Laws of movement
Western science is inconceivable without the laws of movement at its heart. These laws apply to physical movement; they are laws of physics that are asserted to apply universally throughout the universe. Conversely, any kind of movement deemed worthy of investigation by the leading Western science must be physical, the science of physics being regarded as the kernel of all Western science, and with physics' reach being gradually extended over the centuries since the enunciation of mathematized laws of motion in the seventeenth century. These laws are often said to be one of the greatest achievements of the Western mind. Newton and Galileo, along with others, are rightly held in high esteem to the present day.
Even though, since the emergence of Einsteinian relativity theory and quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics is regarded as superseded for certain ranges of physical movement, the repercussions and applicability of Newton's three simple and elegant laws of motion — the middle of which is simply f = m.a or, in words. force is equal to mass times acceleration — have proved to be immense, well beyond anything that Newton himself could ever have imagined. Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism, that take a step beyond Newton to capture the motion of electrons, have repercussions that have seeped globally into every niche of everyday and not-so-everyday life. Maxwell's laws remain laws of physics applicable to a kind of physical motion. Ditto for the laws of thermodynamics that deal with the motions of molecules. Quantum physics, too, postulates four physical forces, two of which apply to intra-atomic motions. The law of gravitation, too, whether Newtonian or relativistic, postulates a gravitational force to account for and calculate the motions of physical bodies, including astrophysical ones.
Note that I am speaking of laws of physical motion, not laws of physical movement, because in modern physics all kinds of physical movement have been theoretically reduced to loco-motion, i.e. change of place, or, more precisely, change of position in a mathematized (vector) space. Why was this reduction of Aristotle's four kinds of physical movement to just one kind necessary? The short answer is that locomotion, i.e. change of place, is amenable to mathematization; this was achieved by Newton and Leibniz in the seventeenth century with the infinitesimal calculus employing the real, continuous, linear time parameter, t. Mathematization, in turn, enables calculation and hence prediction, i.e. precalculation, of motions. It is no accident, but rather deeply premeditated, that all modern science, even beyond physics, measures itself (solely?) against the criterion of predictability.
This, in turn, enables the reduction of all scientific method to empiricist methodology. All modern science, starting with physics, postulates hypothetical theoretical models which are tested in terms of their explanatory power in predicting certain sub-kinds of physical motion by gathering empirical data. (That's why quantum physicists worry about whether there are testable predictions generated my their hypothetical models.) Such empirical predictability serves as the criterion for scientificity. This scientific method verifies theoretical models which are then taken to be true, even though all that empirical data can ever confirm is the correctness of predictions via theoretical models. Otherwise, the model is falsified and the theory put in doubt as incorrect. The hypothetical theoretical model is required to fit the empirical data gathered, of whatever relevant kind.
This scientific method of modelling is transferred even to neuroscience which investigates neuronal motion in the brain and body with the aim of discovering laws of mental movement, as if the mind moved according to physical laws, as if the mind were something physical. The mind has to be conceived as somehow physical to satisfy the absolute will to power over all kinds of movement.
Energy
But what of energy, as announced in the heading? It definitely has a connection with physical movement. Today a problem with energy is recognized above all in the phenomena of global warming and climate change, both of which are palpable and indisputable for those without vested interests in denying it. The physical source of global warming has been correctly identified by physics as the emission of carbon dioxide (and also methane). The former gas is emitted by burning fossil fuels to generate electrical energy, i.e. the motion of electrons, to drive other motions (e.g. of machines of all kinds, including cars). The response to global warming consists in enormous global efforts, against the massive resistance of vested interests, to make the transition to renewable energies that do not require the burning of fossil fuels. The aim is to achieve sustainability, but who is seriously asking the question: Sustainability of what? Of humankind as a species of animal on a planet called Earth?
Enormous amounts of energy need to be generated to drive certain kinds of movement. Why so enormous? At first sight all these kinds of movement seem to be physical. But closer inspection shows that physical movement is interwoven with other kinds of movement, namely, the movement of interplay in social life and the movement of the economy as such. How we humans sociate with each other cannot be captured by any laws of physical motion, no matter how hard modern science tries to do so. The kernel of sociating movement is that of mutually estimative interplay, a kind of movement sui generis whose ontology, to date, has not registered at all in any of the physical or social sciences, nor in mainstream philosophy. Why is this so? The problem lies with the very concept of energy itself, whose origins, along with any other genuinely ontological concept, have today been relegated to oblivion.
Although today energy is taken to be something that simply physically exists (ontically, 'objectively', physically), it only 'exists' by dint of having been cast as such by a certain ontology of movement, namely, the Aristotelean ontology of movement, the only one that Western philosophy has yet properly conceived. (NB: Since the ontological difference has been shut down by positivist science, talk of an 'ontology of movement' is regarded as metaphysical nonsense.) Energy (ἐνέργεια) is a neologism coined by Aristotle as the middle term in his ontology of causal-efficient, physical movement. The term means literally the at-work-ness of a physical force (δύναμις). The four causes of physical movement elaborated by Aristotle — namely: final, formal, efficient and material — were reduced by modern science to two, namely, efficient and material. Why? For the sake of gaining a material, i.e. manipulable, hold on all kinds of physical movement to make them precalculable through mathematization. Newton's mathematized laws of motion are literally inconceivable without their foundation in Aristotle's ontology of physical movement. Since Newton, efficient physical forces go to work on material. They effect something or other in some sort of material and are thus sources of physical power over physical movements. Hence, in particular, the striving of modern psychology, today via neuroscience, to reduce the ψυχή of ancient Greek philosophy to the cogitating material brain. Hence also the tendentious talk of artificial intelligence as some kind of intelligence based on artificial neurons constructed to crudely model brain activity.
The pride of the modern physical sciences is to make endless progress in extending their precalculative power over physical movements of all kinds. They are driven by this absolute will to power over movement. In the face of global warming and climate change, is this absolute will to power to be reined in? Or is it to be encouraged and extended even more to solve our 'problems' with the climate technologically? The latter seems to be the case.
The Medium and the global law of movement: endlessly valorizing thingified value
It is overlooked in today's debates over climate change that efficient-causal power over movement is intimately entangled with another, non-physical kind of movement that escapes not only any kind of physical laws of motion, but whose ontology escapes attention altogether. This is the movement of the global economy, that, hardly anyone will deny, is a global capitalist economy. But what is a capitalist economy? Any kind of economy, as a way of humans producing and acquiring what they need to live, involves much movement, both physical and that of sociating interplay. A capitalist economy, however, requires more than that, for it is subject, or subjugated, to a certain principle, or law, of movement that is not physical but purely formal.
What keeps the global capitalist economy moving is the formal, circular movement of thingified value through a series of interlinked value-forms whose sole law of movement is that advanced thingified value (in the form of invested, possibly borrowed, money-capital) return with a surplus. Thingified value's forms are ideas (ἰδέαι) that have been real-ized as things (res) of various kinds. The required transformations of value-form take place entirely within this Medium in which we all are unknowingly immersed as players in the gainful game. Only the value-forms of this Medium are visible on the surface of society. Nevertheless, we humans are thoroughly immersed in this Medium and subject to its effects, both propitious and poisonous. Yet we do not know that the globalized economy is only made possible by the sociating Medium of thingified value, which has seeped into every corner of the Earth and every nook of our souls.
To spell this out a bit (cf. An Invisible Global Social Value): advanced (borrowed) money-capital purchases means of production (including raw materials), hires labour power and leases land to produce goods and services that, via circulation processes, are sold on markets to generate revenue. All of these are value-forms. This revenue, as the gross return on the advanced capital, must exceed all the costs incurred in setting up and running the production and circulation processes if the law of valorization of thingified value is to be satisfied. This law holds inexorably for individual capitals (enterprises great and small), national economies and the global economy.
The formal movement of valorization of thingified value requires both the movement of sociating interplay and the physical movement of all that is required for (maximally efficient) production and circulation processes, subjugating these latter movements to its own formal conditions of valorization. Since valorization, aka accumulation of capital, is infinite, unlimited, never-ending, the need for physical energy to support valorization via production and circulation processes is also endless. There can never be enough. The endless need for physical energy for the sake of endless valorization drives global warming, climate change, as well as the continuing destruction of the Earth. But we are oblivious to the law of endless valorization.
For today's conventional thinking on sustainability, nuclear energy is attractive as an alternative source of energy generation because it relies on Einstein's equation from relativity physics: E=m.c(exp)2 , or in words: Energy is equal to mass times the speed of light squared. From a tiny amount of radioactive plutonium mass, for example, an enormous amount of energy=physical movement can be generated through radioactive decay.
Moreover, through a fusion reaction between atomic nuclei, endless amounts of physical energy could one day be generated without being saddled with the problem of how to dispose of radioactive waste. It would seem that sustainability of the endless valorization of thingified value would be secured by harnessing an endless source of physical energy for production and circulation processes. The global law of movement of endless valorization of the Medium would gain a new lease of life, but at the cost of continued destruction of the Earth nevertheless, and continued exploitation of its human material. The principle of valorization of the Medium as a formal law of movement is indifferent to the material it subsumes, namely, the Earth and us humans.
The perfect cover-up for this situation is our individualized freedoms of movement in the West that, it is said, need to be sustained, preserved, preferably at a high material standard of living, ironically, through continued 'economic growth'. It is overlooked that individualization is first made possible by the dissociation induced by the Medium of thingified value itself. We sociate via the Medium. Blinded by ideologies of individual freedom in democracies, we remain blithely oblivious to the law of global movement. The principle of endless valorization of the Medium remains invisible.
Further reading: An Invisible Global Social Value
Capitalocene & The global law of movement
On Human Temporality: Recasting Whoness Da Capo,
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