Purportedly, according to the current understanding of the “conventions” governing mainstream physics, “energy can neither be created nor destroyed; rather, it can only be transformed or transferred from one form to another”.  It appears that matter in its various states is treated, for purposes of such convention as merely a form of energy, a very concentrated form of energy.  Thus there has, for some time, been a pragmatic agreement in physics to treat the universal sum of energy and matter as a constant, at least until evidence to the contrary becomes available and is demonstrably more probable than the converse.

“Convention” is the term crafted by philosopher David Hume to describe the pragmatic agreements we arrive at to treat unproven or unprovable concepts as accurate, because they work, or seem to work, or have worked so far. That is the nature of knowledge to which we humans are privy, an agreement to treat things which function as true, until a more efficient truth appears to us.  That is why the conventions we treat as truths are relative, which is not to state that truth, absolute truth is inexistent.  We just have no way to establish it, at least not yet.  At least not permanently.  Given that nothing yet appears ultimately provable, but according to the so called “scientific method”, only disprovable, “conventions are all we have.  But we treat them so emphatically as truths that we are willing to kill and die to defend them.  We humans are a strange, illogical and incoherent lot.

Still, within the context of “conventions” in modern physics, concepts consistently being challenged and modified, as they should be, there are interesting questions that straddle the spheres of science and parascience.  One may involve the above referenced convention concerning the permanent nature of the energy-matter continuum.  The convention concerning the conservation of energy, including mass as a concentrated form of energy, raises for me a question as to the nature of life at all levels.  Life seems to involve a form of energy, at least in the form of temporarily self-perpetuating and constantly mutating electrical impulses which generate motion as well as: (1) reaction, (2) perception and (3), at least the illusion of creation.  My question, questions really, involve what happens to those electrical impulses that manifest as life.  Where do they go?  How do they dissipate or to what other forms of energy do they convert.

Perhaps into shadowy echoes of immortality resonating in infinity.

Something about which physicists and paraphysicists should perhaps ponder and argue.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution. Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen).  Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales.  Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies).  However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony.  He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.