Quote:Critique of the Concept of Energy in Light of Bergson’s Philosophy of Duration
Table of Contents:
1. Introduction;
2. Overcoming the Cinematographical Mechanism of Thought;
3. Overview of the Genealogy
of Energy;
4. Critique of the Concept of Energy;
5. Conclusion: Energy and Duration.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
While I've only read the introduction so far, I thought others might also be interested in Brea's dissertation:
The Birth Of Energy From The Spirit Of Revenge: On The Genealogy Of The Concept Of ‘energy’ And Its Relation To Time
Pedro Brea
Quote:I develop a genealogy of the concept of ‘energy’ in western philosophy and science, focusing on how energy concepts (e.g., energeia, vis viva, kinetic/potential energy) have been theorized in relation to time. Looking especially to the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, Henri Bergson, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger, I argue that the thread that connects energy concepts through time is the epistemological tendency to derive conceptual accounts of change from a prior ontological sameness or essence. I then attempt to lay the groundwork for a process metaphysics that harmonizes with contemporary findings in the physical sciences, while also extending the concept of energy to account for the presence of subjectivity in nature.
Quote:Although the initial impetus for this project came from the ideas of Nietzsche and Heidegger, I take up the project of conceptualizing energy beyond the tendency to ground change in the change-less by turning to the works of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze in the final two chapters. I argue that both these thinkers develop a similar critique of temporality and science as Nietzsche and Heidegger, but that their more positive engagement with the sciences. In this way, if we can grasp the fundamental interrelatedness of objective and subjective processes via the concept of energy, we will have gone a long way towards overcoming the nihilistic solipsism of reductive materialism wrought by modern science from which myself and many others have suffered.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
