Energy as a Primitive Ontology for the Physical World

Abstract

We reanalyze from a modern perspective the bold idea of G. Helm, W. Ostwald, P. Duhem and others that energy is the fundamental object composing the physical world. We start from a broad perspective reminding the search for a fundamental “substance” from the pre-Socratics to the important debate between Ostwald and Boltzmann about the energy vs. atoms at the end of the 19^th century. While atoms were eventually accepted (even by Ostwald himself), the emergence of Quantum Mechanics and Relativity were crucial to suggest that the dismissal of energy in favor of atoms was perhaps premature, and should be revisited. We discuss how the so-called primitive ontology programme can be implemented with energy as the fundamental object, and why fields (and their quanta, particles) should rather be considered as nonfundamental quantities. We sketch some of the difficulties introduced by the attempt to include gravitation in the general scheme.