Jim (Green)... Don't expect people to respond to the original question
when your original question restricts the response to choices the
responders don't wish to make.
I already pointed out that your sequence of gravity doing work and
ultimately resulting in a temperature change is not necessarily avoiding
reification. Your overall wording is not the wording I would choose.
You are trying too hard to eliminate saying energy flow or transfer of
energy. If we're talking about conservation of energy, then don't beat
around the bush... Say so. In the beginning your system had more
gravitational potential energy then in the end. In the beginning your
system had less thermal energy than in the end. Gravitational potential
energy decreased. Thermal energy increased.
If gravitational potential energy decreased and thermal energy
increased, and these were somehow connected, what is the nature of the
connection? You apparently don't want to use wording such as "energy
flowed" and it seems you don't even want to say energy was transferred.
So you start talking about work as if work is something real. It's not.
It's a concept just like energy is.
It seems to me you weave webs and then get upset because people try to
walk around your web rather than get stuck in it.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu