The Best Logique Evidence of God Existence

[polymath257]

No, I am saying that the energy of a particle is the fourth piece of a vector, the rest of which describes momentum.

And it is not clear what you mean when you say 'scientists don't know what energy is'. Sure we do. It's the fourth component of the energy-momentum vector.

The problem is that 'what something is' is a metaphysical question and thereby likely to be simply meaningless. Much better is to realize *all* physical concepts are defined operationally: by how we measure them. This is just as true of energy as it is of mass, charge, spin, parity, momentum, angular momentum, etc.

Here's a question. What sort of answer is possible to the question 'what is energy'? Once again, the predictability obtained in science and the detail is far above what your wife does with the car. At some point 'knowing what something is' is the same as 'knowing how it works'.

I  disagree with you.  the vector comment is not what energy is.  The vector is modeling what energy does.  jut like they do not know what gravity is and they do not know what space/time is.  They have know idea why QM works.  energy is exactly like those three.  it is just  fact.  there is nothing we can do about it.  yet. 

You are answering metaphysical and thus meaningless.  I am saying its only metaphysical by definition and not meaningless.  It very meaningful and we are spending a lot of resources to find out what it means. 

why is it meaningless to you?  is everything you don't meaningless?

Well, let me put it this way. What *sort* of answer to the question 'what is energy' would you consider to be appropriate? Even a ballpark example where what 'something is' is answered in a way you find to be acceptable.

From what I can see, to ask what something 'is' isn't usually a reasonable question. We can ask for its composition (if it is made of other things) or its properties (how it works), but asking for what it 'is' in some metaphysical sense is BS.

There are a couple of general ways of defining energy. Perhaps the best is that it is the conserved quantity derived from Noether's Theorem when the laws of physics are time invariant. In those cases where the laws are NOT time invariant, energy can't even be defined. In those cases where the laws 8are* invariant, itNoether's law gives a good definition.

And it turns out to be that fourth component of the energy-momentum vector because usually time invariance also comes along with location invariance, which gives momentum conservation.

When you say we don't know why QM works, it seems to me that you have things exactly backwards. QM is the *answer* to how things work. And it seems to be fundamental, which means it has no underlying 'reason' for 'why' it is the way it is.

Now, it is possible some future modification of our understanding will have QM as a consequence of some *other* laws, but then *those* laws will have no 'reason' for them.

I suspect you are wanting some sort of 'mechanism' that is based on a classical concept of particles and composition that is simply false. THis is where metaphysical assumptions about how things 'must be' lead to problems: the universe may not agree that it 'must be' how you think it should be.