleSpam

Being pedantic is its own reward

I can't believe this thread is still going.

simpatico

1) I'm pleased you agree with my post #49
but that is exactly what I said in post #47 to which you responded with your Dialogue.
I hope we all should read people's statement carefully before arguing, because otherwise the discussion gets out of hand ( though amusing) and we would chase our tails endlessly

2) the bolded passage is an example of going beyond strawmen into the dominion of
wordtwisting
I said twice a form of energy and you change it to is equal to
I agree 100% with you energy is not (equal to) mass.What is the problem?
the same as cheese is not equal to milk, but a form thereof (a derivative, transformation, manipulation...)
mass is even a better example than cheese, because cheese cannot be reverted into milk

Drakkith

I don't see it. I read 2 completely different things between those 2 posts. They aren't the easiest to understand clearly, so it's possible I am not understanding you.

simpatico

hi drakkith, I 'm glad you are online. I was editing previous post, so please read it again

1) I have already answered that you are not arguing with me, but with yourself

2) the point here is that sometime scientists, tend to ignore deliberately that theirs is not the only science and
only a physicist can treat physics and
they, or justanyone can treat say, linguistics, logics ...
a) you think it's simple to give a definition because you check with a dictionary, and don't know how hard work it is.
to define a word properly, completely it's a huge work it means to enumerate ALL its qualities,properties, funcions, interactions....it means thousands, millions or more items,that should contain all the levels you imagine
b)someone perhaps thinks that in this case ,there is
a definition made by a linguist
and one (of course better) made by a physicist
that's wrong.
everyman to his last
.....now,

This thread is under the domain of linguistics (semantics) so
physics must step back,
the linguist must turn to physics as his source.fullstop.
But, as I said and no one has so far contradicted me, physics has not even bothered to set a unit for it,

simpatico

1) please read point 2 in my post #62
2) I hope ,after reading #62 and re-reading #47 you realize that you agree with me
as I agreed with you entering the thread,in the first place
but, once you aknowledged that the issue at hand is definition, you must be consequent and give way to specialists.

You must only realize that when you speak of easyness
you are simplifying degrees of precision
a real definition leaves no room for improvement

3) probably this is not an instance of wordtwisting, but of hasty perusal of a text:
contrary refers to 'mass..' and not to who said it

( by the way, dalespam , you are a science advisor, what fields? I haven't gone through all posts, what is your own definition?)

4)I realized, only after writing it, that my definition was the exact translation into plain English of what Drakkith had stated in technical jargon.
I used POWER as essence (ontology), as this too is a universally known concept,
and change the world, as quality, functional definition (what is it good for?)
That 's the role of a linguist, mediate between source and general public

spark.bisht

It is the ability to do work in simple language, to do anything it requires energy of any form, mechanical, heat or anything else.

Drakkith

I have no doubt that it is difficult to define something properly. But that IS what has happened, it has been defined. I don't need to slog through countless experiments and measurements to figure out what it is. Someone else has already done that.

No one has contradicted you because you don't say anything other than complicated babble about how complicated definitions are and something about mango's. Oh, by the way, Joules is the SI unit of measurement for Energy. It is also the unit of measurement for Work. Why do you think that is?

simpatico

hi drakkith,
you sound irritated,if it is so: I' m sorry. I very much esteem you!
and I 'm sorry for the babble, but every field has its own jargon.
I appreciated your definition and acknowledged it.If I said jargon, it was not offensive, but I thought, it is the apprropriate word, at least in British English.
I don't mind being contradicted, but you just changed twice my word ' a form of' altering my statements.
as to Joules
1)[ it is not a basic unit,( in #47,I mentioned the 7 units: like space..)
2) it is ( now I stand corrected) a unit made up by 1.5 x 10^ 33 h
once I was corrected that :
Joule is unit of work and
h is unit of action. so I was stranded, without energy.
Isn't it so?
bye

russ_watters

This is no longer physics. Locked.