[Buddha-l] buddha-l Digest, Vol 41, Issue 4

[Curt Steinmetz]

Bernie Simon wrote:
> On Jul 3, 2008, at 9:32 AM, buddha-l-request at mailman.swcp.com wrote:
>
>   
>> Isn't energy the "ultimate stuff of the physical universe" that is  
>> "not
>> subject to destruction" or creation?
>>     
>
> Energy is not a substance. It's a property of physical systems. And  
> energy is created and destroyed all the time, or rather, transformed.  
> The chemical energy of wood is transformed into the light of fire,  
> which is transformed into heat. These are qualitatively different  
> things. The quantity of energy in a system is conserved, not energy  
> itself.
> _______________________________________________
>   
Matter is obviously "a substance" - and matter and energy are 
interchangeable, as has been known since 1905. Therefore at the very 
least energy has the potential to become "a substance" (which makes it 
"potentially substantial") - and in fact we know that energy does do 
this all the time. Also the distinction between "energy itself" and the 
"quantity" of energy doesn't apply when we are talking about 
"conservation". "Conservation" refers precisely to the "quantity" of 
energy - that has always been the meaning of what physicists call 
"conservation laws".

The bottom line is: mass-energy (they must be treated together) can be 
neither created nor destroyed. All you can do with it is rearrange it 
(rearrangement includes conversion from matter to energy and vice 
versa). All apparent change in the physical universe is just the 
rearranging of mass-energy - nothing ever "arises" out of nothing - nor 
does anything ever simply "cease" and become nothing. Therefore any 
posited "dhammas" that arise out of nothing and/or cease and simply 
disappear into nothing must either be conceptual constructs or they 
appear to be inconsistent with what we know about the physical world.

That is unless the "dhammas" themselves are not physical (ie, are 
neither matter nor energy). Then the conservation laws of physics don't 
apply. But that implies that the physical universe is "ultimately" "made 
up" of non-physical stuff.

Curt Steinmetz