What does energy mean? An interdisciplinary conversation

Single-discipline research may have limited effectiveness if it fails to take into account cogent knowledge from other fields, and especially if fails to communicate using terms that are meaningful to other disciplines and to policy makers. In the energy field, interdisciplinary research is needed to address the many complex and urgent socio-technical issues involved in achieving a more sustainable future. However, the terminology and specialised concepts that are integral to disciplines can create barriers to a comprehensive understanding of a shared field of inquiry. In energy sciences the common language of mathematics is used to help in understanding of the quantitative concepts of energy and its transformations, while the social sciences use both qualitative and quantitative means to describe society and social relationships, using the subtly different languages that are associated with different social theories. If these barriers to communication can be bridged, the benefits can be immense. I illustrate some of the misunderstandings that can occur in conversations between social and physical scientists with an imaginary dialogue. I conclude that, to work effectively across disciplines, social scientists will need to learn something of what energy means, and physical scientists will need to learn something of what energy means.