Talk:Energy (science)

Name?

If the distinction is between energy as discussed in physics and as discussed in psychology, then the former should not be titled energy (science), but energy (physics), since many people consider psychology, too, to be a science. I don't know that psychologists discuss energy under that title... Another obvious sense is energy in the sense of oil, solar, nuclear, etc. ...

And weren't we preferring to redirect energy to energy (disambiguation)? Just curious, maybe not. --Larry Sanger 07:49, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Larry, there are more sciences than physics that use the concept energy. Personally, I don't see psychology as a science (my late father, who was a psychologist, agreed with me on this). In any case, in psychology (science or not), energy has a completely different meaning than in physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, and so on. For one, energy (psychology) is not measurable, i.e., cannot be expressed in joule (or do you say to mrs. Sanger in the morning: "I have 10 kJ today and will write a nice blog and do some other work, whereas yesterday I had only 0.1 kJ and didn't get much done")?--Paul Wormer 08:40, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

I think there are good arguments both ways. Physics is certain the field in which energy is defined, although others (e.g. chemistry) make use of it.

I don't really have any strong feelings one way or the other about the best name - I would only ask people that we discuss potential new names before we start moving articles around; since cluster moves are not (yet) automated (although I've just found some stuff that may enable us to make it easier), moving from name to name is a pain.

As to the correct target for the redirect at energy (whether to go here, or the dab page) - it's not that important, frankly. As long as there's a redir there, and all articles which reference this concept eventually get linked directly here, that's all that matters. I think most links to the name energy do mean this one, so it's probably reasonable to go here. J. Noel Chiappa 09:54, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

I do not claim that psychology is or is not a science: it depends on how one defines the key terms, of course, and the position one takes on the question probably reflects personal philosophical biases more than anything more interesting. But CZ is neutral, and there are many people who insist that psychology (or the experimental parts of it) is a science. Hence, to use energy (science) and distinguish that from energy (psychology) is to take a stance with which many well-informed people will disagree, and a stance we are not forced to take. So I'd like to ask someone to change this. How to change it, I leave up to you. I'm sure there are many suitable alternatives, if you are creative.

This is a style of thinking and dispute-resolution that I hope we can get more into the habit of using...it's not particularly difficult or subtle, but it will help us in the long run to keep a smoothly-running community, as well as a resource that scholars of all sorts can respect. --Larry Sanger 10:19, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Comment deleted?

I seem to recall that I wrote a comment on this talk page when I started the article "energy". It was something like: Large subject, with many angles, science, economy, politics, etc., important that there is at least something, that is why I start. Also I seem to remember that I got some comments, as usual, that my writing was too difficult. Do I just imagine this, or did the talk page get lost?--Paul Wormer 10:12, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Are you sure it was not on a different page? I see no sign of a comment similar to that here or on Talk:Energy. Chris Day 10:21, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

Umm, this is the old Talk:Energy - check the history. It got moved here. Talk:Energy is just a redir that got created when the article was moved here.

But yeah, could have been somewhere else - the history of this one goes back a ways. J. Noel Chiappa 10:32, 22 May 2008 (CDT)

What articles on energy should exist?

I doubt anyone deliberately deleted the comment (that's not the sort of thing we do!); but I don't know where it is.

But you raised a good point anyway that needs to be thought about here. Perhaps there should be a general article about energy that covers the various things that people say about it--at least as to engineering and power generation, economics, politics and geography, and policy. I suspect that those topics are closely enough related that it would be useful to have an article about that, e.g.: energy (social aspects). Then the distinction could be made between that and energy (physical aspects) (if you don't like "physics"), which concerns the physical, chemical, etc., aspects of the topic. As to psychological aspects, probably energy (psychology) would be best redirected to motivation or motivation (psychology). --Larry Sanger 10:36, 22 May 2008 (CDT)