PiccoloNamek, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Energy is an interesting phenomenon to explore.
There is, it must be said, significant confusion between the strictly rigorous concept of energy put forward by physicists, and the shamelessly non-rigorous concept of energy peddled by woo-merchants.
Still, anyone who has immersed themselves deeply in any creative field discovers that there is something to the woo version of energy. Woo crystals and wind-chimes start looking like ritual fetish objects*, designed to capture some sort of low-fidelity, slightly adulterated version of the clearer, more refined energy harvested by talented artists, musicians, and other aesthetic magicians. Scenic spots, from sunlit forest clearings, to crumbling old stone ruins, to night-time neon cityscapes, also seem to accumulate various forms of this cosmic background energy.
*(As in talismans, not anything kinky, you perverts.)
Let us call this vaguely-sensed thing emotional-aesthetic energy. It appears to involve the convergence of two seemingly-disparate but intimately-related phenomena: emotional energy is the more attention-grabbing and more (immediately) powerful form; aesthetic energy is the subtler and less attention-grabbing form, but often carries greater long-term influence.
Malagalabombonera, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Powerful emotional energy can be felt in the stadium rallies of zealous politicians, in bombastic nightclub muzak, and in heated arguments between warring lovers; subtle aesthetic energy can be discerned within elegant artworks, in harmoniously-designed gardens, and in the quietly shared glances between close confidantes.
Aesthetic and emotional energy both occur in positive, negative and mixed forms, indeed in a whole 'spectrum' of colours. The intensity of both can vary wildly — indeed this is why the two phenomena blur into each other. Many and diverse forms of emotional and aesthetic energy can often occur mingled together, and this is one of the defining characteristics of the phenomenon.
Thomas Nordwest, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Not only can this energy be felt, but eddies and flows, structures and patterns, can be discerned, varying according to the different micro-areas of a garden or the passages of a piece of music. There is clearly something to theories like feng shui, which suggest that some kind of “energy” flows through spaces, but it is not clear what. The fact that people do often agree on whether, say, the layout of a particular garden is balanced or discordant, suggests that some sort of consistent underlying phenomena is at work — and likely a similar phenomena is in play when we make such judgements regarding the relative harmony or disharmony of a given piece of music or passage of text.
Certain meditation teachers speak of gross and subtle distractions: they contrast intrusive thoughts, for example, from certain quiet but persistent distortions of awareness. (It's said that the latter become more noticeable as the first begin to fade away.) Are these teachers essentially describing the experience of emotional (gross) and aesthetic (subtle) energy, perhaps with the colours drained away?
Indeed, many people immersed in intense creative work find both forms of energy — gross-emotional and subtle-aesthetic — distracting. Even a window with a scenic view, or a Mozart sonata, can be too extravagant for serious creative workers — more austere environments are required for disciplined production. (It's not that the subtle energy from such things is bad, but it can disturb the all-consuming focus such discipline requires.) Not for nothing did Nietzsche speak of a kind of 'morning-sickness' prevalent among artistic types during the early stages of the formation of novel ideas — outside influences can be very harmful during such times.
However, for now I want to explore whether there is a connection between physical energy and the concept of emotional-aesthetic energy I have just outlined.
Modern physicists are right to be skeptical of any adulterated woo-derived notions entering their mathematically pure view of the universe.
The picture of reality as a vast but finite combination of a small set of fundamental particles, interacting according to definite laws, and following (in principle) predictable trajectories via discoverable mathematical equations — setting aside for now the unsolved questions of the quantum realm, which are frequently misinterpreted — is a towering achievement of human thought and responsible for great progress in the mind's mastery over matter in the last century or two. The woo theory of energy is a vague phantasm that even modern psychology departments reject with extreme prejudice. Why should physicists even let it in the door?
And yet: the phenomena I have outlined above are indeed reproducible phenomena with measurable effects on the human body. (To be clear, this is why I want to separate my concept of emotional-aesthetic energy from the vague woo concept of energy.)
Every line of evidence suggests that emotions are some kind of interface between the mind and the physical organism. Emotions interact closely with thoughts, and yet also directly cause the release of hormones into the bloodstream, the tightening and contracting of muscles, physical excitation and relaxation and all associated effects, and so on.
Furthermore, it is a commonplace in biology that life itself, in all its forms, revolves around the flows, cycles and transformations of physical energy. Within investigations into the origins of life, and into the nature of the earliest ‘proto-cells’, a major line of inquiry is the question of energy capture and regulation. The vastly complex orchestra of biochemical reactions in all organisms, both simple and complex — the continual splitting and merging of molecules within the cells of mammals, birds, molluscs, plants, bacteria, and in every other creature on the planet — cannot be understood without tracing out the expenditure, release, and various transformations, of energy.
Chakazul, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This is all well and good, but still, aren't we still blurring a strictly-delimited, measurable physical concept with a vague psychological one, that may only be similar by analogy?
Perhaps, but I strongly suspect that it would be highly illuminating to conduct a rigorous analysis of the physical concept of energy (in all of its various forms), followed by a connection of this concept through the various levels of complexity of the biological organism, and finally conclude with a systematic connection to a more precise conceptualisation of emotional-aesthetic energy, such as I outlined above.
However, time and space is too short. I am very cautious of overreaching. For now I can only outline the key points.
I believe that the notion of emotional-aesthetic energy is somehow intimately related with the question of how organisms manage and regulate the release and transformation of their internally-stored physical energy.
There does not need to be anything mystical here, as the exact nature of all of the energetic cycles within organisms is beginning to be mapped out, as are — though I believe the relevant science is still at a more rudimentary stage — the connections between the emotions, the nervous system, and muscular actions. Furthermore, there are direct connections between electromagnetic fields, chemical bonds, and the storage of energy in simple molecules like ATP (the "molecular unit of energy transfer”), though this is not widely-appreciated outside of the relevant fields.
("Chemical energy" is really electromagnetic potential energy; as atoms are bonded by their electromagnetic fields, all chemical interactions — by-and-large — involve the interaction of these fields; the storage and release of energy from ATP is just one example.)
However, there is something magical about the organic release of energy from sensory stimuli. An eagle sees a rustle in the grass; swiftly afterwards it swoops down. A person hears stirring music, and is inspired to dance and sing. What are these phenomena really, if not simply much more complicated patterns of energy transformation?
It is well-known that living organisms are made up of hierarchies of physical structures, ultimately reducing down to basic particles. It is less-well appreciated that there are also hierarchical patterns of energy transformation, from the interactions of individual atoms and molecules, through the complex self-creation of the machinery found within biological cells, up to the pulsing of heart muscle and electrochemical firings in the brain. (Indeed, these patterns of matter and energy continually shape and reconstruct one another according to mechanisms that we are only beginning to understand.)
Why is there anything mysterious about the fact that higher-level psychological phenomena also follow a similar pattern? The only real obstacles are that these higher-level phenomena — the emotional-aesthetic phenomena I described above — have not been clearly mapped out, and that the mechanisms of connection between mind, emotions and body are still only vaguely understood.
If these problems can be solved, whole new frontiers of science could be unlocked. Previously-unseen connections between the sciences, the arts, and the humanities may be revealed.
Jonathan Zander, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons