In religious thermodynamics, spiritual energy, a religio-my8thology based science term, refers to the physics definition of energy used in a religiosity sense.
The term, generally speaking, tends to be an effort to define the olden days concept of 'spirit' or the breath of life, primarily of Egyptian origin, in a modern scientific meaning.
In 1907, American sociologist Lester Ward defined spiritual energy, as purely a function of psychological energy and social energy, as follows: [1]
“I am always very chary about using such expressions as ‘spiritual phenomena’, because the word spiritual has almost become a synonym of supernatural. Yet the word is a perfectly proper one and ought to be redeemed and freely used, more nearly as a synonym of psychic in its widest sense, and I shall not hesitate so to use it. The last three chapters have been devoted to showing that spiritual phenomena are as much natural phenomena as physical phenomena, that spiritual forces are true natural forces, and that there is a spiritual energy, i.e., a psychic and social energy, that is as capable of doing work as any other form of kinetic energy. In fact it is the highest and most effective form of energy or vis viva.”
In the 1930s, French philosopher Pierre Teilhard employed the term he term spiritual energy was used significantly. A more recently coined related term is spiritual entropy, a hypothetic sort of entropy analog to physical entropy, albeit defined in the spiritual realm, which is defined crudely by American thermodynamicist Gilbert Wedekind, to the effect that accumulation of ‘maximal spiritual entropy’ equates to eternal death. [2]
References
1. Ward, Lester F. (1907). Pure Sociology: a Treatise on the Origin and Spontaneous Development of Society (thermodynamics, pgs. 97, 168; spiritual energy, pgs. 167-68, etc.). MacMillan.
2. Wedekind, Gilbert L. (2003). Spiritual Entropy: Life-Changing Insights Revealed by a Unique Natural law (spiritual entropy, 43+ pgs). Xulon Press.
