Energy as the capacity for change
A philosophical statement, not a replacement for physics.
⚠️ A note on what this is. What follows is philosophical exploration, not a technical claim. Physics has precise definitions of energy that do the work they need to do. I am not proposing a replacement, and nothing here should be read as one.
What interests me is energy considered as the capacity for transformation — the thing whose presence makes change possible at all.
Framed that way a question appears: is that capacity best understood as internal to a thing, external to it, or as something whose significance only shows up in interaction? A stone at the top of a hill has potential that means nothing without the hill, the gravity and the possibility of descent. The capacity seems to live in the relationship rather than in the object.
If that is right for the simple case, it is worth asking how far it extends.
The language of the universe is energy.
I hold that as a philosophical statement about transformation and relationship. It is not a physical result, and I would rather say so plainly than let a sentence like that borrow authority it has not earned.